Dustin's DL Food Blog

  Grilled jerk chicken thigh kebabs, apple salad with grapes, dried cranberries, and walnuts, mango salad, and jasmine rice.  I still have gala apples, so I made another tarte tatin. We'll have with a small scoop of a H ä agen-Dazs vanilla ice cream. That $1.99 for three pounds is bedeviling me. I still have a bunch of apples. 

  Deep fried vegetarian night. Samosas, spring rolls (from Pakistan), cauliflower kurma, and whole wheat paratha.  It was nice having a relatively easy night of cooking. The only thing I really had to cook was the cauliflower. 

 Grilled Greek-style chicken thigh kebabs, tzatziki, and a big salad of bulgur, chopped tomato, Persian cucumber, Kalamata olives, red onion, feta, and yellow pepper. The rest of the tarte tatin with a small scoop of Ben & Jerry's vanilla was dessert. I made yogurt in the sous vide on Sunday, so the tzatziki was especially refreshing.

  Halibut puttanesca, roasted eggplant, and Caesar salad. Tarte tatin for dessert. The halibut was on sale for $19.99/lb, so I couldn't pass that up. I needed a recipe and ran across Julia from ATK making halibut puttanesca, which sounded good to me. I had a Chinese eggplant that we grew, and added a couple more that I had, roasted and fixed with o live oil, r ed wine vinegar, g arlic, f ennel seeds, oregano, and r ed pepper flakes. I picked up three pounds of gala apples for $1.99 (along with a bunch of other fruit) and have no idea of what to do with it. Hence, the tarte tatin. But in the interest of not being a totally fat pig, I halved the recipe. Dessert and breakfast. Halibut puttanesca Tarte tatin

 Prime NY strip steak, topped with compound butter. Eggplant stuffed with potsticker filling. Tomato salad. Fried Anaheim peppers.  I saw a magazine cover in the checkout line that featured a baked tomato stuffed with potsticker filling. Intrigued, and with a good deal of pork butt in my freezer, I decided to give it a try. Except I really never liked baked tomatoes. But I do like baked stuffed eggplant. I made some a couple of weeks ago, so I used to same technique with potsticker filling from ATK. I also made dipping sauce (soy, rice vinegar, sesame oil). I was okay. The filling lacked a bit of flavor after cooking. If you're doing a keto diet, I could see it as getting a gyoza fix. I'll work a bit more on it.  Dessert as peaches in rose' wine with cherries.

Greek chicken and vegetables with bulgur. Got done with errands late in the day, so I chose something easy. I used a large breast and two thighs. I like bone-in skin-on thighs; he likes them too, but he doesn't gnaw. Drives me crazy. He leaves a lot of meat on the bone. Earlier this week, I made him a breast and me two thighs. When his chicken reaches 155F, my thighs were done. I cut the meat off the breastbone, and then sliced it. Everyone was happy. https://www.themediterraneandish.com/greek-sheet-pan-chicken/#wprm-recipe-container-69568  

Fried shrimp, romano beans in tomato sauce, and zucchini fritters. Smoked paprika aioli to go with the shrimp. I had leftover beans that I cooked yesterday for the black bean/corn salad we had last night. I made some killer black bean soup for lunch.

  Grilled jerk chicken, black bean and corn salad, mango salad. My recipe called for bone-in, skin-on chicken parts, and that's how I always made it. But I've been using boneless skinless to grill these days, and today I'm using them to make my jerk chicken recipe. Lots of Caribbean/Jamaican flavors in the bean salad. The mango salad will be closer to Thai, but it will go well together.

  Vegetarian night - samosas, zucchini sabzi, and cauliflower kurma. I get the spicy samosas from the Muslim market. Frozen from Bangladesh. Deep fry for 6 or 7 minutes. That wlas the easy part. The two vegetable dishes require lots of chopped onions, and garlic-ginger paste. And a bunch of spices. It was all delicious, but a bit time consuming.

  Roast chicken, Caesar salad, and Italian potato salad. Just back from the wedding and had a busy day unpacking and doing the grocery shopping. Of course, I had to make the Caesar dressing from scratch. The potato salad is just boiled Yukon gold potato chunks, evoo, parsley, smashed garlic, salt, and pepper. So simple, so good. While I like potato salad with mayo, eggs, etc, I actually prefer this simpler version.

Got home late last night from our trip out west. Before we left, I had cooked down a couple of lbs of campari tomatoes that weren't going to make it for another week, so I had fresh sauce ready to go. I've tried to lay off the pasta, but I felt like home cooking. Cooked the sauce with onions, garlic, pancetta, crushed red pepper, basil, and rosemary. Made more bucatini than I should have, and topped with parmesan. It was quite delicious. Now I have to head out and do some grocery shopping.

  Grilled prime NY strip, sauteed broccoli rabe, potato, green bean, and carrot salad.

  Grilled chicken kebabs (lemon, garlic, rosemary, oregano, etc), zucchine alla scapece, and romano beans in sugo.

  Seared tuna tataki, green bean gomaae (sesame dressing), marinated cremini mushrooms (Japanese style), and jasmine rice. Some ponzu sauce and wasabi mayonnaise on the side. The green beans were the long Chinese green beans. We grow them behind the flowers - they're a climbing vine, and my partner put up some very discreet wires for them to grow along. Again, it's in a public space. I'll pick another couple of zucchini tomorrow, pick some of the mint out there, and make zucchine alla scapece with dinner tomorrow. Oh, and I picked the first fig today. It was amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4JuJpIick&t=1s

Grilled Chicken with Adobo and Sazón, Yuca Con Mojo, and Spanish Garlic Green Beans. The chicken recipe is from ATK. This episode came on yesterday while I was working. I love Lan, and her recipes are almost always keepers. The yuca con mojo was a basic recipe, and the green beans came from Spain on a Fork, starring Alberto, Queen of Valencia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OB7ayBepa0&t=3s

  Zucchini parmesan, arugula salad with smoked, grilled halloumi, and toasted pistachios. I have a zucchini plant. Yes, I live in a condo, and no, it's not on my patio. For some reason, the building that houses our hot water has 20 in diameter cylinders imbedded in the cinder block that surround the building. No idea of why. People often plant flowers in them, and we have too. But I planted a zucchini in one, and some hot pepper plants in another. The zucchini have started coming in, and I just picked two. I'm Italian. We can't help ourselves. We are going out of town next week and I didn't want them to go bad. I'm also trying to cook all the perishable stuff before we leave. I've had a good-quality mozzarella that hit it's sell-by date last month. I also had leftover crushed tomato from the romano beans from a few nights ago, and the last vestiges of some tomato paste. The solution was zucchini parm. Gina of Buon-A-Petiti has a lot of great recipes; I used ...

Grilled salmon with herb compound butter, arugula salad with goat cheese, apple, and candied hazelnuts, and stuffed eggplant. I know, it all sounds so frou-frou, but it really wasn't. My partner grilled the salmon, simply with salt, pepper, and oil. I had the compound butter from the steak we made last night. I had arugula and goat cheese in the refrigerator, an apple that needed to be used soon, and hazelnuts in the freezer that my partner candied with sugar in a dry pan. I just dressed it with olive oil and sherry vinegar. The only thing that needed some effort was the stuffed eggplant. I used this recipe from Lidia Bastianich, but I skipped the meat and the red pepper. I bought the small eggplant like in the video last week because they looked really fresh. I had some Italian bread that was starting to mold, so I fed the the birds the crusts and used the rest in the stuffing. I did boil a couple of eggs per the recipe, but I cracked one of the eggs taking it out of the carton; I...

  Grilled T-bone with an herb compound butter, black bean and corn salad, and Romano beans braised in tomato sauce.

  Chicken breast with orange and Gaeta olives, pasta salad with shrimp, and fennel gratin.

  My BFF came for dinner last night. His husband was out of town visiting family. We had a tapas dinner; a board with manchego, Serrano ham, marcona almonds, lemon-stuffed olives, roasted grapes and a flat bread with rosemary and salt. Then, clams and chorizo, pureed navy beans, roasted potatoes, aioli with smoked paprika, and garlic shrimp. I bought flat bread at the Middle Eastern market called barbari (no sesame like in the picture). It was fresh out of the oven, and like two and a half feet long. I've seen it there before but never bought one because of the size, and I didn't even know what it was called until I looked it up to write this post. We embellished with rosemary, olive oil and salt and popped it in the oven for a few minutes.

  Teriyaki chicken, steamed broccoli with sesame sauce, roasted sweet potatoes with teriyaki sauce, and a bit of jasmine rice. Chicken was an ATK recipe, but I just used boneless/skinless thighs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvoJ4vSQh5c&t=1s

Homemade pasta in pomodoro sauce, focaccia, salad, and a glass of Bordeaux. While I tend to go on to long about what I've made, what I make can be a bit complicated, it doesn't take more than an hour and a half to make. Most often, it takes much less time. Today, I had a need for food therapy. A couple of big jobs at work are about done, and I felt like taking on a project. Busiate is a type of macaroni that I never heard of until late last night, when one of the guys I subscribe to made a dish using them. He bought them, but I had to Google them to see what they were. Making the dough took 15 minutes to mix and knead. I used 150 grams of the "semola di grano duro" (hard wheat semolina flour). Didn't even use a bowl, went old school and mixed it on the counter. It was making the little suckers took a pretty long time. I made mine thinner than the woman in the video. I tried to make pasta using skewers before, and mad a hash of it. This went very slowly, but well. ...

  Pureed white bean with shrimp and focaccia, grilled salmon with tarragon aioli, and corn on the cob. Once again, in the interest of not wasting $.50 of beans, I was off and running. I had overcooked the beans I made last Saturday. I drained them well and pureed them, added a good deal of evoo, garlic, parsley, and smoked paprika. I also had some leftover shrimp from Saturday too, so I sauteed the shrimp in evoo and a good deal of crushed red pepper, added parsley, and put it, oil and all on top of the puree. I had a bit of work downtime today, so I mixed up a rosemary focaccia. We ate them together as a first course. It doesn't sound like it, but dinner was really quick and simple. While I did carry on about the beans and shrimp, it all was basically leftovers that came together really quickly, was absolutely delicious, and I'm kinda proud I just put it together on the fly. My partner grilled some salmon, I went out and picked some tarragon, and added it to some leftover aiol...