Dinner of the Day.

[IdleRich]

In Portuguese supermarkets you see millions of sausages for sale. Row and rows in the form of cold meat, also short, fat snag-style (I think that the right name) Brazilian sausages for the barbecue, and three main types of traditional Portuguese sausages for cooking that hang in clear plastic packets of one. Two types - chorico and morcela - most of you will be familiar with (or at least the Spanish equivalents) but the third type, farinheira, maybe some of you won't.
My understanding is that when Jews were persecuted and eventually given the choice of converting to Christianity or dying by the pogroms, they were sometimes tested to see if they had truly converted by being forced to demonstrate that they were cool with eating pork in the form of the sausage. They came up with a cunning way of getting around this by stuffing a skin with flour (and maybe something else such as chicken fat or cod) and cooking this up as a pseudo-sausage. Nowadays these still exist but the main flavouring tends to be, er, pork fat.
Good ones are really tasty, they are kinda crumbly and greasy and fall apart one cooked when you try and slice them. We sprang for one of the more expensive ones with the fat coming from so-called black pork which comes from a special kind of pig which mainly eats acorns and has a particular flavour. They were fucking lush and we ate them on rye bread with a strawberry and piri-piri chutney to cut through the richness, plus a few amazing Russian pickled tomatoes on the side (I truly don't know how they get them so tasty) washed down with a few glasses of red wine as a really beautiful 5.30am snack (my bodyclock has just completely given up any semblance of pretending to know what is supposed to happen when.

 

[luka]

Yesterday I had brown rice with peas and broccoli and onion and carrot and green pepper and it was nice but today I fried the remains and mixed with it with fermented tofu and kimchi and some tofu sausage and it was spectacular. Could of eaten a bucket of it. Extraordinary. I love fried things cos they're greasy and fatty.

 

[Mr. Tea]

It was my girlfriend's birthday yesterday so I cooked some fillet steaks sous vide (nice and cool, 54 deg C, so they were still red-pink in the middle) with a coating of my patented wild mushroom steak rub. Then pan fried them for thirty seconds a side. Buttery sweet potato mash and some tiny sweet little cherry tomatoes (raw, with a splash of dressing) on the side. I love keeping a meal really simple like that.

The meat was butter-soft and was so intensely meaty as to taste almost a bit like liver (in a good way).

 

[Leo]

odd that this thread died out at the time when everyone is forced to cook at home more than ever. you'd figure it would spur the opposite. wife is cooking up an all-veg storm but i haven't remembered to post anything.

 

[IdleRich]

We been cooking loads of stuff but no-one else was posting... just doing a lamb curry right now in fact with some kind of Hawaii themed starter of raw salmon marinated in sugar and stuff.

 

[Leo]

homemade veg meatloaf (made with mashed up lentils and chick peas, I think) out of the freezer, with peas and mashed potatoes, washed down with a glass of cheap cab sav. I of course wanted a second glass but wondering about whether alcohol actual does lower your immune system. any truth to that? I'd like to think two glasses is fine.

 

[entertainment]

Peanut butter pork noodles

Fry off some minced pork with ginger, garlic and some homemade Sichuan chili pepper oil.

Add some veggies. Carrots, kale, spring onion, whatever.

Add noodles.

Mix together rice vinegar, soy, fish sauce, a little sugar, a good amount of peanut butter and a little sesame oil and pour it over.

It's very good.

 

[IdleRich]

I did peanut butter blondies the other day.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Meat-free dinner this evening. It's a thing I invented - very simple sauce for pasta. Dried wild mushrooms, rehydrated beforehand - keep the stock, obviously. Strain, chop and fry in butter and oil; dash of salt. Then a splash of cream, some nice gooey blue cheese, chopped and minced garlic, blob of English mustard and the mushroom stock. Cook over a very low heat while the pasta cooks next door. Water down with a splash of the pasta cooking water if it's reduced too much by the time you come to serve. Then the real genius: stir in a shot of brandy. Pour over the pasta and serve with black pepper and finely grated parmesan.

The whole combination seems like something you can imagine people in Switzerland eating in a chalet halfway up a mountain, except they'd probably use spaetzli rather than the ordinary fusilli I lused.

 

[Leo]

Meat-free dinner this evening. It's a thing I invented.

congrats, tea. you've stumbled on a stunning discovery, entire cultures might some day go without eating meat. kudos.

 

[IdleRich]

We saw some guy on a documentary eating loads of Hawaiian food and it looked good. Girlfriend had a pretty good stab at lomi-lomi salmon today. Which is basically raw salmon with onions and tomatoes marinated in citrus and sugar and probably some other stuff too.

 

[catalog]

Brunch the other day. Aloo parantha (=mashed potatoes with some spice in between two chappatis) with peppered Greek yoghurt. Yum carbarama

 

[IdleRich]

There is this bbq fast food kinda thing across the road from us, nine euros gets you an entire spatchcocked (I think) chicken in a tray, swimming in spicy grease.
We bought one of those, made some garlic sauce by slicing loads of garlic into sour cream, chopped some veg. Served em as kebabs.
Two of these each





Still got loads of chicken left.

 

[Leo]

cauliflower parm, so good. multiple IPAs.

 

[IdleRich]

So that's like cauliflower cheese? With plenty of beer. I like cauliflower cheese but it's normally as a side dish I thought - is it enough on its own?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I made jerk chicken last night. Did it properly too, with an extended period of marinating in the spice paste and lemon juice. So, so good. Served it with some small salad tomatoes and a mash of sweet and normal potatoes plus carrot.

 

[hmg]

Calves liver saut?ed with chopped smoke bacon and a little red onion, then flamb?ed with half a glass of red wine.

I like how the vitamin B2 in it makes my piss go luminous yellow a few hours later.

 

[hmg]

In the new forum, can we have e acute?

 

[catalog]

Have you tried holding down the ? on your keyboard/phone? Should work

 

[Leo]

So that's like cauliflower cheese? With plenty of beer. I like cauliflower cheese but it's normally as a side dish I thought - is it enough on its own?

imagine shrimp parm or chicken parm (if the chicken was diced into small pieces), but with cauliflower instead. the bite-sized cauliflower heads (or whatever they are called) are dipped in egg yolks and bread crumbs, then roasted until golden brown. then put a layer of them in a baking dish, layer of mozzarella, another layer of cauliflower, tomato sauce over the whole thing and parm on top, then baked.

had a salad on the side