Meal No. 3472: Murgh Makhani

Last Saturday's happy evening was due to another delightful visit from my college suitemate Ronnie and his wife Tina, who've been dear friends of mine for nearly 40 years. I picked out a menu that I thought would be tasty and less-than-ordinary but that could still be put together with relative ease and that would allow plenty of time to visit and interact. Classic full-flavored butter chicken fit that bill, served over basmati rice, with roasted cumin-coriander cauliflower florets. I'm always happy to see guests willing to have seconds, but we also all still left just enough room for a terrific dessert to follow. More on that in an upcoming blog post!

The high that final Saturday of October was a remarkable 84°F, which I found pretty glorious. For that I also had good company:

I blew the leaves from the driveway but by the next day you'd have no idea that I had done so. That had me out on the driveway again yesterday, blowing and raking an even bigger pile of them, in hopes I could get it done while the good weather remained and before the arrival of the anticipated chill and rains on the final day of the month. (Too bad about Halloween night for the kids!) Since temps were heading into the first freeze of fall, I also drained and shut down the irrigation system yesterday afternoon.

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"Finger Lickin' Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani)," by Marzia Aziz of Little Spice Jar.

Meal No. 3471: Roasted Spiced Salmon & Broccoli

Oh, the long-overdue glory of roasted salmon and roasted broccoli, a befitting suppertime indulgence at the end of a glorious, warm, sunny Friday afternoon in Winston-Salem. It's mind-blowing that this was our weather so close to the start of November, with a high of 80°F that day, along with some great outside time while the leaves were just a-falling. A seven-week gap in having this most favored menu left me craving it to an almost unhinged degree.

Some moderate raking endeavors, quickly defeated in the face of the leafy onslaught, was the limit of my yard productivity...it was so much nicer to enjoy soaking up the sun in the backyard while the dogs frolicked, or while they kept sentry watch for possible squirrel activity. They did not take time to spot this katydid, when it flew across the front grove and alighted on the leaf of a dying cherry tree:

Meal No. 3470: Chicken Fried Rice

From some recent meals, I had a good portion of saved cooked rice, and with thin-sliced marinated chicken breast as the chosen protein, and a bonus stir-fry sauce heavy on tamarind paste, a dinner of chicken fried rice proved to be simultaneously luscious and somehow basic, and perfectly tasty for last Thursday's dinner.

There was a mid-day snack, too: marvelous warm sweet banana bread.

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Based on "Classic Chicken Fried Rice" [Published 26 October 2015 / Updated 04 May 2023] and "How to Velvet Chicken for Stir-Fry" [Published 24 March 2020 / Updated 27 June 2022], from Bill Leung of TheWoksofLife.com.

Supplemental Stir-Fry Sauce inspired by "5 Easy Sauce Recipes that Will Make Everything You Eat Taste Way Better," by Sophia Roe on Well + Good. [Published 09 January 2019]

"Carolyn's Banana Bread," a recipe shared by former neighbor Lori Pilon.

Meal No. 3469: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

If I make a favorite meal that does not quite please me, especially if it had been offered to special company, I might just itch to repeat it pretty quickly. That's the story behind this past Wednesday's quick return of chicken with coronation sauce to the Roediger House menu. I erred on the side of over-saucing it, perhaps, but with perfectly-steamed rice to serve it over, there was no crime committed.

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"Coronation Sauce for Chicken," from 400 Sauces, by Catherine Atkinson, Christine France, and Maggie Mayhew. Hermes House (2006, 2008), p. 155. Recipe is a variation on "Coronation Chicken," created by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Happy Accident of Scarlett

We are now just past one full month in residence for the newly added pup in the Roediger House. She and Sumner are getting along quite well, with plenty of play, rare exhibitions of annoyance (usually communicated from the older Sums to the younger she-imp), and definite deeper naps and overnight sleeps since they wear each other out. I wasn't sure that Sumner would ever accept an interloper or rival and I clearly underestimated him.

Scarlett continues to exhibit a voracious appetite at mealtime, hoovering up her puppy chow in under two minutes even though the slow-spiral bowl was quickly deployed. It turns out she's eating for multiple diners: the first vet appointment led to a diagnosis of intestinal parasites, unsurprising for a former tent-dweller in the community of unhoused individuals. She certainly plays like a healthy happy pup, in spite of these unwelcome invaders.

On a couple of occasions, Sumner has become a sumo, wrestling her into submission:

And in a way that only a younger sister could evoke, she has brought to photographic light the menacing playtime snarl of which Sumner is exceptionally skilled:

I do not think I exaggerate in how it is here described:

But they do have a good time together. Sumner loves to go to my firewood rack in search of some useful chew piece to be found therein, and he sweetly offers it for games of tug-of-war with Scarlett:

And then they have to lie down for a spell:

Or perhaps she has to undergo a deeper rest period, say, on the long sofa in the mancave, settling in for what we call her "gecko" position:

She was a bit big already for the smaller borrowed crate, and I was a bit overly enthusiastic about the new crate for Sumner, ordering too large a size, perhaps. But they have their happy nighttime homes in the master bedroom, to which they willingly go each evening and also offer the kindness of sleeping all the way through the night:

Right up through yesterday, these terrific canine siblings of the household have continued to entertain, with their chew toy wrestling:

...and their pause for attention at the feet of the master:

When Sumner needs to exert his dominance, his wrestling move is to lay her flat on the mat...or the coach:

And then Scarlett just strikes a gorgeous pose while she rests and recovers:

As previously noted, it was not on the agenda to expand the household and bring in a second dog...but all indications are that the happiness here is universal.

Meal No. 3468: Bacon, Caramelized Onion, and Gruyère Quiche

Once I decided I'd work up a a batch of pie dough, it set the course for last Tuesday's dinner for three: bacon, caramleized onion, and Gruyère quiche, along with roasted asparagus. I really extended the quiche's baking time and it still had not fully set up in the middle, which I'd not had a problem with on my recent trials of that recipe.

I faced a similar dilemma with the other crust's creation: lemon-buttermilk chess pie, also a recipe I've made a number of times but this go-round it was still a bit loose in the center, even with going well past the recommended time for it to bake properly. Both the dinner and the pie tasted great, but I was not a happy chef that night.

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Recipe based on "Bacon and Caramelized Onion Quiche," from Mountain Mama Cooks.

"All-Butter Pie Crust," from King Arthur Test Kitchen of King Arthur Baking. See also "Butter vs. Shortening: The Great Pie Crust Bake-Off," by PJ Hamel of King Arthur Baking. [Published 23 November 2013]

"Buttermilk Lemon Pie," from Taste of Home.

Meal No. 3467: Hoisin Pork Tenderloin

Kept it simple this past Friday night, with roasted hoisin pork tenderloin, spiced roasted potatoes, and simple garden peas.

The rest of the Wake Forest Homecoming Weekend was a delight, with fellow alums Matt and Jenn using the Roediger House as their homebase while they were in town for the festivities. It meant some very late nights for this old man but unquestionably worth the adjustment to my more staid schedule. Those photo albums from 30+ years ago ain't gonna look at themselves now, are they? We managed to remember a group photo as they were preparing to leave Sunday morning. While we're at it, why not juxtapose that with a photo from 20 years ago, when we met up for dinner at the 2003 Wake Forest Homecoming:

And then, later that afternoon, it was a treat to get a stop-over visit from another pair of longtime friends, Fred and Carol Wood, as they headed home to Raleigh. (We agreed it had been far too long since they were last here: ten years!) Life in the RoHo remains excellent.

Meal No. 3466: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

Last Thursday night at the Roediger House featured a long-time favorite dish: chicken with coronation sauce over rice, this time accompanied by roasted garlicky asparagus cuts. This was the lead-in to a double dose of huge homecomings through the weekend, which brought tons of people and loads of activity to Winston-Salem: both Winston-Salem State University and Wake Forest University had their reunion activities in full swing, a definite rebound from these last few years of coronavirus curtailment. That meant a couple of WFU friends were here and made the Roediger House their homebase, which was pretty awesome.

This included Matt, who was a freshman one year and then an RA on my staff when I was Hall Director of Kitchin House at WFU, and who got here in time to partake of that supper.

I also had made a new batch of the cookie dough caramel ice cream with chocolate swirl, which made sense for two key reasons: I still had half a batch of the edible cookie dough I'd made, and it is one frickin' glorious ice cream. That was our sweet finisher that night and there was still more to carry us through the weekend. (I'm listing below the recipe sources for all of its elements, even though only the ice cream base itself was newly made; the caramel and chocolate sauces were hanging out in the fridge in their respective Mason jars from previous crafting.)

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"Coronation Sauce for Chicken," from 400 Sauces, by Catherine Atkinson, Christine France, and Maggie Mayhew. Hermes House (2006, 2008), p. 155. Recipe is a variation on "Coronation Chicken," created by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

"Edible Cookie Dough," from Jaclyn Bell of CookingClassy.com. [Published 09 September 2018]

"Bourbon Caramel Sauce," from Ali Martin of GimmeSomeOven.com. [Published 31 August 2019]

"Sweet Milk Ice Cream," published in the King Arthur Flour catalogue some years ago, but no longer available on their website.

"Hershey's Chocolate Syrup," from Stephanie Manley of CopyKat.com. [Published 25 August 2020 / Updated 15 September 2021]

Meal No. 3465: Creamy Chicken Francese

A close exposure to a covid-positive colleague put several of us on homebound last week, so instead of working on Tuesday, I was able to be at home. It also meant I could invest a little more time into dinner, and for National Pasta Day, I decided to make creamy chicken francese, served over linguine, along with roasted broccoli florets. Gracious, that was some deliciousness. I was all about that full plate becoming a clean plate just as quick as possible.

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"Creamy Chicken Francese," from Karina Carrel of Cafe Delites.

Meal No. 3464: Weeknight Sesame Peanut Noodles with Chicken

Having enjoyed my first trial of sesame peanut noodles with chicken just 10 meals ago, I was more than ready to quickly return to it. That happened this past Monday night, to glorious end. Once more I defaulted to ramen for an easy noodle prep and, once tossed into that stirfry sauce, soaking up the flavors and seasonings, it really completed that dish.

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"Weeknight Sesame Peanut Noodles with Chicken," by Marzia Aziz of Little Spice Jar.

Meal No. 3463: Bacon Cheeseburger Soup

As last weekend came to an end, under chilly fall skies and clouds aplenty, soup was the only answer to the dinner question. The full flavors and hefty punch of bacon cheeseburger soup seemed the best of all possible options, and on this I was not wrong. This recipe is a dependable winner anyway, sort of hard to blow it, but that Sunday evening it was especially compelling.

I had more energy that day than I expected, given that the night before I'd driven over to Fuquay-Varina for my 40th high school reunion which, once again, was really a terrific time. A core cluster of very dedicated classmates who are mostly still in that area really put incredible effort into pulling it off every five years, and we were a present and happy bunch. It was a late night drive back to Winston-Salem and a short night of sleep, but I rode the high of those good times throughout the day.

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"Bacon Cheeseburger Soup," from Catalina Castravet and Holly Nilsson of SpendwithPennies.com. [Published 01 March 2018]

Chocolate Tres Leches Cake

Last Friday's dinner was an occasion to try out a new recipe for dessert: chocolate tres leches cake. Wowzer, was it a tasty concoction. Chocolate sponge cake spiced with a bit of cinnamon, the classic three milks, and a rich sweetened chocolate whipped cream on top, adorned with a drizzle of homemade chocolate syrup: I feel like I could have had three slices if it weren't for the embarrassment in front of so many witnesses.

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"Chocolate Tres Leches Cake," from Cuisine at Home. Issue No. 121 (January/February 2017), p. 48-49.

Meal No. 3462: Pan-Seared Pork Medallions with Ginger-Soy-Shiitake Mushroom Cream Sauce

A long-time favorite dish of the Roediger House reappeared after an absence of about 20 months: pan-seared pork medallions dressed finely with a ginger-soy-shiitake mushroom cream sauce that's pretty out of this world. (Memory is not serving me but I might have started making this recipe even back in the old kitchen, pre-2009. I see that it was Meal No. 6 once the new kitchen was built and ready.) Anyway: that sauce is terrific either over tuna steaks or pork loin or, as I most commonly do, over these pork tenderloin medallions. When there were three of us gathered for that Friday the 13th evening hang, with television fare chosen for so fortuitous a date on the calendar, that supper made it seem a tad more special. And less scary.

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Based on "Pan-Seared Tuna with Ginger-Shiitake Cream Sauce," from The Bon Appétit Cookbook by Barbara Fairchild, 2006, p. 398-399.

"Company Mashed Potatoes," a Jones Family favorite.

Meal No. 3461: Pepperoni Pizza

The previous day's observance of National Sausage Pizza Day propelled me to make some fresh dough, but that recipe results in two dough balls. The next day, Thursday, was therefore another good new pizza occasion at the Roediger House, and this time it took the form of an easy cheesy pepperoni pizza. The first bites were reminiscent of a better Domino's slice, and it only went up from there.

Cookie Dough Caramel Swirl Ice Cream

A very nice young lady is a next-door neighbor in an apartment in the old house beside the Roediger House, and when she went through the misery of wisdom teeth extraction recently, she strongly suggested that some RoHo cookie dough ice cream might help her heal. I was not speedy enough but she was willing to feign a slower recovery just so the medicinal magic of just such a concoction could meet the moment. I prepped a sweet milk ice cream base last Tuesday night and churned it Wednesday morning. I'd never made edible cookie dough, so that was a nice new endeavor, with heated flour to make it safe and an overnight rest in the fridge to firm it up. Once I'd portioned it into tiny morsels, that cookie dough went into the freezer. As the ice cream was finishing, I stirred in the cookie dough. Then it was time to dig out some bourbon caramel sauce I made a while back, and I also added in my homemade copycat Hershey's chocolate sauce. By Wednesday evening, it had all firmed up enough to offer out the first servings, to make sure it had turned out okay before sharing the to-go container promised to the neighbor. Cookie dough ice cream is not what I was ever known to order if I happened to be at an ice cream parlour, but boy howdy was this an amazing treat that night.

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"Edible Cookie Dough," from Jaclyn Bell of CookingClassy.com. [Published 09 September 2018]

"Bourbon Caramel Sauce," from Ali Martin of GimmeSomeOven.com. [Published 31 August 2019]

"Sweet Milk Ice Cream," published in the King Arthur Flour catalogue some years ago, but no longer available on their website.

Meal No. 3460: National Sausage Pizza Day

After trying a new pizza dough recipe for the recent skillet calzone meal, I wanted to see what I thought of it for a regular pizza. Since last Wednesday was National Sausage Pizza Day, I had my incentive. Here's my take: it is a full-flavored dough, tasty all on its own, but also thick and bready. I bet it would appeal to quite a few people, but it can't be my go-to, where my own preferences are concerned. Still, with tasty sweet Italian sausage, a quick homemade herbed tomato sauce, and just the right amount of mozzarella cheese, this was a nice pizza night at the Roediger House.

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"Perfect Homemade Pizza Dough," by Marzia Aziz of Little Spice Jar.

Meal No. 3459: Spiced Chicken Breast

Last Tuesday's supper was another round of sous vide for a protein prepped and stashed in the freezer: southwestern-spiced chicken breast, together with some cumin-coriander roasted cauliflower. The added treat was another batch of cheddar bay biscuits, using a different recipe, and they were mighty good again. Guess that's my excuse for eating three of 'em.

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"Easy Cheddar Bay Biscuits (Red Lobster Copycat)," from Amy Nash of House of Nash Eats. [Published 11 August 2023]

Meal No. 3458: Juicy Burgers on the Grill

Indiginous People's Day was this past Monday, a day off in observance for many but not for all. We were coming off of a pretty chilly weekend, with early morning temps at 42°F Sunday and Monday when it was time to get up. That first day of the week was mostly cloudy, with strong and gusty breezes, but I persevered into it for just over three miles of walking down through the West End Neighborhood, and then tallied another three-quarters of a mile with the two dogs. The appetite was strong in this one at dinnertime, and juicy burgers on the grill seemed an excellent call. A bit of the Thousand Island dressing I had in the fridge as a stand-in for special sauce, and barbecue kettle chips in abundance, it was a last gasp of summer for a holiday evening in the cool of autumn.

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"Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003, p. 52-53. After Pillsbury was purchased in 2001 by General Mills, home of Betty Crocker (founded in 1921, mind you!), it basically ceased to exist as a company and lives on just as a brand. I guess that's why a Pillsbury cookbook recipe from 2003 is now only found on the Betty Crocker website.

Apple & Chai Cream Strudel with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream

A night with Amy and Gern and Kristen and Mookie is all by itself going to be a wonderful evening, and true as ever was this the case last Saturday night. Following our huge meal of beef bourguignon, I was hoping to have a dessert that respected the change in weather that weekend, which was signalling more strongly that the season of autumn was upon us. Enter a wildly adapted concoction whose one shortcut was to employ a store-bought refrigerated puff pastry crust: apple and chai cream strudel. Everything about that dessert was a variation and creation from too much ideation, stealing notions here and tactics there from past recipes I've used. The outcome was passable, albeit grander in size and scope than our already-full bellies might have otherwise handled. We were dedicated conquerors, though.

I also decided to modify a dependably delicious ice cream recipe to scale up the quantity, which meant churning it in my old-fashioned electric ice-and-rock salt ice cream maker. I looked back at recipes from my friend and colleague Donna as well as a couple passed down from family to try to approximate the right approach. In the end, we had a fine and plentiful batch of brown sugar cinnamon ice cream as a seasonal addition to the braided pastry on our plates. I've written up what I did and added it as a clickable link below, with a downloadable pdf of that modified ice cream recipe.

The Latest Panhandler

Speaking of that quantity of ice cream, since there was enough to share, I took a container down the street to neighbors. As I was heading back home, an unfamiliar person approached me. “You look like you're wanting to talk with me," I called out. "What do you need?”

“A friend,” she replied.

“Well," I said, "since I don’t know you, I’m probably not that person. What do you need from that friend?”

“Some help,” she said.

“I have to tell you that Spring Street is a strange place to be looking for help. The good news is: Samaritan Ministries was hoping to help you. They planned for you. Bethesda Center was wanting to help you. They also planned for you. The Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army and Crisis Control Ministries and The Dwelling were all planning to be there for you. Why did you walk past where the help is, and come to where the help isn’t?”

Twenty years of downtown living has gotten me to a place of utter befuddlement about the panhandler dilemma, but I am working through my thoughts on why it is an off-kilter and confused situation, from my perspective. Perhaps that will be some lengthy future blog post. What I am convinced of at this point is that there is not a legitimate need that drives the pursuers of the hand-out on my street or on Restaurant Row. If there were, all these organizations dedicated to helping street people would be out here giving them money. Why do you suppose they don't think that's the best solution?

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Apple Filling based on "Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]

Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014]

"Old-Fashioned Chest-Churned Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream," adapted by me from "Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream," from Heather Tullos of SugarDishMe.com. [Published 11 September 2015]