I've got fresh tomatoes, some lovely cheese and other things to use. Should be a good week.
So in making this, I took out my own bread crumbs, and used them, then realized that they were clearly to big. Cleaned off the fish, and started over (re-food processoring the unused bread crumbs. This turned out great. The fish was good, the crust was good, and it's probably the freshest fish that I've ever used. That being said, it was a bit expensive. Now that I look at it, it wasn't that bad (certainly borderline), but I guess I paid for the whole fish, and just took the filets. Not that I have any experience filleting, but I was generally happy, and this is something I could make again, but I'd have to think on the cost.
Crispy Breaded Tilapia
Steak sauce was good, burgers held together well and made for a good eating. It probably would've been even nicer on the grill, but what can you do?
I thought I added to much spinach, Shannon thought there was too much peach. In a change of pace I twittered the whole thing. I thought it was a nice balance of flavors.
I put in some roasted peppers, mayo, mustard, some spiciness and into the tomatoes they went. It was pretty good. Certainly a way to use these types of tomatoes (I can't remember what she said they were). They were a lot like bell peppers and not very juicy on the inside. So many varieties.
Tuna Salad Stuffed Tomatoes
So Shannon pointed out to me that when I served these, there was really no lettuce component, after we started eating these. I did add some avocado. You've got some Vande Rose Farms Bacon, some heirloom tomatoes, a bit of onion, and under the bacon, a little chopped up chicken. I added some Dijon mustard to mine. Delicious sandwich.
CBTA
So credit where credit is due. First off, the pork is from Crooked Gap Farm, and the tomatoes I've been buying are from Butcher Crick Farms. Over all I've been thrilled at the experience that I've been having lately at the market. So for the first time, that I've noticed, there is fresh fish at the market. Hassevoort Farms started up a fish farm. While I was waiting for my fish to be filleted they were talking to another customer and he was describing main stream fertilizer (made his soil salty), organic fertilizer (too expensive) and so they started to do this as a method to produce their own fertilizer. And so the bones and skin from my filleted fish are headed back to be ground up and recycled. I'm curious how it will taste, especially since when I cook them tonight they'll be less then 48 hours out of the water.
Even though this description is first, I used the peppers for the pizza first, so this was my second use of them since Wednesday. This did take a bit to prepare, but the results were pretty good. And it did taste like a chile rellenos. Though the ones we get around here are usually a bit more doused in cheese.
So perhaps the sauce, I sort of turned into gravy, and perhaps it was a bit darker then it should have been, but it was still delicious. It was an interesting way to make mashed potatoes, the rest of the meal was pretty much the same sort of processes that I've done before. The mashed potatoes, though, with a little bit of chicken broth and then microwaving them and then putting in some Boursin cheese made for a creamy delicious mashed potatoes, with out a lot of dirty dishes (boiling water pot, etc). I was delaying making this meal because it looked like it would take a long time, but it really didn't.
I have never really made this the same way more then once. It always comes as a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but it never seems to be quite finished until I add the yellow mustard. Nothing adds that right taste then some mustard added to the sauce. Basically it comes down to this. Onion, spices (various), ground meat (beef, pork, etc), diced tomatoes, a bit of tomato paste and then finish it all up with some (or quite a bit) of mustard. Simmer them up until the sauce thickens and then deliciousness ensues.
So the pork from a new vendor was far better then the pork from the last one, but still does not match up to my favorite. Did, however, make pretty good pork burgers. I saw him again at market, but after spending a lot more then I intended, I didn't have enough money left to visit his stand. I I know I have something from him here somewhere, but I can't find it so I cannot give him due credit.
So this was really easy, take some eggs and arugula from the market. I didn't find any tapenade at the store, and I didn't feel like making any, and besides, Shannon is not a big fan of olives. So it worked out pretty well, but really, why wouldn't it?
So I called an audible. We headed up to the Sullivan's to attended a presentation on farming and production in our zone (related to reducing costs, increasing yields, etc). Near the end of the presentation Sean whipped out his pepper roaster and roasted up a few peppers. He offered several people (including us) a bag of roasted peppers...and who can say no to that? I had bought some peppers from the store (it's a bit early for most peppers, it's been an odd summer). It was an interesting night. Finally got to see where they lived (it had a georgeous view), and the surprisingly small kitchen for the amount of salsa they produce. Becki made many comments on how when their daughter got married she made them take the dress out to the garage when they were making salsa. Overall I was pretty impressed at the relatively limited amount of capital (no numbers presented) that they outlaid to make what they had. Starting small and working their way up. It's pretty impressive.
Anyways, back to the food, I had these roasted peppers and used them (Poblano and Hatch) along with a couple of jalapeno. Sauce spiced with some red pepper flakes, some smoked mozzarella, and you make a nice pizza.
So this morning, at the Des Moines Farmers Market, I ran into Hal Jasa at at a new for the season tomato stand. I stopped by first, and thought about it and then returned to the stand and got a few types of tomatoes and on his recommendation also got ground cherries and a lemon cucumber. Listening to the proprietress talk about the tomatoes, you can tell that this is not only what she knows, but what she loves. When I first was at the market, I was a little tired, grumpy and not really seeing the beauty of the market (it being humid and heating up), but after that I was excited to be there. Being infected with excitement I proceeded through the market at the general lazy pace that I do, when it's not to hot out or threatening rain. Picking up some beef, peppers, onions, pork and some cheese (I really hope I don't forget to take the pound of smoked gouda to my parents later today).
This was very good again, and the bonus this time, we had it with bread, so we were able to sop up the sauce and have that sort of deliciousness. Of course I had forgotten the bread, but Shannon stopped by the store on her way home from dropping off a kitty a the West Des Moines Animal Shelter (the kitty was dropped off at her work).
My pork supplies are drastically low, yet I don't have the money to buy the pork I want (at least in the quantity that I would feel justified of adding an order to their delivery to the area). This makes me sad. I didn't even have quite enough to make two sandwiches, Shannon, by her own choosing, had one that was half ham. There is so little left. I bought some ground pork from a new vendor at the market, we'll see how that goes.
I think this turned out pretty well (though the times on the recipe, probably cause of my oven, were off by quite a bit). The recipe went pretty well and even though the pan spent time in the oven, I didn't burn myself (as I do from time to time), so that was good. This past week I watched a show that featured anchovies in many forms (fresh, etc) and it made me want them, and yet, I live in this land locked area where fish is just ok, and good fish is ungodly expensive and because I am a wuss (and have no experience) I am unwilling to catch my own. I have been working though this tube of anchovy paste and it's almost gone and I really think that it adds a nice savory flavor to many things. I've used it in chili and many other things. Anyways, this recipe is pretty good.
A simple dinner, using elk that I had bought a bit ago. I do like elk, but I forgot to add a bit of fat to it, so they were nice, thick, and a little dry. Oh well, next time.
From time to time, I really hit the note with Chris as far as dinner is concerned. This was clearly one of them. Vegetarian (to meet the food desires of Holly) and quite delicious. I would make both of these again. The remembered seeing the Thai Basil the last time I was at Gateway Market. And luckily for me, it was there again. With the curry spice, there was a nice mild building heat and the mushrooms added some nice savory notes. Just a nice movie night meal over all. Though I am left with some coconut milk that I have to figure out what I want to do with. For the tomato salad I kind of had to add some random spices because I didn't get a chance to run down to All Spice to pick up za'atar. The tomato salad still turned out great.
Salsa goes into burgers, burgers go into pan...this added a little spice to the burger, but was just ok. The Beef is nice, the salsa is nice, but together they are less then they are apart. Not that it couldn't be better, maybe by adding a sauce, but I heard it mentioned in a conversation I was passing buy and it just struck me as having the possibility of being a good idea.
I was hoping, hoping that this could match the love affair that I have with the Berkshire pork, but it doesn't. It is not bad, it just didn't have that same effect that that heritage piggy does. Anyways, made up like burgers, eaten, still pretty good, and not as tasteless some of the pork that you get in the grocery store, it still does have quite a bit of fat in it.
There were these blue cheese brats that I saw a Dahls from Lewright Meats, I am a sucker for new products, especially ones from companies that I am usually a fan of, but this was not blue cheezy at all. So all in all a decent bratwurst, but not what I wanted out of it.
This was an utter failure for me. either when I was mixing the yolks back in with the whites, or in cooking (it still had foamy height on the stove), but somewhere after then it just totally collapsed and ended up a little tough. The other thing about this, is that it really only serves one, so either I have to quickly do a second one, or just make it for myself, because I just can't see myself buying another non-stick pan just to do this.
This was very good. Sometimes you spend an hour+ on dinner and you think, why did I spend all this time to do this? This was not one of these times. I used replacement dried mushrooms (bought for something else and ended up not using them), but it was really quite the fine dish and relatively simple to make (so much so that I spent most of the time making something else). In fact I'm going make this again this week (I already half half a package of pancetta left for it)
Simple, turned out well (ended up using Sriracha instead of something like Frank's Red Hot, because I was out of Frank's). Was a good dinner on a very hot night.
So I made Cherry Ice Cream with expresso ganache last week. The problem with it was that the expresso flavor asserted itself over pretty much everything else. So it wasn't really right for the ice cream. It still looked good though.
This has been working really well and created a smoother ice cream.
I didn't get a chance to make this. I was going to make it today, but when I looked over, we didn't have enough bread, and I wasn't exactly going out in this heat, so, I made the Stir-Fried Chicken, instead.
Take some chicken from Fox Hollow, some salad greens and leeks from Cleverly Farms, some sour cream combined with some of the tamatillo table sauce from Juan O'Sullivan's, how can you go wrong? Well you can't. It was delicious.
So the plan here was to make this the same day, with the 2 hour window, however, the timing didn't work out. It was the last day before the heat wave, lawn should be mowed, and I hate it enough when it's not so bad out... Anyways, I made them the night before, after I made up some pizza dough, and they worked out well again...maybe I will end up getting that book (or putting it on some list or another in hopes that someone else will get it for me). I may be waffled out for a bit though. So remaking this in the intention that I want may have to wait for a bit.
Opened the fridge expecting to find some soy sauce, only to find some fish sauce. I then proceeded to look at the open date on the bottle and decided that I was going to throw that away, then I checked the dates on some of the other Asian sauces and etc that were near it, and they went to. So I was looking at the recipe and thinking where do I go from here. So I upped the sauce and then sort of played it by ear. It worked out pretty well. Cleverly Farms made an appearance again.
I don't know about perfect, but this is a pretty interesting method to make scrambled eggs. Changing temps, smaller pan then you might expect, the extra egg yolk, it did lead to nice egg curds. I think I will have to do this again. I heard the guy that wrote it on How to do Everything, describe the process and it was interesting. I couldn't imagine having to make eggs that many times.
An old favorite.
So another interesting thing was a new process on how to make ice cream at home. A method, also from Cook's Illustrated, which involves making things I normally would, but with a few small changes to get the ice cream to cool down faster and freeze hopefully to make smaller ice crystals and a smoother ice cream. From what I've tried with the first stage freezing, I think it's going to work out pretty well.
And then combined with the custard base
