Meal No. 259: Grilled Chilean Sea Bass

While Chilean sea bass is on watch lists for overfishing, I found it looked much better than the halibut I'd intended to purchase this afternoon. And it's not as though we could put it back in the ocean to continue living and reproducing, not in the state it was in at the seafood counter at the Harris Teeter. So it became the feature of this Friday's supper.

Officially, this is cedar-plank-grilled Chilean sea bass with a ginger-garlic-soy glaze.

I've never made it before. I've never even eaten it before. And since it's a no-no, I'm not sure when I'll have it again. But it sure did make an incredible meal. The asparagus cooked up nicely, and I decided to make another batch of Israeli couscous with onion, garlic, parsley, and pine nuts. That stuff is amazing.

First Grass Cutting of the Spring. Prior to making this late night dinner, I did break out the lawnmower for the inaugural grass-cutting of 2011.

First Attempt at Final Cabinetry Issues

While I was working away on my taxes today, I also got to entertain a visit from the "punch" guy who works for Kitchen Vision of Winston-Salem. (This is the outfit that did all the cabinetry in the kitchen and three of the bathrooms, as well as in the laundry room...all elements of the addition to the house in 2008-2009.) I've had problems with the pull-out trashcan (it wasn't closing properly and most of the time stuck out a few inches) and with one of the drawers in the wetbar.

His idea of the solution to the malfunctioning drawer in the wetbar was to angle the guides/tracks down. Now the drawer's face sticks out ridiculously at the bottom, because the drawer is now positioned on an angle instead of a horizontal plane.

I guess having a drawer slide into the cabinet at a downward trajectory is a potential solution to the problem I was having. But I have trouble imagining how someone could walk away thinking it's the right thing to do.

Restocking the Beer

I do like it when my latest beer orders have come in, especially when I see the variety, the quantity, and the appearance of hard-to-get brews.

But I'm also finding that my willingness to stock up leaves me with storage issues.

Meal No. 258: Smothered Pork Chops

After working a couple of days down in Richmond County this week, I drove back into Winston-Salem on a beautiful April afternoon and got straight to work in the kitchen. After all, I had a dinner party already scheduled and people's appetites to satisfy. I had a hankering to give the smothered pork chops another go, even though I just had them for meals 237 and 241. I went back to the recipe from Cook's Country but bulked up the quantity of onion and broth for making the gravy.

There were no leftovers.

Doubletree(?)-Inspired Cookies

This week, while I work in Richmond County, I am happy to force upon the administrators another round of cookies from the Roediger House kitchen.

This is another run at the DoubleTree-style chocolate chip cookies that I blogged about not long ago. I saved some of the dough to make hot cookies straight-from-the-oven for dessert after last night's dinner. The milk with it took me just to the gates of a side-yard of Paradise.

Meal No. 257: Almond Chicken & Broccoli with Cream Sauce

I taught all day long here in town, a final day with Winston-Salem/Forsyth County program managers and instructional coaches, with our focus on instructional design and post-observation conferencing. Tonight, I drive down to Richmond County, where I'll be working with administrators for the next two days. So the meal was well-thought-out in advance so that it would be easy to pull together and still get me on the road before it was late.

This is almond chicken and broccoli, cooked in a terrific sherry-tarragon-broth-parmesan cream sauce. It would be another meal that I can picture having in winter. It's also the kind of meal that drives me to want more even though I'm full, just to have that savory taste linger a while longer.

You know how sometimes you'll eat a hot/spicy meal and you feel the heat of the peppers (or whatever) accumulating on your tongue, getting more pronounced and potent as you continue eating? That's sort of what happened with the creamy goodness of the sauce with this meal, only it was an increasingly pleasant and enticing flavorfulness that built up the more I ate.

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Recipe from The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever, by Beatrice Ojakangas [2008], p. 159.

Meal No. 256: Plank Salmon with Maple-Ginger Glaze

A few years ago, I was given some cedar planks for grilling steaks or fish. I must confess: I'd not yet gotten around to using them. But I've wanted to, and after a trip to Sam's Club over the weekend, decided to get a large slab of salmon and give this a try.

The result was tasty and I can see bringing this back again. It was plenty for three and would be a sufficient but potentially light meal for four.

I also tried a side dish that was brand-new for me: Israeli couscous. I looked at a couple of different recipes for preparing it and combined the best of both and threw in a few other ideas, notions, and shenanigans, including some toasted pine nuts. That worked out exceptionally well.

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"Cedar Plank Salmon with Maple-Ginger Glaze" from the Food Network Magazine, April 2011, p. 105.

Meal No. 255: Penne Carbonara

After a good week working again in Frederick County, VA, I was glad to be wrapping up early yesterday afternoon so that I could head home. After all, while NC was enjoying temps in the mid-60s on Friday, it was cold, rainy, and 46°F in Winchester and Stephens City. Yuck.

So, of course it was not a thrill to go out to my car and find that it had a flat tire. Somehow, between schools mid-day, I managed to pick up quite a hunk of metal, and it did its dirty darnedest to my tire.

Cold and rainy, I'm dressed up for working, and I've got a flat tire. Glad I have AAA.

It was a bit nerve-wracking to drive home at that much reduced spare-tire-speed with all the traffic blasting past me and running up on me. And it took nearly five and a half hours to get home, instead of the usual 4.5. Last night's supper was at Pancho Villa, not at home!

Out of town for a week, flat tire on the way home, didn't get nearly as warm today as promised, and then it was storming. I took the easy way out and made another pasta carbonara meal to get me through this Saturday night.

Creamy Triple Lemon Pie / Chocolate Cream Pie

I have two desserts from last week to chronicle here.

Creamy Triple Lemon Pie
Recipe from Cuisine at Home, Issue 86 (April 2011), p. 36-37.

A concoction I prepped for dessert after one of last week's good dinners came out of Cuisine at Home, one of the cooking magazines I've got coming to the house. It's called Creamy Triple Lemon Pie, and it is all of those things and more. If I were to rename it to give you a sense of what it's close to tasting like, I'd tell you it's a "key lemon pie." The ingredients are in the same realm but this recipe requires quite a few more steps.

The crust is made of lemon cookies with lemon zest mixed in. The filling is, of course, lemony. But even the whipped cream (which is home-made) has lemon zest in it. There's your triple play of lemon.

So, while it's just a bit more involved than making key lime pie (at least making key lime pie the way I do), the effort paid off.

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Emeril's Chocolate Cream Pie
Recipe from The Food Network.

While the creamy triple lemon pie was a first-time creation for me, the other pie from my time at home last week was a definite repeat...and one I was happy to make. This sexy little number (above) is a slice of Emeril's chocolate cream pie, and it really does taste amazing. I had it on hand to serve as dessert following last Friday night's Bed & Breakfast evening for good friends Bassey and Cubby.

I was concentrating on my own good slice of pie and appreciating the nice things this happy couple was saying about the dessert, and it was slow to sink in exactly what Cubby meant when he said it was so creamy it was smearable. Then I looked up to see what they had done to one another.

All in good fun, of course. All in good fun. And glad they kept the pie smearing between themselves.

Two New Batches-O-Cookies

I like baking up some cookies, and I like sharing them. So the school districts that I work with will have batches of these goodies inflicted on them, whenever I happen to get some baking done prior to hitting the road for the week.

So the good people in Frederick County that I'm working with while I'm up in Winchester these last few days are being offered samples of Chunk Wild Cookies (recipe from King Arthur Flour) and Ghiradelli Ultimate Double Chocolate cookies.

Meal No. 254: Bacon & Onion Pizza

I wish I made pizza more, but there are all kinds of recipes that keep jumping in line ahead of it, so it is a random and merely occasional meal in the Roediger House. This past Monday afternoon, before I jetted out of town to spend my week working in Frederick County, VA, was the most recent "pie" offering. This is a bacon and red onion pizza on a semolina wheat crust. I tried out one of my new deep-dish pans, and I'm afraid it left much to be desired.

Meal No. 253: Kung Pao Chicken

The meals that I make in the wok, using the recipes from Hugh Carpenter and Teri Sandison's Wok Fast cookbook, are always really, really delicious. This past Sunday night was no exception.

This is a kung pao-inspired chicken stir-fry over rice, with a bit too much extra kick to it, but that made the cold beer all the more refreshing.

Meal No. 252: Cincinnati Chili and a Play

The local Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance just finished up a run of the play "Assassins," and a few of the usuals and regulars decided we'd make it the evening's entertainment this past Saturday night. The added incentive: one of those regulars wasn't coming to dinner because he happened to be one of the actors in that very play. Former WFU grad student and Roediger House regular Bradley Phillis took on the role of Leon Czolgosz; here is a production still taken by Daniel Alvarez and tagged to Bradley on Facebook:

The Saturday night meal, made more appropriate by the ridiculousness of the cold temperatures that swept into Winston-Salem and lingered tauntingly that week, was Bon Appétit's take on Cincinnati chili (which I made without the spaghetti it is normally served over). The recipe was in the February 2011 issue.

Bed & Breakfast Saturday Morning

People who see the house or who take note of my joy of working in the kitchen or who stay overnight will, from time to time, ask me why I don't go ahead and open a bed and breakfast. The house is pretty well-suited to this, even more so since I added bathrooms to service the bedrooms upstairs. I can tell you with tremendous certainty that running a bed and breakfast as a way to earn a living has absolutely no appeal to me. That's not the kind of business I want to get into.

But that doesn't mean I don't mind playing at it for the benefit of guests. Frankly, I like it if people who stay over get the feeling of hospitality associated with those accommodations.

So it was fun to offer that as an evening get-away followed by an easy Saturday morning for my friends Bassey and Cubby. They came for last night's dinner of pecan-crusted chicken and bourbon sauce. And when we all got up Saturday morning, the coffee was brewed and ready for them:

This was followed by biscuits and sausage gravy and fresh fruit. It was a good time. And it also counted as Meal No. 251.

Meal No. 250: Pecan-Crusted Chicken & Bourbon Sauce

One of the distinct pleasures of my work in education is getting to know remarkable and good people in the various school districts I consult with. One of those is Donna Whitley-Smith from Page County, VA, whom I've now known and worked with since 2005. She is a terrific, dedicated, and very hard-working assistant superintendent.

And Donna is also really good about sharing recipes. One of those she passed on to me recently was for pecan-crusted chicken with a bourbon sauce. So you can see what inspired my kitchen endeavors last night when I had a fine crew of folks coming for dinner.

Looks mighty good, doesn't it?

It always pleases me when there are notable doses of silence in a meal, even when it is a gathering of fun and funny people, while we smack our lips and savor the great tastes.

Meal No. 249: Indian Braised Lamb

Sticking, I suppose, with a bit of an international theme for the last couple of meals, last night I made Indian braised lamb. The shoulder lamb chops were on special at the Harris Teeter and I'd not made anything with them before. I found several interesting recipes when I did my web search, but the one I settled on came from the Williams-Sonoma website. I upped the spicy kick, which made it all the more pleasant to finish up the meal with the last of a creamy triple lemon pie.

Recipe from Williams-Sonoma.

Meal No. 248: Thai Shrimp Curry

I feel like I've already been eating way too much this week while I'm at home. And I probably have. So last night, for the Wednesday evening meal, I wanted something that would not seem quite as heavy.

Then came the April 2011 issue of Bon Appétit with an enticing photo on p. 4 that drew me in. And that led to the choice of tonight's kitchen concoction.

It's called "Thai Shrimp Curry," and it was mighty good over jasmine rice while I enjoyed a Bell's Best Brown Ale and another episode of the third season of Star Trek.

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Recipe from Bon Appétit, April 2011, p. 40.

Meal No. 247: Salisbury Steak & Mushroom Wine Sauce

Salisbury steak has a pretty ordinary sound and feel to it, conjuring up visits to the K & W Cafeteria or something unknowable on the school lunch line. But this recipe from Chef Michaelangelo (Mick) Rosacci of Tony's Market in Denver gives you good guidance on making this a meal worth making at home and serving to company.

Rather than the ordinariness of ground beef, I made this using half ground bison and half ground lamb. This gave it another whole dimension of flavoring. But by the time I'd added the delicious mushroom wine sauce, it left somewhat moot the gradations in flavor between regular Salisbury steak and this hyped up/specialty meat version. That's how compelling the sauce was.

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Recipe from MoreThanGourmet.com.