Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

I sure hope that you don't have to eat the birthday fare unless the pizza is really good and not what the kids would eat.

Making sauteed kale and shiitake mushrooms with bacon over cheesy polenta. Polenta is Italian for grits.

 

My wife just gave me holy hell for making the cheesy polenta well ahead of time. I just did it because just like making grits it requires constant stirring/whisking until it comes to a boil and then occasional stirring. She is correct that if you take it off the heat it will stiffen up into bricks but she doesn't know that keeping it warm with an occasional stir keeps it right. I learned that trick from some Southern ladies that were feeding the bike riders on TOSRV many years ago. Long story about why it had that name but the southern version was a bike ride from Tally to Albany on Saturday and then back on Sunday. It was back to back 100 mile bike rides. Anyways at one of the feed stops they had a huge kettle of cheesy grits that they had to have right for hours. Just keep it warm and give an occasional stir and it will be all right.

 

Smoking two chickens today. One for dinner tonight and one for other things like chicken enchiladas and smoked chicken salad. Also made quick pickles. My wife is making some kind of Korean vegetable salad as well.

 

Tonight will be smoked chicken enchiladas. Smoking two chickens is just as much work as smoking one and you get the benefit of lots of leftover smoked chicken meat.

The jerk chicken pizza has been delayed until Monday or Tuesday.

 

Same dinner as last night. Leftovers rule.

 

Last minute change in dinner plans. We were going to see friends and have grilled pizza. One of the pies was going to use some of my jerk chicken. The problem is that they are having a covid outbreak.

So we are getting Satchel's square pizza instead.

 

Tonight is stir friend green beans with pork and chilies,

 

No leftovers last night. It was lick the plate good. It was based on a NYT recipe but we added a pinch of szechuan peppercorns.

Tonight is chicken piccata with a side of linguini with garlic and black olives.

 

Tonight it is skirt steak with French green beans (haricot verts), corn and pesto. A side will be a tomato, English cuke and basil salad.

 

Tonight is spicy sesame noodles with peanuts and Thai basil.

 

Thick pork chops on the KJ.

 

My wife tasked me with shopping for our Asian noodle night. One dish had some very specific things that you won't find at your local Winn Dixie. First off was toasted sesame oil. The recipe didn't say it was Japanese but that is a very Japanese ingredient. I did locate it at our local Asian market. The other was wide udon noodles. Again another Japanese ingredient. Now our local Asian market is mostly Chinese but they do cater to the Korean community and also has a good selection of Thai products. All they had were narrow udon noodles but shanxi noodles (Chinese) are very similar wheat noodles and almost as thick in the middle so I bought some wide ones. It should work. A third tip-off that the recipe was Japanese was the use of black sesame seeds. I already had some because I love using them on seared tuna.

 

Tonight is rapini, aka broccoli rabe, with sweet Italian sausage and penne.

Yesterday I was thinking about fish that I used to eat as a kid catching fish near Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island that I never or rarely see at our local fish market. Fishing the bridge or pier pilings for sheepshead always gave a good meal. Casting out from the shore could land some flounder but you had to deal with a fair number of stingrays as by catch. Mangrove snapper in Estero Bay were easy and plentiful but not much meat per fish. Kind of like catching fresh water pan fish. Snook was never a commercial fish but very tasty. We used to catch a lot of redfish but back then before Paul Prudhomme blackened it it was considered a bit too "fishy" and we gave them away. He just hide the flavor with a lot of spice and great marketing. But a big fan of the dish.

But the one I was really thinking about was cobia. We didn't catch many of them but they were great.

 

Last night my wife made green beans with ground lamb and north African spices. Pretty good.

Tonight I am making chicken marsala.