Quick Tomato Sauce (p13 May/June 2009 Cook's Illustrated), Garlic Bread, Salad and Full Proof Vinaigrette (p45 Fall 2011 Entertaining)
One of the things Shannon has suggested, was to take the pizza dough that I've been making, was that she thought it would make a good garlic bread or bread sticks or whatever. So I used a movie night dinner to do this. I took a good chunk of butter (probably too much), several cloves of garlic and then cooked them slowly in a pan and brushed the garlic and butter on the top of the pizza dough, and then baked it like I normally do. The only reason why I say that there was probably too much butter, is that there was small pools of butter on the dough after it was done baking. And while butter makes things delicious, this is a bit much I suppose. I've made the quick tomato sauce before (several times), and it was a simple salad of baby greens and shredded carrots. Shannon though the vinaigrette was a bit too tart, and I suppose it could've been. I eyeballed the Dijon mustard, and anytime I eyeball mustard, I'm generally going to add more then the recipe calls for. I kind of forgot to take a picture of the whole meal, as I tend to do, but it turned out pretty good. Simple flavors, nice combinations. After dinner, Chris, Holly and Shannon headed down to Snookies to get a dessert and I stayed home to do some dishes and get ready to do some work (after hours stuff).
After the movie, I offered a second dessert. I had spent the previous night juicing a good chunk of key limes and wanted others to try it. So I served it. I had small samples from the side of the ice cream maker and it seemed ok, but for me, tart is often a good thing (I love me some rhubarb). I suppose I should have used my food tester (Shannon) first to get an opinion on it. So it was too tart, even by the end of the small part, I was getting tired of it. I wasn't exactly thrilled by that. However, on the positive side, it had a nice consistency and good mouth feel. So I do have enough to make it again, and am thinking about it, but I don't really want to hand squeeze all those key limes. It looked nice too.
Graziano Sausage Pizza
So last week we had the Graziano sausage and it was good and I thought I had gotten my fix for a while, but after seeing my younger brother have a sandwich last Sunday, kind of triggered that desire again. So we had this pizza. I decided to use the remaining lamb and also some extra low moisture tomatoes to also top the pizza. It turned out well, and was a nice dinner.
Lamb Burgers
So a new vendor, Hedgeapple Farm (clearly not the most up to date), and also a raiser of Icelandic sheep (who knew?). The lamb was pretty good, and made for a good burger at a decent price. So I hope to buy from them again. However, I didn't see them at the market this week. So maybe next week. I really should start setting money aside, to buy meat (lamb, pork, beef, etc) by the quarter or half, rather then at a time, but that would also mean I need a deep freezer. I guess I'll have to add this to a more direct goal.
Pasta with Anchovies, Chile, and Dill Breadcrumbs
So this was an interesting way to cook. We had a visitor from the fine people at DirecTV who were here investigating the signal strength, while I was trying to cook dinner (my request for scheduling). So I was able to quickly put this together. It ended up being pretty good. I'm not sure if it was the anchovies that I picked, or just anchovies in general, but they had that general fishy smell. After the filets got all mashed up, it was a nice savory dish and Shannon finished it off for lunch, so I assume she liked it too. It was a pretty quick meal, though I got distracted from time to time, helping the DirecTV guy out (directions, signing papers, etc).