…and become a group blog. Please visit www.whatihadfordinnertonight.com and register, and then you will be able to post your dinners as well as comment there. Thank you all for all your interest and support so far, I am looking forward to what we can make this into.

Don’t forget to reset your bookmarks and RSS feeds, too!

I marinated a tri-tip beef roast from TJ’s in an Asian black pepper sauce and slow cooked it in the oven, much like the Easter brisket, in stages, with onions and garlic, and then used the drippings from the marinade to further make a sauce. It was quite richly-flavored, with a sneaky pepper afterbite.

I also made brown jasmine rice (I thought I had grabbed the white basmati, but oh well) to go with, and a garden salad (baby greens, cucumber, arugula, cherry tomatoes, and green onions, as well as some left over hard-boiled egg and the remainder of the red pepper (see below)) with vinaigrette.

G&T came to dinner (it’s Friday again, yay!) and brought the fixings for stuffed red peppers (stuffed with ground beef, rice, onions and green peppers, as well as mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, sage and thyme and other yummy stuff) and T assembled and cooked and baked them here. Even better, they brought a chocolate cake (mmm…..) and red wine (a Gundlach Bundschu ’05 Pinot Noir, one of our favorites! And, as if the evening wasn’t festive enough already, L joined us, too, and we played a lot of Rayving Rabbids 2, while listening to some well-needed rain falling outside.

Tonight, a pork roast, cooked in a dish with olive oil, garlic and onions, in the oven with scalloped potatoes from a box (sale on Betty Crocker’s at Lucky this week (4 for $2!)) at 325°F for about an hour, accompanied by garlic steamed fresh green beans / haricôts verts, and grilled portabella mushrooms (marinated first with olive oil, salt and black pepper).

You really did ask what we had for dinner last night!! – Leftovers!!

As usual I way overbought for Easter entertaining, so had lots and lots of vegetables left. Two packets of mixed veg (not frozen) which I blasted in the microwave for a few minutes. I also cooked and chopped up a few baby potatoes for substance. A very rich cheese sauce was added to that, topped with breadcrumbs blitzed in the food processor with some cheese (we love our cheese!). I sprinkled some (leftover) pumpkin seeds over the top, baked it at 380 deg. C. for about 30 minutes, until it was hot, bubbling and gorgeously golden, and served it with chicken schnitzels (to appease the meateaters in the family).

It really was a throw together, but actually tasted really good, I surprised myself!!

(Alison is my eighth cousin, nine times removed. She lives in Gillitts, South Africa.)

Tonight I made one of the few recipes in my extremely limited repertoire that involves more than dumping some cans into a pot and letting them simmer for half an hour. (Though chili made in that fashion is mighty tasty.) The recipe is my modification of the Thai Chicken Curry recipe found on the page of the Dinner Co-op of Carnegie Mellon’s CS department. I’ve scaled up the recipe to match the packs of three chicken breasts that sell at the local Price Chopper, and added some small things along the way. The dish is odd in that it’s both creamy and spicy, but I like it a lot. The peanuts add a crunch, sort of like a poor man’s water chestnuts.

Ingredients:

• For white sauce:
  • 3 Tbsp butter
  • 3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • Dash salt
  • Dash pepper
  • 1½ c milk
• For stir fry:
  • 2 c broccoli florets
  • 1.5 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced into ¼-inch pieces
  • 1 medium-size red bell pepper, sliced long-ways into ¼-inch strips and then in half
  • 3 Tbsp sugar
  • 3 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 4 or 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tsp ginger powder (use some fresh ginger if it’s handy)
  • 1 heaping Tbsp red chili paste (Priya brand is great if you can find it) or curry paste
  • 3 Tbsp cooking oil (I used canola)
  • ¼ c roasted peanuts

Directions:

1. Blanch the broccoli. Boil some water in a saucepan. Add the florets to the boiling water and let boil for one minute. Drain the water and set the broccoli aside.
2. Make the white sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan on low heat. Once it’s melted, add the flour and whisk it all together before the flour has a chance to cook. Add salt and pepper. Add milk and whisk it together. Raise the heat to medium and cook, stirring every minute or so, until thick enough for the sauce to drip onto the surface and leave bumps. Turn off the heat and set aside.
3. Stir fry, woo! Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok over medium heat. Add the chili/curry paste, break it apart in the oil with your spatula, and let it cook for one minute, stirring constantly. Add the sugar, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger (I always combine these four beforehand). Add the chicken and stir-fry for about thirty seconds. Add the red bell pepper and stir everything together. Stir-fry for six minutes, or until the chicken looks done. Add the white sauce, broccoli, and peanuts; mix the whole lot together and heat through.

Serve with jasmine rice. Serves four or five.

Guest author Chris Willmore’s other pursuits may be found online at www.treedub.org

Neither of us felt like cooking tonight, so I called our favored local Chinese food delivery place, where the woman who answers the phone almost recognizes my voice without me telling her my address. We got the family dinner (more food, less money) which included won ton soup, BBQ pork fried rice, egg rolls, beef with broccoli and chicken with sweet and sour sauce. Seems like they have a new chef, tho… the food was not up to their usual standards, but not utterly terrible.

You might find what my friend Chris had for dinner more interesting, since he actually took the time to cook it.

J’s been a fan of Cuban food since childhood, and has been jonesing for some since a new, but uninviting, Cuban restaurant opened near us, and took it on to prepare some properly at home tonight. We’ve been using saffron regularly since we bought some a couple of years ago to try and make yellow rice ourselves, but only recently did we figure out that the secret ingredient we were lacking was turmeric (yes, that r is supposed to be there, look it up). So J ground up both with some salt and black pepper in the mortar and pestle to create a base for both the chicken and the rice and then simmered the chicken with some onion, garlic, olive oil, Sriracha chili sauce and tomato sauce, and then combined them into one dish and baked for a while in the oven. Very nice, very soothing, and not entirely unlike Miss Neddy’s Congee!

I made some green and yellow split peas with some garlic in them to go with, which are always hearty and filling, as well as a light salad of tomatoes with green onions and fresh oregano from the garden, with a really simple vinaigrette dressing of just olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and black pepper.