What are you having for dinner? (wanna share your recipe?)

[Friday]

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

Vietnamese Summer Rolls Recipe

www.bonappetit.com

Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls

Fresh and healthy Vietnamese rice paper spring rolls with an amazing peanut sauce. Plus TWO secret tips to make it super easy to roll them up neatly!

www.recipetineats.com

Vietnamese Summer Rolls Recipe • 4★ • 30 min

If you have ever considered making a Vietnamese summer roll, you may have been intimidated by the process But these delicious rolls are not at all difficult I learned my summer roll technique from a native of France

cooking.nytimes.com

^^^ Same darn thing, really, with minor variations.

I make these at night (when it’s cool), for tomorrow, when it’s hot out. Love. &. Adore.

I steam the shrimp (with water & lemon, or water & sake), after defrosting by running cold running water over & soaking with a tb of baking soda in water (a very Asian thing, using baking soda to plump up / crisp the flavor) for 15-60min (then rinsing off), which none of the recipes mention. Soaking shellfish in baking soda water is like “velveting the meat” by using corn or potato starch on meat-creatures (beef & pork & chicken) in SE Asian cooking. So “normal” it’s rarely mentioned, and western variations suffer for it. If your making SE Asian meat-creature? Or poultry? Add starch, to “velvet” . Shellfish?Add baking soda (and rinse off), to crisp/pop. SE Asian Fish-Fish or poultry? Xio Xing. (Or sherry). Truly. Starch, Baking Soda, & Xiao Xing in the East are like adding salt & pepper in the West. It would be WEIRD bordering on insane “not to”. So the overwhelming number of recipes “just” don’t mention it.

I’ve ATTEMPTED using baking soda in Mediterranean shellfish, btw, to TERRIBLE effect. Brilliant in Asian dishes, terrible in Mediterranean dishes. The crisp biteyness, like little candies, from seared or flame broiled or wine open shellfish just dies/doesn’t happen; it’s only useful when steamed, and then? It “pops” with bursting lovliness.

If you’re STEAMING shellfish? (SE Asian recipe) Soak them in baking soda water for at least 15min, up to 60, then rinse off, before cooking. Seeeeeriously.

But if you’re searing or otherwise cooking? Absolute Do Not baking soda soak.

 

[nursenurse]

I did the Vietnamese Lettuce wraps last night from recipetineats.com for the girls. I could eat the sauce with a spoon. I doubled that and there was not a lick left.

 

[Friday]

Poke Bowls

Poke Bowl Recipe

Try this refreshing Tuna and Salmon Poke Bowl for the family or at your next DIY Poke Party! Customize your bowl with the creative mix-ins suggested!

www.justonecookbook.com

Tuna Poke Bowl

Too many Poke Bowl recipes disappoint with bland dressings and tasteless rice.... the Japanse blood in my veins demand Poke Bowls be totally scoffable!

www.recipetineats.com

Put (mostly!) together tonight, add zeh fishies, and eat in the heat tomorrow. I like Nagi’s sauce, better, but Namiko’s overall = better. Either way? If you haven’t had it, before, Poke is essentially all the sushi, none of the fine motor skills fr fiddly bits & rolling.

 

[PlainJane]

Ugh, love Poke. It makes me think of my brother, I miss the bonehead

I am making chickpea salad. Never had it before but I expect to enjoy it.

1oz can of chickpeas
1/2 cup of Mayo, 1tbsp of pickled jalapeño peppers, crushed red pepper flakes, all purpose seasoning, salt, black pepper, parsley, Garlic and onion powder, 1 small bushel of kale chopped finely, 1/2 red onion chopped finely, two celery stalks chopped finely, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 1 tbsp of mustard, 1/2 Cucumber chopped

I’m going to substitute the mayo with Greek yogurt for the added protein

 

[Friday]

1oz can of chickpeas
1/2 cup of Mayo, 1tbsp of pickled jalapeño peppers, crushed red pepper flakes, all purpose seasoning, salt, black pepper, parsley, Garlic and onion powder, 1 small bushel of kale chopped finely, 1/2 red onion chopped finely, two celery stalks chopped finely, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 1 tbsp of mustard, 1/2 Cucumber chopped

Awesome! Will have to try that one.

I do mine on a chickpea/tomato/shallot/parsley/sherryVinegar/oliveOil base… if I’m out of sherry vinegar, lemon juice & cumin… then whatever’s handy, or nada & done. The last one got a bunch of cucumber added, which was a first. Dunking in baguette hunks (I get lazy about slicing baguettes, and generally just rip pieces off), or adding any other kinds of bread, makes it very protein-happy.

 

[PlainJane]

Nice! Sounds delightful

Dunking in baguette hunks (I get lazy about slicing baguettes, and generally just rip pieces off

It tastes better this way. Don’t know why, but hunks just work.

 

[Rose White]

Love chickpeas! Saving both of your recipes @PlainJane @Friday

Dunking in baguette hunks

I recently heard a chef say her favorite part of the salad has always been the juice and she and her sister used to fight over it, so she likes to create what she calls soupy salads so she can drink the last part or mop it up with bread.

 

[Rose White]

Sounds great @AlmostNotQuite !

 

[nursenurse]

Ordered in pizza tonight. I think my new favoutie flavour, a hot honey with six cheese blend, a hot honey sauce and a hot honey drizzle, pepperoni, and lotsa hot banana peppers. Washed down with a nice pinot grigio. Comfort food redefined for me.

 

[Teasel]

Made a cheese sandwich last night, & found myself wondering what it would taste like with honey on it.

 

[nursenurse]

Hot honey would be delish, @Teasel , but a sharp cheddar with a lick of regular honey would be good too!

 

[Friday]

Murphy’s Crustacean Cakes

Spoiler: Wow… How. We. Got. Here.

So I was PLANNING on making crawfish cakes >>> Crawfish Cakes With Crawfish Cream <<< (except instead of “bam” I use Chef Paul Prudhomme’s ‘Blackened Redfish Magic’, because it’s better)…but there was a mixup with my seafood vendor, and instead of 4lbs of crawfish tail meat for $8? I was charged $180 for lobster tail meat. Which ensued, as one might imagine, a rather impassioned series of phone calls/discussions betwixt myself, my vendor, & (shouted over his shoulder, from the echo) the person who thought a $172 substitution without consent was reasonable.

((Aside, my vendor threatened to sub $172 from their paycheck, and I think the point was made? When this particular vendor requires signed consent for $2 worth of changes, before the order is finalized/charged/sent out for delivery, I rather suspected this employee was not going to last long. And that’s before this next bit, happened!))

So my vendor comps me the lobster, rather than reissuing the order as the truck is already out for delivery and I get all set on making >>> lobster rolls <<< Okay. Not this. Because I can’t eat butter, anymore. But these were the kind I made for decades, so it’s what I drool over… and then shift mental headspace for the cold version with mayo. Which is just as good, just in a different way. Lobstah lobstah lobster roooooooooolls!!! Alright! We. Can. Do. It.

My delivery arrives, and I’m loading things into the freezer… when what, to my wondering eyes should appear? (Hint: Not reindeer. Nor lobster.)

Langoustines.

FFS.

So I call my vendor back, again… and it’s almost worth the entire misadventure to listen to his soon-to-be-former-employee explain that it’s NORWEGIAN Lobster. And, “clearly”. Just the same as BOTH (at different times during his tapdance) crawfish & Atlantic/Maine lobster. (But better. Because it’s from NORWAY). And the reason why he charged me (retail!) for lobster, when langoustine costs less than the crayfish/crawfish/crawdads I had originally ordered??? Well. It’s… LOBSTER.

OMG. This. Guy.

So…. From experience? One cannot make lobster rolls from (frozen) langoustine (tail meat). Po’boys, yes, but I wasn’t about to deep fry anything today.

Also from experience? One cannot make crabcake/crawfish cakes from langos (the texture doesn’t stand up, and they don’t hold together).

BUT??? If you mix 1/2 langoustine & 1/2 with shrimp? (1/4 chunky shrimp, 1/4 ground, grated frozen, or blitzed in a food processor shrimp to act as a binder. Kinda like dim sum). One CAN Langoushrimp? Shrimpenstine? cakes.

But, by gum, let’s give credit where credit is DUE & give them their proper name.

((Unless it’s near Halloween. Then maaaaaybe I’ll parsley the f*ck outta them, so they’re green; stick scallops on the side for “bolts”; stick some Dungeness claws or legs on; maybe light some candles for “torches”, and ShrimpenstineMonster them up. Maybe. But not today. Today? As Everything that could go wrong, did?))

Chicken Fajitas.

To be continued.

(Both of my original dinner plans have links behind the spoiler, however.)