Category Archives: FoodBlogging

Pork Medallions (cut from a tenderloin), and potato cubes, rubbed with kosher salt, ground black pepper, oregano, garlic powder, and rosemary, then pan (or actually, wok) fried (separately) at high temperature so everything gets a nice crust on it. Eaten with salad so there is SOMETHING in the meal that isn’t deliciously oil saturated.

I want to figure out some kind of sauce to add a little moisture to the affair, but I couldn’t come up with anything suitable this time. It seems like a sour cream base with something vegetable-y (parsley?) would be good, but I haven’t quite worked it out.

This is a different arrangement of a few parts I’m found of. Chicken breast seared with herbs, this time a little salt, pepper, parsley, and basil, and heavy rosemary, in a hot buttered pan, then deglazed with chicken broth (white wine is really preferable, but it wasn’t worth opening a bottle)for color, moisture, and flavor. Served with zucchini, summer squash, and onions cooked in lemon butter (one of my favorite seasonal vegetable dishes, which is almost out of season), over a bed of farfalle, topped with grated asiago cheese.

A somewhat nontraditional chicken fricassee, inspired by the version served at Gumbo Ya-Ya. This batch is too spicy (due to the Euclid Kroger’s epically inconsistent peppers) and not dark enough (due to my inability to get a roux that dark without burning it), but quite delicious. It definitely bears playing with, I want to get better at braising (Especially maintaining color and texture), and this is a easy, tasty way to practice.

Beef in wine sauce, over egg noodles. This is my current favorite way to convert an iffy bottle of red wine into tasty, tasty food. About a third of a bottle of shifty wine (here, a $9 cab that wasn’t actually worth $9 even before it sat re-corked in the fridge for a week) and some sirloin steak, onions and mushrooms, seasoned with garlic, pepper, salt, and a dash of thyme, and thickened with milk and flour. This batch had a dollop of sour cream added at the end because it was handy and milkfat makes everything better. It’s sort of like a quicker, easier, cheaper Beef Bourguignon. I should really try using some bits of bacon for the initial cooking fat like you do for modern beef bourguignon, theres always some around and you can’t go wrong with bacon fat.

Another “look what I made” format food post, chicken paprikash made with what was once this recipe, but has habituated and drifted over time. Served over rice ( I’ve never been terribly found of Spätzle, and rice is more my habit than noodles) and sugar snap peas, which make an amazing if slightly improbable combination. Also a glass of Moroccan-esque iced tea: it is brewed at unusually high temperature from gunpowder tea and fresh mint leaves, and it is sweetened beyond all reason, but I feel wrong calling it Moroccan tea because it isn’t pulled and is served cold. I love having time to cook, even when I know it is just a lull in the standard semester storm.

Italian fried eggplant (at least an hour and a half in the kitchen to make, plus the place looks like the Mongols and Catholics (ca.1200-1205) gathered in your kitchen for a round table on razing technique afterwards), plating and all, and J. Lohr 2006 Bay Mist Riesling (my current favorite cheap table wine). A Saturday evening well spent.