Weeknight Meals as a Weather Indicator

As I was organizing my picture directories, I have noticed that most of my main meals pretty much reflect the weather on that particular day: lousy days are great for comfort food and sunny days for nice light food. It is not difficult to match the photos of my food with weather.

 

Liver and Mushrooms with Egg Pasta

The caramelized mushrooms and onions almost completely cover the liver taste that so many people dislike. This is wonderful and tasty meal for any kind of weather. Recipe is the same as Calf Liver with Mushrooms & Spaetzle except I was using egg noodles instead of spaetzle.

Veal Stew à la Osso Buco

Perfect food for cloudy, rainy weather. Since I have used slow cooker for this stew it was no-work after initial browning of the veal. Can be done in big batches since it freezes so well. It is cooked just like Osso Buco Chops.

 

Salmon Sashimi with Cucumber Salad and Gari.

Yes, it was beautiful, sunny day when I prepared this simple and quick meal. All you need is super fresh salmon.

Another Week of Comfort Food

Christmas week is notorious for comfort food and my kitchen wasn’t any different.

Cannelloni. It just oozes comfort with béchamel, marinara and meat sauces topped with Asiago and Provolone cheeses and served with toasted garlicky baguette slices.

Roasted Chicken Thighs with Orzo. The thighs were roasted on a bed of carrots, onions, garlic and celery and served with orzo, one of our favorite pasta shapes. So good!!!

Pork Tenderloin pockets with local Swiss cheese. Tenderloin slices were pounded into a thin cutlet, seasoned with salt, pepper and Herbes de Provence and then stuffed with cheese and folded into an envelope shape. After shallow frying and then roasting in toaster oven I served them on bed of Lecsó (roasted peppers and onions).

Spaghettini with baby clams and cream sauce. Very quick to make and very good.

Our traditional Christmas meal: Pan roasted duck breast with red cabbage and bread dumplings. Duck breasts were cooked medium rare and just melted in my mouth. As usual, I used cold pan method where you start cooking the breast by placing breast skin side down in a dry heavy bottomed frying pan.

Another Week of Comfort Food

Actually, way too much of comfort food and way too much pasta for my liking. No less than 4 dishes were pasta and rest had potatoes!  It looks like next week will feature a lot of rice and rice noodle dishes.

Cannelloni.

When I was assembling this great dish I was thinking how closely related it is to Lasagne. In this version I used veal, ricotta and arugula filling with tomato and Béchamel sauce.

Roasted Chicken Legs with oven baked fries.

Crispy chicken skin, moist meat underneath and crunchy potato fries…what a combo!

Chicken breast stuffed with cheese.

Served with buttered noodles, spicy tomato sauce and arugula.

Chicken thighs, tomatoes and red peppers stew with buttered potatoes.

Penne Rigatoni with beef, mushrooms and tomato sauce.

Kassler with fruit sauce.

Traditionally the Kassler (German smoked pork chops) is cooked with sauerkraut but couple years ago I have tried it with pineapple and it tasted great. Since I didn’t have pineapple I tried a can of mandarin and pear compote. Great stuff! I’ll post full recipe later.

Veal and mushrooms ragout with buttered wide noodles.

Simple Weekday Meals

Monday: Mandu – Korean-Style Potstickers.

Tuesday: Monkfish Chowder with curry, shrimp and clam juice.

Wednesday: Chinese braised pork belly.

Thursday: Pan-fried salmon and mashed potatoes and celeriac.

Friday: Thin-crust vegetarian pizza.

The Weekly Menu – April 10, 2011

Rice Terraces

Last week was fairly light as far as food is concerned. When I went over the pictures I have realized that we had rice every day. Mind you, I did use 3 different types. Arborio (short grain) for Seafood Mix Risotto and Risotto Cakes, Japanese Shirakiku (medium grain) for Stovetop Chicken Teriyaki and Thai Jasmine-scented rice (long grain) for Western Beef Stir-fry, Chicken Vegetable & Rice Soup and as a side dish for Barbecue Chicken Wings. Since every meal was so different from each other I didn’t even notice that we had rice every day!

Arborio was soft and creamy, Shirakiku soft and sticky and Thai rice had a nice bite. I guess that this is just a preview of things to come. In warmer months we eat lot of rice and light Oriental noodles like Rice noodles, Cellophane or Mung beans noodles, Japanese Soba and Sōmen among others. Many of them are served at room temperature or cold in salads. I will be posting a lot of noodle recipes.
Here are the pictures of the dishes. More detailed descriptions will follow in next few days.

Western Beef Stir-fry.

BBQ Chicken Wings.

The Chicken Vegetable & Rice Soup.

Seafood-Mix Risotto.

Risotto Cakes with Bocconcini.

Stove-top Chicken Teriyaki.