What did you cook?

I normally do not break fast in the morning but when I stay at a nice B&B in Britain and they prepare a good English breakfast to order I cannot resist. Rashers of bacon fried eggs, black sausage, baked beans, cereal with milk and toast with marmalade. Yummy

 

I work way too much, I'm not home enough and I hate my life blah blah. Because of this I spend most of my days off doing meal prep and making dank food so I can stay one step ahead of total existential darkness when I get home. The past 8 months have been spent perfecting various taco recipes. Tacos are all I eat these days. Tacos forever. My protein of choice is boneless chicken thigh because I can do a lot of different stuff with it and it's juicy-juicy delicious. Pork butt is also pretty good. Every so often I'll fry things even though they don't keep well, BUT it's worth it for that short window of time where they shine. Tonight I got down on my honey butter taco creation. It's pretty good.

Here is the journey in picture form.




Tacos Forever Forever Tacos

 

^ Burlington, NC.

There was a BBQ place I liked outside of Burlington. Think it was a western NC style place. You by any chance know if the place is still around.

On a different note man I miss southern fried chicken. Yes, CA and other places have a lot of different fried chicken too, but it's not the same and I have yet to have any that are as good.

 

Howlin Ray's in LA (and Pasadena) is literally the best I've ever had. The line is nuts, but there's a reason for it.

 

I'm sorry for the late reply. I did not see this!

Man, to be honest, I don't eat out much these days. I have only been in Burlington a couple of years and if I have free time to do what I please then I'm grabbing the dog and blasting the Impala so far outside of town that I forget this city exists. I despise this place. It's an endless sea of highway amenities. The main strip here contains every imaginable fast food chain in existence with a Walmart sandwiched between them. Luckily you don't have to drive very far before you're into the country or a little farther and you're in the Smokies and past that you're plowing into the ocean. One day, I swear.

Anyhow, I cook at home. My experience has been that it's always better and costs less. Not to say there isn't awesome BBQ out there, I'm sure there is. You'd have to guide me to it though. I'm worthless.

 

A hit and a miss.

First the hit. Got in the mood for some Polish food after making some cheat won-ton wrapper pierogies, so tried this for the first time. Pulpety or Polish Meatballs made with beef and pork. Used up some leftover won-ton wrappers to make some wide noodles to go with it and the gravy.



and the miss was my red cabbage OKONOMIYAKI. Way too doughy for my liking, need a better recipe perhaps.

 

Cheers.

 

One of my childhood comfort foods. Well, there wasn't a wet nurse handy, but this comes next on the list:

Creamed mushrooms on toast. Fried eggs on top. About as far from gourmet as it gets: fry mushrooms (with added tomato and garlic) and stir in flour and water milk. White sauces difficult? Not if you do it all wrong


Correction: water? no, milk!

 

Just got my pizza oven a week ago and my pizzas are on another level now!.
I really underestimated the need for a very hot oven for months and finally pulled the trigger on one just for the convenience sake as my previous method using normal ovens was complicated and multi stepped.

I know I am totally biased but this is truly the best steak pizza (sirloin cut) I have ever eaten!.

 

Celebrating Winter Solstice with gold ole Merican comfort food. Cheesy grits, beef and black bean adobo chili, butter basted egg and some sourdough toast.



And while I have your attention, I thought only our crazy fast food joints could come up with wacky "sandwich" ideas, but this Portuguese item has got me thinking............................ Has anyone tried it?

 

More Isolation Cooking. From Portugal, these Bela canned sardines made a great Omega filled breakfast. The jalapenos made it pop.



Since multipacks of bone in ribeye steaks were on sale, after trimming out the eye and cap for other dishes, the tail meat made the most luxurious beef for this olive based stew from Nik Sharma. http://abrowntable.com/home/olive-and-beef-stew

 

I make tacos. A LOT of tacos. These are refried beans, bacon, cheese, pork Pastor meat, onion, cilantro, lime juice and homemade salsa. They were tasty!

 

It is fruit de mer season. I like to prepare moules. I start out with about 100 ml of olive oil medium heat and add sliced carrots, leek and some fennel, sometimes I use spring onions instead of fennel. I do not roast the vegetables I rather cook them in the olive oil. For variety I sometimes add chopped chilis (without the seeds). I then add the mussels about 1 kg per person and add 80 ml of a nice white wine per 1 kg of mussels. No seasoning. The mussels are delicious and the vegetables retain some bite due to the short cooking time of the mussels. The stock taste very nice, too.
How do you prepare mussels? Using Cidre for instance?

 

Made this recently. SO good.

https://www.recipetineats.com/momofuku-bossam-korean-slow-cooked-pork/

 

She has some good recipes

 

David Chang's ginger scallion sauce recipe is something that I've poured into ice cube trays and keep at hand in the freezer at all times. the pork belly rolls are shockingly easy to make, too - even just his roast pork belly recipe is worth just keeping as part of a normal repertoire. So easy.

 

This was actually from David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant as posted to NY Times cooking but she made some solid adjustments (and is not behind a pay wall!). If you order this at the restaurant it’s like 270 bucks!

 

I bought this spectacular 'nduja from a local italian merchant. So making what i can



First thing was an east coast Italian sub

[photo missing]

Basically spread a layer along with prosciutto, salami, cheese, fermented onions & pepper, fresh tomatoes, oil & vinegar.

Serious Eats had a nduja series last year and I'm doing a couple of those recipes. Here are nduja scrambled eggs

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2020/03/nduja-scrambled-eggs.html



Other things I plan on doing is the Serious Eats nduja tomato sauce and a pizza where it's basically substituted for pepperoni. (Or maybe use the nduja sauce on pizza?)

 

wife served up some German pancakes for brunch.. a favorite of ours at the local Elmer's that she introduced me to.

One thing Covid's got us doing better is experimenting in trying to replicate some of our favorite foods at places we patronized that we no longer could visit or do take out.