What's for dinner?

[kwtoxman]

I'd say pizza here has finally evolved , every body knew wood fired ovens just taste better and quaility ingredients are always better, but we wanted 2 for 1 pricing , $8.00 take a ways. The box and the product don't have to taste the same.

Pizza is coming into it's own, a fine dining restaurant here in town has added a wood oven

I agree, some great pizza is now reasonably broadly available out there in a number of restaurants. I even had great wood clay oven pizza in the Dominican Republic at an AI a few years ago. That Bourdain Neapolitan pizza video episode shows how in Italy the AVPN organization was created around that pizza style. They trademark, regulate and certify the Pizza Margherita style in detail, with UNESCO heritage recognition and TSG certification as well. A number of pizza restaurants in Canada have obtained the AVPN designation, even a number of restaurants in Toronto have achieved this accreditation :thumbup:. Famoso also makes good pizza for a chain restaurant; they have a restaurant in TO and their style reminds me of Neapolitan California fusion.




More meal pictures here .
Another stir fry wok meal, this one fusion style with stuff I had around. Bok choy, carrots and sliced onion all fresh from the garden. Cooked in peanut oil and includes yellow sweet pepper, shiitake mushrooms, basswood black fungus, fresh diced garlic, fresh diced sage, chili flakes, chow mein noodles, shrimp, cashews, sesame oil and finished in a Thai yellow curry sauce :agave::agave:.

Very tasty.

Made an omelet with more stuff I had around including fresh cherry tomatoes and onions from the garden, shredded three cheese, ground four peppercorn, salt and fresh Italian parsley. I included a quick stove-top element heated soft tortilla shell for finishing. Awesome :agave:

Quality dim sum is excellent; here's some steamed bbq pork buns and steamed ginger squid :agave::agave:.

:agave::agave:

Cheers

 

[kwtoxman]

I have another great meal and cook to share. I had a ton of fresh garden cherry tomatoes and needed to find more ways to enjoy them. I thought about making a cherry tomato pasta sauce and it turns out lots of people do it

.

I had no idea but there's lots of cherry tomato scratch sauce recipes and options out there, and it's very easy to make. I made a basic burst cherry tomato sauce here; it's a 3 minute prep and I cook up the sauce while the spaghetti boils (6-8 minutes or so). Highly recommended. Here's the recipe; it's really highly rated and simple (I recommend halving the amount of olive oil and then adjust to preference). https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/...-15-minute-burst-cherry-tomato-sauce-56390060

These style of cooks are easy, fast and very flavorful, especially with fresh garden produce. The taste difference was mind boggling. Spaghetti with fresh burst cherry tomato sauce. Amazing meal :agave::agave:.

I think it's a great looking meal as well. Very colourful . The visual aspect of food is an important component to a meal. It's great when I can harness it well.

Here's the fresh burst cherry tomato sauce alone.

Big pictures with lots of resolution if you click on them.

I tend to cook the cherry tomatoes down more than other recipes show in their pictures, making it similar to a rustico style sauce. Here I used two types of cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden, including the top rated and very sweet sun sugar variety I keep mentioning. Served with fresh shredded Grana Padano cheese and fresh basil. The sauce tastes 10X better than store-bought options

. There are lots of great burst cherry tomato recipes out there, and they can be adjusted or modified. You can also use this sauce as a base for making a tapenade or salsa as well. I see lots of opportunities .

I can't believe I took this long to do this type of cook. Check it out for sure if you're interested.

Cheers

 

[jc100]

If you want to really get into sauce making (and canning too) get one of these. https://www.amazon.ca/Norpro-1952-J...ocphy=9000713&hvtargid=pla-316081603817&psc=1

We make sauce and can it for the year ahead. Cherry toms, beefsteaks, plum toms, a mix etc. We usually have enough to last the year but this year the harvest hasn’t been that good. It’s mostly cherry toms. I like the slow cooked/boiled down sauces as they are richer. The quick cooks aren’t bad but work best with cherry toms. The bigger toms are sometimes a bit tart for a quick cook.

 

[kwtoxman]

Anyone consider that 2018 gold medal olive oil mentioned earlier? https://www.amazon.ca/PJ-KABOS-16-9Floz-Vicinity-KORONEIKI/dp/B07DWDF2FV. It's back in stock. I've had more today with the same turkish jalapeno bread mentioned earlier as well. A very impressive combination. I also had the olive oil recently with some fresh sourdough bread. Really tasty . I'm now eyeing a french bread buy, lol.

I'm surprised the Pizza talk didn't generate more discussion. Lots of great options and advice out there. Hope some of you can run with it.

How about chicken nuggets? I got interested in them recently. I haven't made them at home in a few decades since I got food poisoning from a frozen mass produced chicken nugget oil pan cook. It put me the hospital,

. I do love chicken nuggets though and this recently led me to a basic recipe search. IMO, I found a great guide here. I see multiple good recipes and a few good sauce recipes. The cooks are simple and I think cooking chicken from raw (rather than frozen) will alleviate any potential undercooking issues.
https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/yummilicious-chicken-nugget-recipes-you-must-try/
What do you think?
Back to my last post with the burst cherry tomato sauce spaghetti cook. Crazy awesome level :agave::agave:! Keep the comments coming. I can't recommend this cook enough.

Cheers

 

[kwtoxman]

Pretty quiet again. Here's a few more meals.
I made that garden fresh burst cherry tomato sauce pasta again. This one has extra sauce with more olive oil. :agave::agave:

Another Weber Summit grill of chicken drumsticks with award winning competition bbq sauce. :agave:

A nice red wine from ON for the pasta meal. https://www.vivino.com/henry-of-pelham-old-vines-baco-noir/w/4895905?year=2016

It was time to harvest some of the garden too. I look forward to having this food through the winter.

Cheers

 

[kwtoxman]

Hope everyone is enjoying Thanksgiving weekend.

Some of the last garden fresh cherry tomatoes, plus dry cured meats (proscuitto, chorizo salami and schinkenspeck) and some german dill potato salad.

I picked up a 9 inch lava molcajete (mentioned earlier). Now I'm curing it.

Cheers

 

[jc100]

How do you cure and wash it?

 

[kwtoxman]

I've found many methods of curing a molcajete on the internet, links and videos. I've been grinding rice, dry then wet. Washed with water. I will use garlic, salt and spicy peppers to season and finish curing. I haven't decided if I want to do heat as well or not.

I'm really impressed with this molcajete. It has a number of things I was looking for. It's definitely lava rock (basalt), large, coarse and it has a broad foot base. Plus it was the best price I've seen for the real deal (basalt) near that size, ~$80 to my door. Anyone interested can look at my earlier posts and links (they appear to be bringing in units as they are produced). It's a great gift idea and can be used in the kitchen or for decor in the house.

Be careful looking at these things, there are some granite molcajetes (mortar and pestles) being offered for sale described as lava rock (basalt).

I noticed the tell-tale sulphur smell from time to time when grinding/curing. Neat.

Cheers

 

[jc100]

It’s going to be quite porous. Just wondering how you get mashed avocado out of the pores.

 

[jc100]

Hmm interesting. I have a mortar and pestle but it’s fairly useless for some things. Might get one of these.

https://www.bedbathandbeyond.ca/sto...sEbEDIZOnp9Cs4Z5mssaAo2UEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[kwtoxman]

The food mashed into the pores as part of the preparation is small and will be washed away when cleaning. The porosity is part of what an authentic lava molcajete offers; it provides a variable surface for food preparation and that's a good thing. It's a great tool for giving variable food texture. If I need more consistent grinding/preparation I'll use a granite molcajete or marble mortar/pestle. The variability in a basalt molcajete surface is its strength.

I put that response together before your second post and link and it says much of the same thing.

Also, being lava stone, they are great for heated oven/grill cooks for some Mexican meals. Basalt can take tremendous heat and retain that heat well. I've had a few meals cooked in a molcajete in restaurants and look forward to trying a few cooks myself now.
E.g. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/molcajete-mixto-recipe-2119902

I'll report back at some point how the basalt molcajete compares to the granite molacjete, but it may take a year or two. I try not to rush to judgement.

There's lots of recipes and options out there. This looks tasty .
[video=youtube;BN-hT8TamB8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN-hT8TamB8[/video]

Cheers

 

[J_F]

It’s going to be quite porous. Just wondering how you get mashed avocado out of the pores.

this is my curiosity as well
especially if used with meat
the seasoning process will leave stuff in the pores
stuff that could grow critters

 

[jc100]

this is my curiosity as well
especially if used with meat
the seasoning process will leave stuff in the pores
stuff that could grow critters

Putting it in an oven at 450+ will help...looks like part of the curing process is burning olive oil onto the surface to give some carbon. If I can find space in my kitchen for one of these I might bite. I don’t have anything that would give me the same effect as this right now. A food processor and blender isn’t going to help with food oils and is too homogenous, the mortar and pestle is pretty useless for real grinding. I’m not as interested for guacamole as for other things as guac is pretty easily made with a fork and a bowl to whatever consistency you like.

 

[jc100]

Ok. Since my wife has gone vegan I’ve been trying to make things that are varied and tasty that we can eat together. Here’s a few dishes I’ve managed to make without recipe books that came out quite well.

The first was a butter “chicken” dish. The problem with adapting a dish that normally contains cream to vegan is the consistency. Luckily, there is a very viable alternative. Cashews. A handful of cashews blended with water makes cashew cream that approximates the consistency of cream. It also has a creamy
protein packed taste too. I used this with some packaged dry spice mix for butter chicken, some chopped Vidalia onions fried in half the spice mix and some tofu fried with the onions. I split the fried onions in two portions and blended half with the rest of the spice mix and the raw unsalted cashews and some water to make the butter chicken sauce. The vitamix I recently bought turned this into a totally smooth creamy sauce with zero grittyness. I returned the sauce to the pan with the rest of the onions and fried tofu and heated it through. Served with basmati rice and a garlic naan this was absolutely delicious. Very very close to a real butter chicken taste seriously.

Second dish. I like Greek food...Moussaka and Pastitsio (not sure of the spelling here) which are variations of layered dishes. Moussaka is potato and eggplant layers and pastitsio is a pasta like dish. So I combined both with some Gardenia veggie mince sauce made with home processed tomatoes, fresh cremini mushrooms, chopped onions and layers of grilled eggplant slices, grilled potato slices and lasagna sheets alternating with the sauce and topped with panko crumbs. All baked for 40 mins in the oven. This gave a lovely layered dish with a Smokey eggplant flavour and crunchy topping.

Vegan isn’t as tough as I thought it would be. I still eat meat though.....bacon isn’t replaceable.

 

[kwtoxman]

https://gigglesgobblesandgulps.com/steak-and-shrimp-molcajete/

 

[kwtoxman]

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday with family and/or friends.

My holiday meal was today. I did a scratch spicy apricot glazed smoked picnic ham. I smoked this ham again to freshen up the smoke using hickory, apple and cherry woods. 8.3 lbs and the cook was 4.5 hrs long on the Weber Summit grill. Perfectly done, savoury and amazing :agave::agave:.

We made scratch scalloped garden potatoes as well. A natural side with ham in our family meals. :agave:

Here's the main dinner table. The meal included ham au jus, candied yams, fresh garden carrots, pickles and wines. :agave:

It was a great success; I saw many go for a third serving.

Dessert was pumpkin pie from a local premium food/butcher shop. Served with fresh real whipped cream.:agave:

Cheers

 

[roadrash]

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!


My holiday meal was today. I did a spicy apricot glazed smoked picnic ham. I smoked this ham again to freshen up the smoke using hickory, apple and cherry woods. 8.3 lbs perfectly cooked. Amazing :agave::agave:.

We made scratch scalloped garden potatoes as well. A natural side with ham in my family meals. :agave:

Here's the main dinner table. The meal included ham au jus, candied yams, fresh garden carrots, pickles and wines. :agave:

It was a great success; I saw many go for a third serving.
Dessert was pumpkin pie from a local premium food/butcher shop. Served with fresh real whipped cream.:agave:

Cheers

Any leftovers for me?

 

[Joe Bass]

I didn't do any of the cooking.

Sent from my purple G4 using Tapatalk

 

[J_F]

looks delish Joe, and nice presentation

 

[crankcall]

Congrats to Mrs. joe, Grandma Joe or whomever was responsible for cooking. Many layers of happiness happening there.