Dustin's DL Food Blog

  Chicken thighs. peppers, onions, and potatoes. No recipe. It was time to use up some some stuff before they went bad, specifically potatoes and peppers. I bought a pound bag of those mini-peppers for $.99 a couple of weeks ago, and the potatoes have been hanging around for a while (we've been trying to cut back). I started roasting the potatoes separately, then browned the chicken on the stove. I chopped and browned some pancetta, then added onions, peppers, garlic, hot pepper, and peperoncini. Deglazed with white wine, sprinkled on some Wondra, added some water and chicken powder, put the chicken and potatoes on top and popped it back in the oven. Delicious.

  Corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and turnips, with horseradish sauce. I bought a corned beef back in March, about the time we started the Mediterranean diet. Normally I would have cooked the entire corned beef and scarfed down a lot of it. This Italian boy loves corned beef. But, I decided to cook half and freeze the other half. It made it's reappearance today. Fucking delicious. The best fruit salad ever that I made yesterday was dessert.

  Lunch: Fruit salad Dinner: Clams, shrimp, beans, and spinach. The fruit salad was amazing. I went to the Middle Eastern market, where they often have some ugly, but good cheap produce and fruit. Pineapples were $.99. Yellow, ripe, missing the crown. Needed to be used in a day or two. I bought nectarines, blueberries, strawberries, and pears. All at peak ripeness. I cut them all up, added some grapes, tangelo supremes, and cherries. I added a scoop of sour cream to my bowl. Delicious. Dinner: I saw a recipe that was essentially beans in clam sauce. Of course, I couldn't leave it that simple. I bought some small clams and some shrimp with the heads on (which I rarely do). I cleaned the shrimp, saving the shells and heads. I cooked a pot of navy beans I sauteed the shrimp heads and shell in olive oil, and deglazed with white wine. Sauteed chopped onions and crushed red pepper, added garlic, parsley, and chopped fresh tomatoes, and some cooked spinach. I added the shrimp/wine liquid,...

  Chicken tagine and couscous. A month in the making! Since Morocco is on the Mediterranean, and we went there a few years back, a tagine sounded like a good idea. I salted lemons with spices last month for the preserved lemons. Of course, I couldn't just use one recipe, but I made a spice blend and dry-marinated chicken thighs, used the standard olives, onions, and preserved lemons. I cooked it with carrots, zucchini, and parsnip. Made a little couscous to go with it, and topped it all with cilantro. It was really tasty. Will make again.

  Three cheese chiles rellenos with ranchero sauce, the rest of the Romano beans cooked in the ranchero sauce, and crispy fried yuca. The rest of the story - The recipe came from the Chevys Fresh Mex Cookbook. The chiles rellenos recipe was pretty standard, using Monterrey Jack, cheddar, and queso fresco. It's the ranchero sauce that was really good, also from that cookbook. Unfortunately, it's not online or I would have linked to it. I like to cite where the recipes came from. The yuca fries were good, but I think I like yuca with mojo better. But as long as I was deep-frying, I thought I'd give it a try. That came from ATK.

  Fish day. I didn't intend to buy the sea bass. Grouper was on sale and while I may have said grouper, I pointed to the sea bass. It was a big piece and the fish guy prepped it for two. I get to the register and it's $46! I called my partner and he said just buy it. He grilled it, and we topped it with an Asian sauce (lime zest and juice, fish sauce, Vietnamese chilli garlic sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic, sugar) and chopped cilantro. I bought some Romano beans last week and felt I had to use them before they went bad. They were still amazingly fresh. I cooked some onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes, and bit of tomato paste, threw in the beans and some water, covered it and let it cook for a while. I also bought a box of figs last weekend. What to do with them? Oh, a salad sounds good. I made a balsamic vinaigrette with some shallots, diced a ripe pear, crumbled goat cheese, and made my partner make some candied pecans. On a Monday night for Christ's sake! I'm fucking ob...

  Waygu steak, marinated carrots, sauteed broccoli rabe, sauteed mushrooms. I had a half of an Australian waygu ribeye that I bought a couple of month ago. My partner cooked it on the griddle we have in our grill; he did the flip-every-minute method, and basted it with the fat using a stem of fresh rosemary. I made brown butter with fresh rosemary because the griddle doesn't have the sides to do the whole basting thing like you would do in a cast iron pan. He knocked it out of the park. I made carrots, that I parboiled and marinated them in evoo, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, fresh oregano, and cumin. Linked is where I got the recipe. Sauteed mushrooms in butter with sage. Broccoli rabe parboiled, then sauteed in evoo, with garlic and chopped Fresno peppers. I love all the fresh herb that are now all flourishing. If I find that Waygu again and it looks like the ones I bought, I'm stocking up. There's nothing like it.

I decided to make a taco salad. Longer story to follow, It came very good. Let's start with that I was 25 when I had my first taco salad. I grew up Italian-American in the Northeast, but I had moved to the midwest for a job. Taco salad, green bean casserole, biscuits and gravy, pork tenderloin sandwiches were all new to me. I had never heard of ranch dressing. My partner is a Texan. I do the cooking and except for a few dishes, Midwestern and Texas food are not in my wheelhouse. That said, when I saw  [R68] ;s post, I thought my partner would like it. I really had a lot of stuff on hand, but as you might have guessed already, I can over complicate everything. Protein: Boneless skinless chicken thighs that I seasoned with Chevy's Fuego Spice mix that I made a while back and was still hanging around. My partner left an ear of corn behind from last night, so we grilled that too and cut the kernels off. Canned black beans that I mixed with some salsa, garlic, oil, cumin, and cilant...

  Tonight we had grilled salmon with aioli, corn on the cob, zucchine alla scapece, and green beans topped with toasted panko, sauteed onions, chopped parsley and mint.

  Tonight was vegetarian night. I had some leftover sauteed broccoli rabe and some uncooked turnip that I didn't use in the lamb stew. I decided to make a frittata, adding onions, roasted red peppers, and Romano cheese. Came out great. I also made potato and green bean salad, and used a mix of herbs we have growing in various places.

  Poulet Basquaise and pisotto? It was kind of a risotto, but I didn't do all the stirring, so it was kind of a pilaf. I did start it with shallots, sauteed the rice, added white wine, etc. Then I added a lot of chicken stock, let it go for a while, then added just a bit more stock. Finished it with some basil, a squeeze of lemon, parmesan, and a bit of butter. Turned out pretty good.

  Navarin d'agneau - okay, it's lamb stew, but I made a fussy recipe that involved straining, cooking different vegetables separately, etc. Of course, I couldn't use just one recipe either, so it was a mashup of two. Anyway, it had carrots, turnips, those small C-size gold potatoes, carrots, peas, haricots verts, cipolline, and a bit of tomato paste. It was quite delicious. We were out of town last weekend and I should have waited to make it (red meat one day a week) but I had a craving. Oh, I used a lamb shoulder chop with a round bone that weighed 1 1/4 lbs. Perfect for two people. Update on the swordfish steak. I may have made it once and didn't care for it, but it was $9.99/lb and looked super fresh. With the help of the internet, 130F is what the internal temp should be. My partner was on the case. It was phenomenal!

  Swordfish, marinated in herbs, lemon, and garlic, and grilled. Roasted fennel with parmesan and balsamic vinegar, and Greek salad (horiatiki).

Steak Diane, beet salad with feta and candied walnuts, and sauteed broccoli rabe (garlic, Fresno peppers, evoo) I had a large ribeye that I had defrosted. I cut it into two, and we had it grilled on Sunday. I didn't want to re-freeze the other half so we're having an extra meat night ton. I split it across it's length to make two thinner steaks and pounded them to 1/4 in. However, it was the part of the steak with the big fat part in the middle, so I cut that out and used Moo Glue to put it back together.

  Vegetarian night. Penne with pomodoro sauce using the passata I made last fall, mixed with a bunch of "san marzano" tomatoes I bought at the Middle Eastern market a couple of weeks ago. They get vegetables that don't go to Kroger, etc. but are perfectly fine. They were like $.50/lb. We're going away for the weekend and what we had left was on it's last legs, so they got blitzed and added to the passata. On that same trip, I got a bag of five heads of romaine lettuce. Caesar salad to go with the pasta. Since I made the executive decision to have pasta (shouldn't have), I'm my wisdom I also decided to make a loaf of bread because I didn't have croutons. Pasta, homemade sauce, fresh bread, salad, fucking great dinner. All those carbs, I'm typing fat. But so it goes.

  Grilled chicken shawarma bowl (which is really a glorified salad). Chicken, marinated in shawarma seasoning, oil, and lemon juice, then grilled in skewers. Bulgur, then chopped romaine, then red pepper, tomato, cucumber, and red onions, then the chicken, feta cheese, parsley, mint, and a lemon/olive oil vinaigrette. It started simple (really) but I can't help myself, and the list of ingredients grew. It looked and tasted great. My partner heartily approved. He skewered and grilled the chicken, bless him.

Grilled salmon with basil aioli, sauteed broccoli rabe, and tomato salad with bulgur, Persian cucumbers, shallot, and vinaigrette dressing.

Grilled ribeye steak, corn on the cob, sauteed mushrooms, and   grilled asparagus with aioli