Sunday Night Dinners (#s 7 & 8)

In keeping with my pattern of delayed postings, a couple of past Sunday night dinners from Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen. 


#7 was Braised Short Ribs with Dijon Mustard.  Perfect for a Sunday night, brown the short ribs and let them braise in the pot while you drink cocktails or, in my case, do all the laundry you put off doing all weekend. If you're Hercules, you monitor the braising process very carefully:

The only reason he was not monitoring from his usual position beneath the stove was that I was not in the kitchen during said braising.  The recipe was definitely hassle free and you can even make a large part of it ahead of time, so if you are an obsessive entertainer there is plenty of time to take care of all the final dinner details.  A couple photos:

Before (in process):

... and after (Fun fact:  I hate cooked tomatoes unless they are made into pasta sauce)

My only gripe about this recipe was the operator error - I know braising means "cook forever in liquid," yet I still seemed to gloss over exactly how long it would take and ended up eating at 10 pm.  If I had gotten my act together and started the process earlier, I would have been much happier.

#8 was South Indian Shrimp Curry.  Easy, quick, and good for a weeknight meal.  I think peeling the ginger was the step that took the longest, which wasn't so bad.  The downside:  My house smelled like curry for 2 days.  The upside:  Yummy leftovers!  I didn't get pictures of this one, but I think we've all seen curry by this point and the end result wasn't exactly food porn.

Based upon these two recipes, I'm making the determination that this cookbook is a keeper.  There were several others that I wanted to try, but I just didn't have the extra time that week.  It is a full service cookbook (as are the other Gourmet cookbooks I have) with everything from drinks to desserts, and lots of good tips throughout.  As a unabashed food porn addict, I will admit that the cookbook is no substitute for the lovely photos that used to grace Gourmet magazine (and which are included in my OCD recipe file).  iPhone photos are no comparison, but they will have to do here!

Best Intentions, Gone Wrong! (#s 4-6)

I've got some catching up to do here - an update on some recipes from a couple of weeks ago.  The theme of this post is "things I intended to make for others."  All recipes came from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, which showed up on my porch the week before - as if to mock my lack of progress.

First up, the Roasted Potato Salad which I intended to bring to wine... err... book club - the evening's theme being comfort food and all.  The recipe proudly declares 1989 as the year of the Potato Renaissance.  Although potatoes are one component of my Food Trinity (the others being bacon and cheese), I seem to remember 1989 for other reasons (Tianamen Square, a trip to Japan, the Loma Prieta earthquake during the World Series).  I'll agree to disagree with the NYT writers on this one.  I stayed up really late one night making this for the following evening and appreciated its simple preparation:  roasted potatoes (duh!), red wine vinegar, whole grain mustard, garlic, chives, rosemary.   It looked and smelled fantastic before I added the chives and I was tempted to skip them because it was midnight and I didn't feel like chopping a batch of m&*%$f&^% chives, but I was glad they did.  They gave the dish a good flavor and also made it pop visually.  The red wine vinegar gave it a nice flavor.
  
Sadly, this dish is incongruent with the war on carbs.  Since I couldn't make it to book club, a large portion of it sat in my refrigerator, mocking me, for several days.

Next, Broiled Halibut with Miso Glaze and Edamame with Nori Salt.  You won't see photos of either because they were incredibly visually unappealing.  I had planned to make it for a friend but got stuck at work and had to cancel.  Since fish doesn't exactly keep in the fridge, this turned into another late night cooking session for one.  One of the lessons I will learn these days is to read the whole recipe ahead of time - I read the recipe for the main dish, but not for the edamame (which was a recommended side).  As a result, there I was at 10 pm passing nori (quickly!) over the gas burner on my stove and hunting through the kitchen cabinets for my long-dormant coffee grinder to grind toasted nori into powder.  Strike 1.  Strike 2 was the recipe's admonition that you may need to mix more nori than you think you need to with the salt.  The end result was edamame that was covered with what looked like soot.  It was tasty, but the marginal utility of spending the time toasting and grinding the nori was nil compared to just sprinkling the edamame with sea salt.  I might revisit this if I could find premade nori powder.

The halibut recipe was my original pick - well, actually, I was debating between this and another fish dish, but the hot guy I asked said this sounded better than the other.  Preparation was easy enough, but it didn't look particularly exciting when I popped it out of the oven.  It tasted fine, but I have made halibut in other configurations that I liked much better.  I probably wouldn't bother making it again.  And clearly the usefulness of hot guys is negative when it comes to recipe choices (Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain excluded).


So, NYT, I'm iffy on your cookbook.  I will have to try some more recipes to see if it's worth keeping, but for the time being I am moving on.