Just had an early dinner in the form of shredded beef brisket with spiced bbq sauce accompanied with rocket in a sandwich with seeded bread.
After wrecking a perfectly good steak yesterday (I bought a 2kilo block of sirloin the other week to experiment with) by trying to "reverse sear" it, I realized that I'd always broiled, never seared, steaks before. So Chef Google and I got together tonight, and the results were quite satisfactory. The other kilo or so will be biltong when I wake up, it's drying now.
'Hey @Maddy, so glad you could make it to my kitchen. Teranaky or peanut butter, I can never be certain with my recipes...' 'Hi @Iain Aschendale , I've been so looking forward to meeting you. Where shall I sit, buddy?' '@Maddy, @Maddy, I got something to show ya...' 'You got a great place here, @Iain.'
Oven baked chicken strips. Homemade. The third attempt at the perfect strips. Just like the time I was obsessed with making the perfect omelettes.
I just made this for the next couple days' lunch, and dang it's tasty. Dinner: I have vegetables and sirloin strips in the slow cooker, and rice in the rice cooker. I was so damn pleased with myself for throwing together a meal that necessitated neither the oven nor the stove (it's balls degrees fahrenheit outside), and then I had the brilliant idea to prepare the above salad while the dishwasher was running and pumping hot steam into the kitchen. Ah well, points for trying.
Courtesy of Plated, dinner tonight is Prosciutto and Zucchini Cavatappi with Thyme Breadcrumbs and Mascarpone.
Greek Lentil Soup from the staple vegetarian cook book Laurel's Kitchen. That book was my saving grace from Krap Dinner throughout university. https://www.amazon.ca/Laurels-Kitchen-Handbook-Vegetarian-Nutrition/dp/0915132079 "Ah, those were the days I want to hold ya man." John Lennon to Mick Jagger while sharing a bowl of brown rice in 1968. See, the past does have its merits, - sometimes/occasionally, and especially when there is no need to linger.
Wagyu flat iron steak with grilled bok choy and some kind of Asian sauce. I dont know what the fuck it is. My sous chef ordered 25lbs of it (about $800) so I told him to sell it all or he's fired.
And now I have (counting)... like, 150 little neck clams? 200? So... clam and lobster ceviche? Buck a shuck clams? Hmm... at least they only cost $.26 a piece.
Old school clams casino man!!! Do a modern twist on that!! I think the ingredients are cheap, too. edited to add wiki. ETA: Originated in Rhode Island. ETA: I know that being from L.A. I've seen them around longer (since I was a kid), but if I see one more fucking ceviche on a menu I'm gonna scream. Came back to add (creative brain just kicked in, sorry): Got any wine you want to push that would pair with it? Clams casino app as part of a special pairing?
No, got to prep them to order or they die. Unservable after about 2 hours, and no time reprep. And 15 minute cook time. Ceviche holds for 3-4 days
Just had chicken fried rice with oyster mushrooms and sweet and sour sauce. I was experimenting with mixing the mushrooms in stir frys
Thanks for taking the time to explain, Homes. Damn. I'm just getting so tired of seeing all the same things on every restaurant menu all across the US. Food is becoming truly uninspiring, and that's sad. ETA: If you gotta do ceviche (grumble) what about using Thai flavors? I still can't eat it, but it wouldn't be as boring, Plus, for me, every seviche on a menu means yet another app I can't eat (immune impaired, plus allergic to cheese, mushrooms, and wine). The appetizer menu, which should be the most interesting part, is the bane of my existence.
I don't know. Maybe? You need a shitload of lime juice to "cook" the seafood, so that's going to dominate anything you add after it. You can add the coconut milk and all that I guess, but it isn't very likely to sell. Ceviche is one of our cheater foods (like soup or chowder) where you can basically take any raw seafood that is about to die/spoil, chop it up, and preserve it for later consumption. And there's zero prep time, which is free money. One of those things where you're just trying to move product. We didn't end up doing it anyway. I did buck a shuck and sold what I could, then I just gave them away at the bar to people who wanted them. Interestingly enough, as you mentioned earlier, clams casino are not only from Rhode Island but from Casino Park in my hometown of Narragansett (which is tiny... like 13k people). The funny part is that it hasn't been known as Casino Park for like a hundred years. Ever since the casino burned down leaving only the famous "Towers": And even more interesting (to me at least) is that there's a little gazebo off camera to the right of the Towers: And in that gazebo is where Homer first became a man in the Summer of 1996. ETA: not with that guy in the pic... I don't know who the fuck that is.
A) You make me glad I don't like seafood B) I'm sure you've got equal horror stories about the beef and pork, so my time will come
You're actually much, much more likely to catch a food born illness from produce or another uncooked product (like eggs). Seafood does come with an inherent risk of biological pathogens, but your red meats, in my experience, are probably the "safest" foods to eat as far as restaurants go, if only because they are cooked. Anything that isn't cooked (remember the E-coli outbreak in romaine lettuce earlier this year) has a great potential to harbor bacteria. Particularly seeds and sprouts, since they roll in the pH sweet spot for bacterial growth. Cooking something will inhibit almost all of that. Unless you're talking about viruses, which are not inherent to food but easy to pass along through cross contamination.
Sorry, I should have been more specific: No coconut milk. I had in mind the flavors of a Thai dipping sauce made with rice wine and chopped cucumbers and chili (among other things). Now that I think of it I don't think it would have enough acid to cook the seafood, but it would make a fantastic substitute for a mignonette with raw seafood. The towers are gorgeous--fantastic brickwork and windows! I thought of clams casino from my recent vintage cookbook browsing, then saw the Rhode Island part when I linked the Wiki and had no idea. Thank you for the history lesson! (I'm a food history nerd.) Regarding that extra bit of history (Homes, you sly dog)...My teenage hometown (3200 people) had a gazebo, too. Boy and I met and hung out there, but before things could get interesting the town installed a bright motion-sensor spotlight that pointed straight at it. To answer the question in the thread...spinach salad with hard boiled eggs.
Some spectacular genius decided to add a piece of bacon to a Bay clam one day. Boom. History. That guy probably amounted to nothing before he died. But he invented the clam casino. We should all aspire to be like him. Small contributions to the greater good. It doesn't take much when you think about it. Clam + bacon. Genius comes in small packages.
I know, right? That's deep, man. There are so many truly great vintage recipes no one does anymore, and most of them are simple, but genius, in concept.
Short answer there is that nobody wants to eat them anymore. It's all about the fusion, creativity, and the next big twist. Makes my head spin sometimes. Casinos sell fine, though. We have clam beds all up and down the coast. Not worth it for my joint... not with my prep and labor problems.
I'm missing out. Clams are so not a West Coast thing (all about the oyster), seeing them on a menu other than an occasional appearance as poorly done chowder is a rarity. (A good New England clam chowder is one of my favorite things in the world.) Can't get 'em in the South, either, and my business travels never take me to clam bed USA. ETA: Oh! I have good news about scallops, though! New scallop beds have appeared for the first time in Florida in over...what was it? 20 years? 30?
