Category Archives: Dinner

I made this tonight, from an epicurious.com recipe. I used tri-tip steak instead of tenderloin ($3 lb vs. $11lb at Safeway), and the steak came out very nice, tender enough and tasty. That said, I’ll probably not make this recipe again (unless I have some hoisin sauce I need to get rid of), because while good, it wasn’t special enough.

Last night I made my first stir fry. Ever. Really.
I had meant to try one before, I had bought the sauces, but for whatever reason I never got to do it. Then a few days ago I found the jars of stir-fry sauce I’d bought at the supermarket (probably over a year ago, they don’t have an expiration date, and by God I hope they’re still good!), and decided to use them. That’s my new plan: either cook international recipes or recipes that use up the ingredients I already have at home. Come to think of it, this is not really a very new plan – and it’s not one that works particularly well. Yes, I use up ingredients, but I buy new ones to make the new recipes, so that it becomes a huge food cycle. At least we rarely eat the same thing twice – if that’s a good thing.
Anyway, back to my stir fry, I can’t believe how easy it was. I sliced some thin-cut pork cutlets (I’d have bought chicken, but it wasn’t on sale, and I almost only buy meats on sale now), stir fry them on some oil for a few minutes, I removed them, dumped out the fat, and then stir fried some broccoli, celery and snow peas for a couple of minutes. I returned the pork, added the sauce, and voila! That was it. The results were pretty good. Of course, I only ate the pork, which was a bit tough (I will try chicken next time) and a bit bland (next time I should salt it, rather than rely purely on the sauce), but mostly good. The sauce (Kikkoman Stir-fry Sauce), was very nice – somewhat reminiscent of teriyaki, but not as sweet. It gave a good flavor to both the veggies and the meat. Mike liked that the veggies were still crunchy. Camila ate a tiny bit of pork and broccoli, but she didn’t complain later that she was hungry, so I guess that’s all she wanted. She hates food with sauces, but I just told her there was no sauce on the pork. She can be pretty clueless sometimes.
Mika didn’t eat any of it – she was doing her homework and didn’t want to be disturbed by dinner. She ate some grapes (88c lb at Safeway this week!), and I guess that was enough.
Anyway, the moral of this story is that making a stir-fry is very easy, and I should plan to make it again in those nights when I don’t have much time to cook. I’ll probably try chicken next time, see if it’s more tender, but I liked the thin pork cutlets because they had very little fat to get rid of, maintain their shape, and were incredibly easy and quick to slice up. I’ll also try new veggies next time (though my kids only like a limited amount of veggies): some mushrooms, some red peppers (for color if nothing else), mini-corn, if I can find it at the supermarket, etc.

Last night I threw a Hanukkah dinner and invited my friends Desiree and Charlotte along with their families. It went very well, though I did spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing latkes. I’m thinking that next year I may prepare them in advance and keep them warm in the oven – while I love the fresh latkes, it did keep me away from the party for most of the evening.
This time I served my famous Mixed Green Salad with Gorgonzola Vinaigrette, to great acclaim as usual. It really is a wonderful salad.
The latkes were from my usual recipe. As usual they were great. I served them with sour cream and apple sauce (homemade by Desiree).
The main dish was Wine-Braised Brisket of Beef with Caramelized Pearl Onions and Dried Apricots. Quite good, and my guests ate almost all of it (either they were very hungry or they really liked it).
For dessert I wanted to make homemade doughnuts, but this simple recipe was a complete failure. The doughnuts were too crispy on the outside, semi-raw on the inside (I do admit this was probably my mistake, it was hard to keep the oil at a constant temperature), and just not very tasty. I gave up and bought regular donuts and the donut store.

This week, I’ve made a couple of more dishes from my bible, epicurious.com. I did my usual “I have this ingredient, now let’s find a recipe that uses it”. In this case it was star anise, which I’ve had for a time, and have now used in three recipes in a week 🙂
Monday night I made Vietnamese lemongrass pork. This was a dish similar to the grilled pork served at Vietnamese restaurants. It was quite good, though not really restaurant quality. I think what was missing for me was the grill flavors – I used my George foreman instead. The pork had a subtle lemongrass taste, and the accompanying sauce was very good – but perhaps had one too many tablespoons of fish sauce. I don’t feel compel to make this dish again, but then again, I seldom make a dish more than once.
Last night I had Braised Lamb Shanks with Coriander, Fennel, and Star Anise. Often times recipes are the result of evolution, cooks take a dish passed on by others, modify it somewhat, until with each modification it becomes something else. This lamb dish, however, seems to be the sort of dish that has to be specially created and experimented on by a very creative cook. It uses elements from different cuisines to come up with something original.
It was also quite good. The flavors were really different, the pepper and the fennel stood out, but were mollified by the other spices. I wouldn’t say that I was in love with it, and like the dish above, I probably won’t make it again, but I was definitely glad I made it and ate it, and do look forward to the leftovers. Mika, my 6.5 yo, liked the meat as well.
I served the lamb with an Israeli couscous/orzo/babychickpea mixture from Trader Joe’s, and I think the two went very well together.

Chicken with lemongrass sauce from epicurious. Mike liked it, I thought it was OK but I couldn’t really get the lemongrass in very small chunks, even though I have a good food processor. And the little lemongrass stalks were pretty unpleasant to chew. I wouldn’t make it again.
I made this roast chicken w/ rosemary orange butter recipe last night. Perhaps it would have been good with the sauce, but the vegetables burnt (my fault, I forgot to stir them), so I couldn’t make it. Without the sauce the chicken was pretty tasteless. My regular rotisserie chicken is better.
As usual, I’m just recording this so if I come across the recipes again, I will know not to make them.

Today I baked. Mika wanted me to make brownies from scratch, and as I’d never made them, I decided to give it a shot. I used this recipe from epicurious.com, which had gotten great reviews. The recipe was for a 9″-square baking pan – but who has a 9″ baking pan? The two standard ones pyrex ones I have are 8X8 and 9X13. So I decided to use the 8X8 one instead.
I should have used less batter. As it was, the brownies rose a lot and were undercooked – they were pretty crispy on the top but still wet in the middle. They were pretty good, I thought, though I still like Trader Joe’s brownies better. The girls didn’t like them. I’m actually happy about that, as I had no idea just how bad brownies are. They are pretty much sugar and fat. I don’t think I’ll make them again. I should say that these brownies are particularly rich, so you wouldn’t want to eat more than a little bit anyway.

A couple of days ago Mika said she wanted to make pizza – from scratch. I was resistant at first, but I figured, what the heck, I can try it – so I did today. Needless to say that Mika’s enthusiasm for the pizza was all gone, and she didn’t help at all. And as the only topping she likes is cheese, she wasn’t even excited about putting toppings on the pizza.
To make the dough I used this recipe, which had also gotten pretty good reviews. I’d never made pizza dough before – my only experience with pizza had been using the pizza dough you can buy at Trader Joe’s. But, making it from scratch gave me the opportunity to use the hook attachment on my mixer, which had been rather useless until now.
The dough itself wasn’t hard to make, just a matter of mixing the ingredients. I was amazed to see that it actually rose – my aunt used to make pizza when I was a kid, and she often complained that it didn’t rise. But we are in summer, and it’s pretty warm here, so I’m sure that helped.
The problem was working with the dough. It was so hard to get it to not stick to the working surface and my hand. Turning it was impossible, stretching it just as hard. *sigh* These, btw, were the same problems I’d had with TJ’s pizza dough, so my technique may just be terrible.
In any case, I finally sort of stretched it and made the pizza.
For the sauce I used this recipe, also from epicurious.com, which basically consisted of simmering a can of crushed tomatoes with a little olive oil for an hour, and then seasoning with salt. I was surprised at how good it actually was.
But the results – the dough, the sauce, the cheese (I made a mozzarella only pizza) weren’t great. I thought the dough tasted pretty good, but the problem was that the taste of both the dough and the sauce completely overwhelmed the cheese. You couldn’t taste it at all. Now, mozzarella is a very light-tasting cheese, so I understand that, but all pizza-places manage to make mozzarella pizzas that taste much better.
Oh well. I’ve learned my lesson, from now on, I’ll order in.

A couple of nights ago I made balsamic-glazed sirloin steak from a recipe from epicurious.com. Mike thought it was quite good, but I didn’t like it. I thought it lacked flavor, and it wasn’t very tasty – despite all the good ingredients in the marinade. It was also not as tender as the steak I’d made a couple of nights before, despite being pretty much the same type of steak. I wouldn’t make it again.
So, you ask, why blog about it? Well, it’s so if I come across the recipe again, and I’m tempted by it, I can do a search on my blog and find that I didn’t like it the first time around 🙂

For the last few years, I have been celebrating my birthday with a Free Form Games murder mystery role-playing game. This year I chose their newest addition, Lei’d to Rest, which takes place during a luau in a Hawaiian beach. There was no question that I’d have to make Hawaiian food for dinner, and fortunately there is no lack of online resources as to what to cook for a home-made luau. The menu consisted of the following – recipes and comments are below:

• Kalua Pig
• Teriyaki Chicken Kebabs
• Macaroni Salad
• Pineapple Upside Down Cake
• Mai Tais
• Luau Punch

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A couple of nights ago I made this recipe for braised bbq spareribs. I thought it was OK – Mike really liked it.
I was happy to find the recipe because it’s winter and I don’t want to have to BBQ outside – most recipes for ribs require a grill. IT was also extremely simple to make.
I cooked them for a little over 1 1/2 hours, they probably needed more time. They weren’t as tender as I would have liked and they were still a little pink. I coated them with E&J’s BBQ sauce which, IMHO, is the most delicious BBQ sauce out there.
In all, I may try to make them again, but I might also look for another recipe.