What did you have for dinner?
  • Last night it was the Creamed Corn from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home as well as a variation on his Rainbow Chard recipe (essentially just sauteed chard with bacon), and some home-made mac & cheese. It was Keller-themed all the way though, as fitting the end of the recent Challenge, as I used a technique from his Chicken Pot Pie to make a reduced bechamel sauce for the mac & cheese.
  • How is Ad Hoc at home working out for you? I've been eyeballing it for a while but haven't yet picked up a copy. The French Laundry cookbook is gorgeous but not something that I'm really gonna crack open (apart from to drool over) on an average week night...
  • I made a watermelon, tomato, and feta salad last night. I love using the available summer produce!

    My two cents on Ad Hoc - it's fabulous! I have really enjoyed all of the recipes I've tried so far and can't wait to take on more of them!
  • Last night I had glorious leftovers- Red Wine risotto from Maxine Clark's Risotto AND leftover steak fajitas that were inspired by Jamie Oliver's. Didn't exactly mix, but still, good food is good food!
  • @GaietyGirl: Ad Hoc is, I think, quite brilliant. A lot of my cookbooks are great sources for recipes, but they don't change the way I cook, or don't change it very much. Ad Hoc is already starting to influence me. It is complicated for a home cookbook, but not anything like the French Laundry. Keller brings some restaurant techniques to simpler recipes, without making many compromises.

    Sometimes it seems a bit much (for example, the Chicken Pot Pie recipe suggests you cook each vegetable separately, using 3 or 4 different pots), but often if you follow along you find that there's method to his madness. After the recent challenge, there are almost 200 reviews of his recipes now, so I'm going to use those as my guide and cook more from it this fall.
  • Last night I used the last of our garden's plum tomatoes to make a lovely pomarola sauce for ziti. I have been eating pasta with fresh tomato sauce at least once a week for the past 2 months. I'm going to be sorry to see summer go.
  • Fantastic...will be giving not-so-subtle hints about that book for my birthday so :)
  • I had coconut rice from Mollie Katzen's vegetable heaven, with pork and cabbage with Indonesian dressing (lemon, soy sauce, garlic, olive oil). Good rice, good combination.
  • Tonight after coming home tired from work I made the Pioneer Woman's Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwiches for supper.
  • We had a salmon, leek and spinach quiche. The pastry was Charmain Solomon's fabulous no-roll dough - made with self-raising flour, it's a sort of playdough that you press into the pan and does not need to be blind baked. The filling was just done on general principles.
  • I just made (and reviewed) the spaghetti with turkey meatballs from Everyday Food magazine 2003. I don't have the magazine but the recipe is available at MarthaStewart.com. It was soooo good.
    Andrew- thanks for starting the forum!
  • @bhnyc - that's one of our favourite recipes (jherb, who made the first review, is my wife). If we don't have turkey we use ground chicken thighs (and they're much cheaper here than ground turkey). I also cook the onion in advance. Next time try the tomato sauce - it's simple, but works very well with the turkey.

    Here's the link for anyone interested: http://www.cookbooker.com/recipe/274/spaghetti-with-turkey-meatballs

    And here's the recipe on Martha: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/spaghetti-with-turkey-meatballs.

    And, you're welcome. I have wanted to set up a forum for a while, but was waiting for them to finish version 2 of this software, which took ages...
  • We had leftover root vegetable rice pilaf from Australian Masterchef magazine with moroccan spiced chicken fillets pan-fried accompanied by yogurt and mint sauce. It was meant to be made with brown rice but my family weren't going to eat that so I made it with basmati rice. Delicious indeed and enjoyed by all. Gotta be happy with that.
    And yes, thanks Andrew for the forum, I guess it's a natural extension of Cookbooker, making a great site even greater!
  • I had a concoction a made from fresh veggies from my CSA box. Those included eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes - along with fresh basil, bread crumbs, onions, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, Parmesan cheese, and Mozzarella cheese I found among my staples. Dessert was Peach & Walnuty Cinnamon Coffee cake with Milky Glaze from my recently acquired (old) cookbook "Royal Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Apples, orange & Walnuts"

    *runs to look if I posted the dessert review on Cookbookers*
  • @SqueakyChu - that sounds quite a bit like Thomas Keller's Summer Vegetable Gratin (http://www.cookbooker.com/recipe/4625/summer-vegetable-gratin).

    I picked up some fresh corn at a local farmstand today and made corn fritters from this Cook's Illustrated recipe: http://www.cookbooker.com/recipe/360/corn-fritters, and we had them with roasted local carrots and quinoa. I do love corn season.
  • I have to share tonight's dinner as it worked out so well. Saturday is pizza night, and I always use Peter Reinhart's Neo Neapolitain dough recipe from American Pie: http://www.cookbooker.com/recipe/289/neo-neapolitan-pizza-dough

    I always make a simple caramelized onion and roasted red pepper pizza, as it's my daughter's favourite, and then make a more adventurous one for the grown-ups. This one started with a bed of caramelized onions and a scattering of bacon, then a light covering of mozzerella. On top of that went very thinly sliced fingerling potatoes dug from our garden today, tossed in olive oil and rosemary (also from the garden), then sprinkled with parmesan. The onions were from a local organic farm, and the bacon was from the farmer's market. I can still taste it... yum.

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