Tapas - Potato with Caper and Dill

From the book "Tapas" by Penelope Casas (pg 73).

Really nice light and refreshing take on potato salad.  Worked great as an accompaniment to the seafood and lamb meatballs we served it with. Next time I might consider chopping half the capers and leaving the other half whole.  Also, it's essential to salt to potato boiling water.

Tapas - Shrimp and mushrooms in Almond Sauce

Really really great!  Definitely restaurant quality.

Notes:
- Recipe says start a day ahead to marinate overnight.  I marinated for 6 hours and it was fine.
- I used home made fish stock, but I think it would have been totally fine with the clam juice.
- I quartered 4 regular-size mushrooms
- VERY important to use good shrimp that you like the taste of.  (We use TJ Argentinian Red Shrimp ).

Tapas - Lamb Meatballs with Olives and Almonds

We followed this recipe:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8_lQNiOonM

Exceptionally good!

Notes:
- Used cookie scoop for ~2 in meatballs.  1 lb of meat made ~20
- Used 1/4 C diced green olives (from some random greek olive thing I had lying around)
- Used only 1 Tbsp oil because meatballs release their rendered fat
- Browned at medium-low, rotating every few minutes.
- There was no danger of meatballs falling apart, so next time I could leave almond bits a little larger

Aeoli recipe

I used 1/2 C mayonnaise, 4 cloves garlic crushed, juice from 1 lemon and a little salt.

Maria thought it was too much kick from the garlic.  So we next time maybe 2 cloves and lemon to taste.  Start with 1/2 lemon and a little more until it tastes balanced.

Mushrooom black-eyed pea curry

This came out really well!

1.  Cook 1C dry black-eyed peas in pressure cooker with 1/2 tsp salt.  Drain.
2.  Finely chop mushrooms (~ 2 C or 2.6 oz) and saute in 1 T oil for 4 min over med heat.  Reserve.
3.  In 3T oil add:
  - 1 tsp cumin seeds
  - 1 bay leaf

4.  After 30 sec - 1 min add onion/garlic/ginger.  ~ 1/4 onion chopped (~1/2 C), 1 T ginger, 3 clove garlic.  Cook on medium for 5 min.

5.  Add 2 chopped tomatoes, cook ~3 min more on med-high until most of the water is gone.
6.  Add the following:
  - 2 tsp coriander powder
  - 1/4 tsp cayenne (or 1 tsp chili powder)
  - 1/2 tsp turmric
  - 1/2 tsp salt
  - 1 tsp curry powder
  - 1/2 C water

Let cook 5 min.  Then add beans + mushrooms back in.  Cook on low for 7-8 minutes.

7.  Add 1/2-3/4 C cream or half-and-half (we used half-and-half).  Add 1/4 tsp garam.  Let cook another 5 min or so. 

Garnish with cilantro.

Delicious chopped summer salad

Maria made this from smitten but changed most of the actual ingredients.

Really good!

https://smittenkitchen.com/2012/06/chopped-salad-with-feta-lime-and-mint/

It looks like she did corn (from frozen), cucumber, carrot ...

Our photo:

Nadiya's peanut chicken curry traybake

We decided to try this one from Great British Bakeoff's Nadiya:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/one-tray_peanut_chicken_19540

We halved the recipe and made a few changes.

Instead of making your own peanut butter, we used TJ unsalted smooth peanut butter.
We also added roughly twice the gnocci in the recipe (which seems like a good ratio).

after eating:  Pretty good, but not amazing.  In the world of peanut+curry things it's not as good as thai chicken curry tacos, for example.

We'd do twice as much broccoli and maybe twice as much gnocci (or serve it with rice).  The onions didn't really cook enough iohm, so we'd replace the red onion with 1 chopped shallot.

Here's a picture!

Chocolate Pudding

chocolate pudding

I made this from my aged and falling-apart Betty Crocker cookbook. I've made the Vanilla about a thousand times--I haven't made the chocolate in awhile. The only thing I did differently and don't recommend is used potato starch instead of cornstarch as thickener. It made a slight difference in the flavor and texture that I'd prefer not to have next time.  Also, I used 2% milk because we plan to have it with a good dollop of freshly whipped cream. When I plan on using aerosal cream or only a tiny bit (for some unimaginable reason....) I would use whole milk.

Ingredients:

1/2 C sugar

2 tbsps cornstarch

1/3 cup unsweetened Hersheys chocolate powder

1/8 tsp salt

2 C milk

2 egg yolks

2 tbsps butter, room temp

2 tsps vanilla

Blend sugar, cornstarch, salt and chocolate. Combine milk and egg yolks in a saucepan.  Blend in dry ingredients. 

Cook over mediium heat, stirring constantly, until pudding boils. Boil for one minute and take from heat. Stir in butter and vanilla.  Pour into dessert dishes and chill.

Vietnamese turmeric fish

This was very delicious, but somewhat tricky and time-consuming.

Recipe here:  https://delightfulplate.com/vietnamese-turmeric-fish-noodles-cha-ca/

Only modifications were I served it on rice instead of rice noodle, and I used about 1/3rd as much dill and scallion as in the original.

There were a really interesting mix of flavors.  The galangal goes great with the fish.  The fried scallion gives a nice sweet caramelized flavor.  The dipping sauce is largely lime and raw garlic which adds a sharp taste on top of everything else.  The roasted peanuts are yet another layer.  Fancy!

Here's the fish marinating

The tofu I fried

The scallion and dill

Ta da!

I forgot the peanuts in the first shot