What did you cook/eat today (December 2017)?

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Francesca said:
@MypinchofItaly

Wow .. Gorgeous Sweet tooth pleasures ! I adore a good home made Cheesecake ..

The Red Velvet Tart has a very fascinating history !! You would enjoy Reading about it .. It is on line (Google) ..

Have a lovely weekend and a wonderful 31st and 1st ..
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@Francesca I'm sure it had a fascinating history...but now we are too concentrated to it fascinating taste :laugh:
 
Did someone say cheesecake? :chocegg:


I've 3 big chooks in the oven. They were reduced for fast sale in the supermarket this morning. I made a quick rub from blitzed garlic, white wine & loads of herbs, rubbed it all over the birds and inside too & straight into a hot oven

I'll put out a cold buffet tonight - ham, chicken, antipasto, bread rolls, cheese. Probably some salad greens.

Later I'll put out all of the chocolate I received for Xmas & the last of the dark cherry liqueur bon bons plus the remaining biscuits. There's a stupid amount of food here.
 
Frizz1974 said:
Did someone say cheesecake? :chocegg:


I've 3 big chooks in the oven. They were reduced for fast sale in the supermarket this morning. I made a quick rub from blitzed garlic, white wine & loads of herbs, rubbed it all over the birds and inside too & straight into a hot oven

I'll put out a cold buffet tonight - ham, chicken, antipasto, bread rolls, cheese. Probably some salad greens.

Later I'll put out all of the chocolate I received for Xmas & the last of the dark cherry liqueur bon bons plus the remaining biscuits. There's a stupid amount of food here.
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It all sounds good to me. I love cold chicken and ham. I had some tonight with home cooked chips and pickles.
 
We needed to start using the truffle, so I told Craig I wanted to sort of recreate a dish a chef made for me a long time ago when Craig took me out for a special dinner. The chef used some lovely pink shrimp that were either very, very gently poached or sous vide'd and horror of horrors now, the dreaded truffle oil.

I decided to make a risotto. Made a court bouillon, poached a bunch of shrimp, as well as some squid in it. We'll use some of the shrimp and the squid in a couple of days to make marinated seafood salad (plus some mussels frozen in their steaming liquid I found in the freezer looking for something else a couple of days ago) for a small plates meal. Anyway, used leeks and garlic for the vege in the risotto, plus the court bouillon for the liquid. I did drop some of the shrimp shells in the stainless colander and dropped it down into the court bouillon to simmer for a little more flavor while I peeled the shrimp and sweated the vege for the risotto. I also discovered some very well wrapped homemade truffle butter on my freezer diving expedition that I had made the last time we had a truffle and had a tiny piece left. It was in perfect condition, not a bit of freezer burn and tasted wonderful, so about 3 or 4 Tblsp of that went in the risotto to finish. Plated risotto, lined up the shrimp, shaved the truffle and drizzled with a bit of olive oil.

Told Craig only thing I would change is that I would also make some homemade truffle oil next time to drizzle instead of just plain.

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:cool:
medtran49 said:
We needed to start using the truffle, so I told Craig I wanted to sort of recreate a dish a chef made for me a long time ago when Craig took me out for a special dinner. The chef used some lovely pink shrimp that were either very, very gently poached or sous vide'd and horror of horrors now, the dreaded truffle oil.

I decided to make a risotto. Made a court bouillon, poached a bunch of shrimp, as well as some squid in it. We'll use some of the shrimp and the squid in a couple of days to make marinated seafood salad (plus some mussels frozen in their steaming liquid I found in the freezer looking for something else a couple of days ago) for a small plates meal. Anyway, used leeks and garlic for the vege in the risotto, plus the court bouillon for the liquid. I did drop some of the shrimp shells in the stainless colander and dropped it down into the court bouillon to simmer for a little more flavor while I peeled the shrimp and sweated the vege for the risotto. I also discovered some very well wrapped homemade truffle butter on my freezer diving expedition that I had made the last time we had a truffle and had a tiny piece left. It was in perfect condition, not a bit of freezer burn and tasted wonderful, so about 3 or 4 Tblsp of that went in the risotto to finish. Plated risotto, lined up the shrimp, shaved the truffle and drizzled with a bit of olive oil.

Told Craig only thing I would change is that I would also make some homemade truffle oil next time to drizzle instead of just plain.

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You have this many truffles that you can liberally scatter them? They are are rare and so expensive here. I'm very very jealous. I mean very. And you post this in the 'What did you cook today ' thread? So cool! :cool: You have more or less posted a recipe so perhaps you could post it as a new Recipe thread?

Its incredible to me that you can just forage truffles. Truffle sites here are closely guarded secrets and far and few between. Another new thread!
 
No, it's a treat we allow ourselves every once in a while, 2, maybe 3 times a year, and only a couple of ounces at most at those times. We don't forage for them, they don't grow where we live, besides this 1 was from your side of the pond. We stopped buying our domestic ones because they just aren't as good, and we have to pay for overnight shipping on them because they only are really growing in the northwestern part of the U.S., and we are in SE. We do live in a large metropolitan area though that contains diverse cultures and in the cooler months is home to mega yachts, whose owners have to be supplied with the finer things in life on a regular ongoing basis. We benefit from that in that we don't have to pay for individual overnight shipping so at least there's that. They generally only sell them whole, especially the blacks, though we did have a shop owner offer to sell us half of an almost tennis ball sized white truffle once, and that was really pricy, and it's not like they keep forever, have to be used somehow, and too expensive to waste, so might as well use them liberally. We'll get another meal out of that 1 and have enough leftover for homemade oil or butter or a small pate. Those shavings are probably thinner than tracing paper. It looks like a lot, but you'd be surprised at how little it actually is.

We think of it this way. We used to go out to special restaurants for special occasions and still do at times once in a great while. But, now that we have learned a lot more about cooking and have found out where to source the "finer things," it actually comes out cheaper to make it at home. That dinner I talked about above cost at least twice of what he paid for the truffle he bought the other day. And frankly, I like my creation better, but I didn't have the cooking ability or confidence, much less the knowledge of where to buy a truffle, or things like actually making risotto or using a court bouillon to poach the shrimp to even try something like that back then.
 
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Today we are going to have our belated Christmas lunch. Gastric flu has dominated the holiday so far. We felt so ill on Christmas morning that we decided to put the goose in the freezer for a few days and cancel all engagements. After a week of eating little more than bread and soup we decided that today we would go for it, so the goose was defrosted over night. We have some catching up to do! On the positive side, we have both lost a few pounds, and rediscovered the joys of homemade soup.
 
epicuric said:
Today we are going to have our belated Christmas lunch. Gastric flu has dominated the holiday so far. We felt so ill on Christmas morning that we decided to put the goose in the freezer for a few days and cancel all engagements. After a week of eating little more than bread and soup we decided that today we would go for it, so the goose was defrosted over night. We have some catching up to do! On the positive side, we have both lost a few pounds, and rediscovered the joys of homemade soup.
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Enjoy your belated Xmas lunch!
 
George returned home early from his hunting trip. He had a defrosted turkey that he had planned to cook for his buds. Yesterday he injected it, seasoned it and cooked it in his Big Easy Oil less (infrared) fryer. Perfection! Crispy skin - moist tender meat. We had that for dinner last night with some of the Black Eyed Peas (beans) that I cooked for New Year's dinner, and cornbread. We will have more turkey today. The rest will be sliced and frozen. The carcass frozen for use in a soup later. I have 2 roasted chicken carcass in the freezer so I see a wonderful - large - soup coming up soon.
 
morning glory said:
I adore lobster - the dandelion Martini sounds fascinating. Is it using dandelion wine?
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No I bought some dandelion syrup from a Christmas Fair I visited. It’s also great in prosecco/champagne.

I bought it from www.tastnatur.com. She has lots of different things that were all nice. I’m thinking of trying to make the dandelion syrup myself in the summer.
 
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