I cooked a small flurry of recipes over these few days, during which I also waitressed at the restaurant a lot, attended the wedding of an ex-waitress with a number of my current and former colleagues, and finally collapsed in a heap with a $5 download of Civilization V (2010).
The nice thing about cooking is that it is a constant, a daily reference point even in a whirlwind of other business, work, events, errands, moods, and crises. I may not always cook something elaborate, but I usually cook something.
So. Friday night, after a hard day at work, I made the Korean Barbecue from last November's Bon Appetit, using thinly sliced pork loin, lettuce leaves, and some store-bought kimchi, with brown rice and farm tomatoes on the side. Neither of my other family members like kimchi, so I put out some sriracha too. Oh, plus frozen crabcakes for my child who does not eat pork. The food was fine, nothing to get excited about. I eat better Korean marinated beef (though not pork) regularly at work. That said, spicy pork in a lettuce wrap with kimchi and rice is just inherently nice. An everyday-dinner idea to keep in mind.
Saturday night, the wedding, featuring some delicious catered barbecue (American-style this time).
Sunday night, Madhur Jaffrey's Spicy Kohlrabi with Corn, served over white rice, with fried eggs on top to provide some protein. With fresh August sweet corn cut from the cob and ripe farm tomatoes, this spicy-sweet kohlrabi was really flavorful, and the rice balanced the spiciness nicely. We inhaled this. I also made a side salad of romaine lettuce, carrot, green pepper, and mango. The mango was an inspired touch, with dressing made from the white balsamic vinegar left over from the strawberry cake.
The nice thing about cooking is that it is a constant, a daily reference point even in a whirlwind of other business, work, events, errands, moods, and crises. I may not always cook something elaborate, but I usually cook something.
So. Friday night, after a hard day at work, I made the Korean Barbecue from last November's Bon Appetit, using thinly sliced pork loin, lettuce leaves, and some store-bought kimchi, with brown rice and farm tomatoes on the side. Neither of my other family members like kimchi, so I put out some sriracha too. Oh, plus frozen crabcakes for my child who does not eat pork. The food was fine, nothing to get excited about. I eat better Korean marinated beef (though not pork) regularly at work. That said, spicy pork in a lettuce wrap with kimchi and rice is just inherently nice. An everyday-dinner idea to keep in mind.
Saturday night, the wedding, featuring some delicious catered barbecue (American-style this time).
Sunday night, Madhur Jaffrey's Spicy Kohlrabi with Corn, served over white rice, with fried eggs on top to provide some protein. With fresh August sweet corn cut from the cob and ripe farm tomatoes, this spicy-sweet kohlrabi was really flavorful, and the rice balanced the spiciness nicely. We inhaled this. I also made a side salad of romaine lettuce, carrot, green pepper, and mango. The mango was an inspired touch, with dressing made from the white balsamic vinegar left over from the strawberry cake.
 |  |
Monday, Mridula Baljekar's Karahi Chicken with Mint, served with brown rice and a side of roasted vegetables (cauliflower, eggplant, peppers, carrot, onion). While the chicken dish had a really nice flavor-- lots of scallions and cilantro, mint, lemon, ginger, tomatoes, dried chiles-- the cooking instructions called for it to be boiled first in plain water-- for 10 minutes!-- before being stir-fried with the other ingredients. This led to the chicken pieces themselves being dry and bland. While I know that some cuisines do use this boil-then-fry technique more frequently, I was not a fan of the results in this case. That's three recipes so far in this cookbook (Best-Ever Curry Cookbook) that I would consider unsuccessful. I'll try two or three more, but if I don't hit a winner by then, I'm giving up on it..
Tuesday night, I took a break from recipes to use up some other supplies around the house. We had corn on the cob, chocolate-cherry-coconut muffins (also featuring weird-tasting instant oatmeal packets left over from our hike!), and an egg scramble with cheese, cilantro, and jalapeno pepper. The muffins were popular. The corn is coming to the end of its useful life for this season, I think; it tasted old. Alas. Though I won't be sorry to see this hot, hot summer go.
Wednesday night, the second of Jaffrey's kohlrabi recipes, Spicy Kohlrabi Stew with Tomatoes. This was sort of an odd dish, with large, 3-bite-sized chunks of kohlrabi boiled together with a lot of tomato and modest seasoning (it was distinctly less spicy than the Spicy Kohlrabi with Corn), becoming a bowl of big-veggies-sitting-in-broth that required both a spoon and a fork to eat. The idea was to serve it with a lot of fresh flatbread and some store-bought hummus, but the flatbreads I bought that afternoon were already moldy inside (thanks, Community Food Co-op! I would not call you out except that this happens all the time), so I had to improvise. We had multigrain English muffins, hard-boiled eggs, and celery sticks, with some hummus to add to any or all of these. It was a weird meal.
Tuesday night, I took a break from recipes to use up some other supplies around the house. We had corn on the cob, chocolate-cherry-coconut muffins (also featuring weird-tasting instant oatmeal packets left over from our hike!), and an egg scramble with cheese, cilantro, and jalapeno pepper. The muffins were popular. The corn is coming to the end of its useful life for this season, I think; it tasted old. Alas. Though I won't be sorry to see this hot, hot summer go.
Wednesday night, the second of Jaffrey's kohlrabi recipes, Spicy Kohlrabi Stew with Tomatoes. This was sort of an odd dish, with large, 3-bite-sized chunks of kohlrabi boiled together with a lot of tomato and modest seasoning (it was distinctly less spicy than the Spicy Kohlrabi with Corn), becoming a bowl of big-veggies-sitting-in-broth that required both a spoon and a fork to eat. The idea was to serve it with a lot of fresh flatbread and some store-bought hummus, but the flatbreads I bought that afternoon were already moldy inside (thanks, Community Food Co-op! I would not call you out except that this happens all the time), so I had to improvise. We had multigrain English muffins, hard-boiled eggs, and celery sticks, with some hummus to add to any or all of these. It was a weird meal.
And that is the story of our week in dinners.