Meal No. 3442: National Cheeseburger Day

The Monday main meal occurred early in the day, both to get me away from snacking temptations and also because I had a pretty enticing dessert already made and chilling in the fridge. And since the day was dedicated as National Cheeseburger Day, I could only abide by that dictate, even though burgers were so recently on the menu. Mostly cooked via sous vide, since I’d prepped, pattied, and vacuum-sealed them to store away in the freezer, these were finished in the skillet where the requisite cheese was piled on. A heap of kettle chips was nice but even better was the homemade special sauce that dripped and oozed with each hungered bite.

While the cheeseburgers and chips were more than enough food for the day, I had already made dessert for that evening and it was chilling in the fridge. It was a return to the marvelous Atlantic Beach pie, a seafood restaurant speciality from the North Carolina coast, our Tar Heel lemon version of the better known key lime pie. Ours can be made either with a saltine cracker crust or, as I prefer, crushed Ritz crush. As the article proclaimed it (linked below), it's pretty phenomenal.

The lovely weather made for excellent skink pursuits by the house pooch Sumner. In the photo above, you'll find the skink all the way down at the lower left corner, but I also caught Sumner and the skink in a moment of greater closeness than the skink might have wished:

---

"One Phenomenal Pie: Atlantic Beach Pie," from Chef Bill Smith. Published in Our State Magazine, May 2014. Also featured in "Found Recipes" on All Things Considered from National Public Radio, broadcast April 13, 2013.

Meal No. 3441: Croque-Inspired Madame Cristo

Last Sunday was National Monte Cristo day but I cannot justify dropping a cheesed sandwich into a big pot of oil to fry, no matter how good I found that to be the one time I actually did it. Instead, I took liberties with the Madame Cristo grilled ham and cheese recipe from Chef John of FoodWishes.com, which has now made quite a few appearances here since I discovered it just under a year ago. Although I had to run out and grab some deli meat (turkey seems to be a suitable partner to the ham), I happily utilized slices of bread from the giant round challah loaf I'd made the day before. These sandwiches were something else, in all the right ways.

---

Based on "Madame Cristo—Grilled Ham and Cheese," from Chef John Mitzewich of FoodWishes.com and AllRecipes.com. [Updated 03 July 2018]

Round Challah for Rosh Hashanah

Ten years ago, it was a blessing of a Jewish New Year to enjoy a visit from my dear friend Sheryl, who was a fellow PhD student with me at the University of Virginia in the late 1990s. While this is not an observant household, the occasion was well-suited to my hopes of being a proper host for that all-too-rare company from California, with the challah culinary centerpiece taking a lovely braided round form, as befits the holiday. Now has passed a decade, much too quickly, and while Sheryl was not able to make it back last weekend, I still marked the occasion with a fresh loaf of braided round challah.

Around mid-day, I got going with the slow build of the yeasted dough, which achieved marvelous rise in two separate one-hour increments, as noted above. Then I divided it up and created long ropes of dough ready for braiding together, beginning with this pattern:

Then, I braided each of the extended portions of this great X:

Those braided extensions were then rolled under, placed into a springform pan, and given an initial egg wash:

Oh, it baked up to be rather gorgeous...and proved to be tasty enough that a sizable hunk was all that I needed for supper. Let's call it a great challah day.

---

Challah Recipe from Tori Avey, The Shiksa in the Kitchen [Updated 08 May 2023], which I first discovered thanks to the Bon Appétit website. [Published 04 September 2013]

Guidance for braiding the challah from "How to Braid Round Challah - Quick and Easy," from CookKosher.com on YouTube.

Meal No. 3440: Breakfast Bread Pudding

Last Friday night's gathering for three featured breakfast for dinner, in the tasty form of savory breakfast bread pudding. I made it way too rich, though, by using brioche loaf instead of a regular pain de mie or sandwich bread...but I still ate my entire oversized slice. If I'm looking at grits as an option for a meal, I'm likely to make grits part of the meal, and that was also an inescapable truth of that weekend-starting grubfest.

Dessert also seemed required but I opted for something that would at least feel lighter and still be special: lemon pudding cake. I suppose I let it cook just past the correct baking time but it was still pretty wildly incredible.

---

"Savory Bread Pudding," by Charlotte Rutledge of King Arthur Baking. [recipe clipping]

Guidance for making the creamy grits: Luquire Family Stone Ground Grits, milled in Greenwood, SC.

"Lemon Pudding Cake," from Julia Moskin of NYT Cooking. Featured in "Straight from the Home Coop" from 04 April 2012 (original link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/dining/hatching-your-own-batch-of-eggs.html). Recipe was adapted from The Farm, by Ian Knauer. [Accessed online 03 July 2016]

Meal No. 3439: Cheeseburgers!

Last Thursday night, with two homemade hamburger buns remaining, I pulled prepped frozen burger patties from the freezer, dropped them into the sous vide, and finished them in a hot skillet and added cheese. In the meantime, I put together a batch of beef and cheddar melts sauce as a step up from the typical "special sauce." With some kettle chips on the side, it was mighty nice to find a dinner plate with a cheeseburger on it, after too long an absence.

---

"Beef & Cheddar Melts Sauce," a Roediger House creation.

Classic Fudge-Frosted Yellow Cake and Homemade Frosty Ice Cream

Last Tuesday was National Chocolate Milkshake Day and also a gathering of six for dinner. The manageable approach was to make a milkshake ice cream on Monday night—a copycat version of Wendy's chocolate Frosty—followed by baking a cake on Tuesday morning. As shown in the picture at the top, I'm certainly not a food stylist but I don't think the point is the picture! The ice cream was churned in the big freezer chest, with the rock salt and huge bag of ice from the corner market:

And it could hardly be a birthday celebration without that cake. I went with the King Arthur single-layer yellow cake with the American classic goopy fudge frosting. While I deviated slightly from the recipe and got a bit of a scare with the icing, a good dosing of my homemade chocolate sauce brought it into shiny pourable goodness for a very tasteful final rendering:

Ice cream and cake together: now there's a marriage made in belly heaven.

---

"Classic Yellow Cake with Fudge Frosting," from PJ Hamel of King Arthur Flour. See also PJ's blog post of the same name [Published 26 December 2011]

The recipe for a copycat Wendy's Chocolate Frosty was originally discovered in a discussion thread on the Southern Living blogs, posted by user Pat (pbj1118). Most recipes on the web are not an exact match, although I'm sure they're still good!

Flavor boosted with homemade chocolate syrup, from a batch based on "Hershey's Chocolate Syrup," from Stephanie Manley of CopyKat.com. [Published 25 August 2020 / Updated 15 September 2021]

Meal No. 3438: Cuban Mojo Pork Roast

Last Tuesday night was an occasion for gathering the full crew together at the Roediger House, in a birthday celebration, and it therefore required something feast-worthy. But that doesn't necessarily mean formal and fancy. The menu relied on a generally well-received Cuban-inspired slow-cooked pulled pork, braised in a citrusy liquid with corresponding spices and flavorings. On homemade buns slathered with a cilantro lime sauce, with Mexican slaw on top or on the side, it was a most satisfying dinner as part of a larger delightful evening.

---

"Slow Cooker Cuban Lechón Asado," from Cory Fernandez of TheKitchn.com. [Published 10 December 2022]

"Cilantro Lime Sauce," from Alexa Blay of Key to My Lime. [Published 04 September 2019]

"Beautiful Burger Buns," from Ellen "Moomie" Dorsey of King Arthur Baking. See also the accompanying blog post, "Burger Buns with a Beautiful Backstory," by PJ Hamel. [Published 28 June 2021]

Spiced-up Coleslaw adapted from "Mexican Coleslaw," from Christin Mahrlig of SpicySouthernKitchen.com. [Published 08 August 2017]

"Taco Seasoning I," from Bill Echols on AllRecipes.com.

Meal No. 3437: Creamy Swiss Baked Chicken Breasts

Well over four years have passed since I brought out a much-loved and once popular recipe that's been in my collection since 1997: creamy Swiss baked chicken breasts. That was last rainy Sunday evening's supper spread, along with roasted broccoli florets, and it was delicious.

Once the rain had mostly cleared out, I hit these city streets for my daily stroll, and chanced to cross the Church Street bridge over Salem Parkway at an opportune moment as dusk settled over us.

---

"Easy Creamy Swiss Baked Chicken Breasts," a recipe shared with me by Cindy Coulson in 1997. A matching version of the recipe can be found on Cooks.com.

Meal No. 3436: Salmon Croquettes with Garlic-Chili-Lime Aïoli

After enjoying the heck out of some roasted salmon Thursday a week ago, I put away the extra I'd cooked in order to then make some wonderful salmon croquettes. These tasty patties are best accompanied by a simple but amazing aïoli, from a recipe passed on by dear friends in New Jersey quite some years ago. I still had broccoli in the fridge so more roasted florets were ideal to serve as the vegetable. That's what filled the bellies and put smiles on the faces at the Roediger House last Saturday evening.

---

Adapted from "Salmon Burgers" (p. 396) and "Herb Sauce" (p. 395), from Denise Austin, Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, Rodale Books (2003).

"Chili-Lime Aïoli," from David Wald of Princeton, NJ, May 2009.

Meal No. 3435: Indian Butter Chicken

Blame the cauliflower head that I'd bought on sale, if you must, but as we approached the end of last week, I knew it was time to cut out the florets, toss them in olive oil, spice them well, and roast them in a good hot oven...just so they'd be the perfect tag-along for a second go at Instant Pot Indian Butter Chicken. This was one of those Instant Pot community buzzed-about recipes that everyone circled around when the initial popularity of multi-cookers exploded onto kitchens everywhere. And my one previous experience of this butter chicken recipe left me happy enough, and this latest version proved quite tasty as well.

While September started with two or three phenomenally gorgeous days, we quickly settled into quite a little heatwave, temps up into the mid-90s, and dry as a bone. I actually scheduled the irrigation system to run in the front and back yards, which I've had to do very little of for most of the summer.

---

"Pressure Cooker Indian Butter Chicken," from Jay's Sweet -N- Sour Life.

Meal No. 3434: Roasted Spiced Salmon and Broccoli

The price of salmon has proved discouraging for quite a while now, so when this week's specials from Harris Teeter came out with a per-pound price of $7.99, I was there for it. Last Thursday, it was awesome to once more look down at my dinner plate and to see perfectly roasted spiced salmon there for the first time since early July. Piled high beside it was the roasted broccoli florets that I never can get quite enough of. The dual benefit—a healthy meal choice and a palate-satisfying selection—brings me back to this menu whenever I can pull it off.

You'll understand that I was pretty hyped to grab another slab of salmon on a subsequent grocery run, to roast and serve up on Monday night.

Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream

The first Wednesday of September also happened to be National Coffee Ice Cream Day, and I had the perfect recipe to go along with that: Vietnamese coffee ice cream, now a longtime favorite of the Roediger House ever since I got David Lebovitz's ice cream book some years ago. I made the base last Monday, and churned it Tuesday evening, and it was well set-up by the time the dessert hour arrived that Wednesday night. Oh, I'm glad there was enough extra to go into a to-go container to send down to the neighbors!

---

"Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream," by David Lebovitz. In The Perfect Scoop. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2007), p. 35.

Meal No. 3433: National Cheese Pizza Day

Last Tuesday was National Cheese Pizza Day, and we celebrated at the Roediger House with yet another new pizza crust recipe, plus a homemade thrown-together quick tomato sauce (that was surprisingly delicious so I hate I didn't write down what I did!). When it was all baked up, that cracker-thin crust held up well to the mix of cheeses I added: grated parmesan, sharp cheddar, mozzarella, and even provolone. 'Twas more than enough to eat three pieces.

The dough is enough for two pizzas, so let's be clear about what that implied for the next evening's dinner:

'Twas delicious all over again, and perhaps even better!

---

"Ultra-Thin Pizza Crust" (recipe) and "This Pizza Crust Is Ultra-Thin" (blog post, published 16 June 2014), from MaryJane Robbins of King Arthur Baking.

Meal No. 3432: Bacon and Swiss Quiche for a Crowd

The Sunday night of Labor Day weekend was perfect for bringing together the crew of regulars, gathering first around the dinner table and then retreating to the third floor mancave for a stretch of delightful camaraderie. The menu that evening was shaped by the dessert decision (more about that in a moment), where I found myself with two pie crusts, and quiche for supper seemed a tasty option to pursue with that extra one. Bacon, caramelized onion, and Swiss and Gruyère, in a silky eggy custard with additional flavor-enhancing ingredients, baked up beautifully in that crust to give us quite the marvelous quiche. It was a way to shake things up a bit with an unexpected main dish, gilded by the guilty pleasure of having breakfast for dinner. On the side was the option of a pile of spiced roasted potatoes and a handful of plump and juicy seedless grapes.

The dessert I leaned towards for that night was lemon meringue pie, which I'd made somewhat recently and decided I could really stand to have a bit more of. There are lighter desserts than this, but there are also heavier ones, so this seemed a good middle option. I'm regularly inclined to feel like the lemon could have been punched up more but the diners took a shining to it nonetheless.

---

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]

"Lemon Meringue Pie," based on a classic and common recipe.

Meal No. 3431: Rigatoni alla Vodka

Perhaps how good it was back in July made it easy to swing back around relatively soon to pasta with a vodka sauce. The Saturday of Labor Day Weekend presented the ideal opportunity, while in Winston-Salem we enjoyed a third straight day of picture perfect weather. It was a mix of inside and outside time as the day unfolded, an intense dose of yard work, a good 4-mile downtown stroll, and then enjoying sitting and watching and listening to the busy-ness of the neighborhood in eveningtime, when downtown was alive with the concert on Fourth Street and a game at the Winston-Salem Dash's ballpark nearby.

---

Based on "Penne alla Vodka," from Daniel Gritzer, Senior Culinary Director of SeriousEats.com. [Updated 17 March 2023]

Carolyn's Banana Bread

The final day of August was an imitation of a gorgeous September day, almost in anticipation of the turning of the calendar month. But the fully clear blue skies and wonderful breezes, along with low humidity and very comfortable temps, were likely the handiwork of the remnants of Hurricane Idalia, which slammed Florida's big bend region the day before and was skirting the coast as our morning proceeded. While I'm certainly glad not to have been in this system's path, its push of cloud cover as it advanced did keep us from catching sight of the previous evening's August Blue Super Moon.

For the mid-day snack and then again for dinner, it was a pair of loaves of superior banana bread, topped with walnut pieces, eagerly consumed especially because it was so on target. I'd have made the banana bread the day before, and had in fact gone so far as to whip the softened butter and add in the sugars and vanilla...and then a never-before-experienced event occurred: the egg I cracked into the batter was utterly and thoroughly rotten. It all had to be tossed and I had to recover from the sight and smell of it.

The wonderful pleasantness of the night likely had a lot to do with Sumner's resistance to come inside as bedtime approached.

---

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

Meal No. 3430: Chicken Fried Rice

Cooler and still very little sun on the penultimate day of August, I spent too much of that Wednesday afternoon with a bit of gnawing hunger, and into my head popped the idea of a nice dish of chicken fried rice. It's been five years since I last made it, so we can say it was quite overdue. And it was pretty delightful, really, full of great flavor and more than satisfying. I had to scoop up a few more forkfuls from the wok after dinner and before clean-up because I could just not get enough of it!

---

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]

Meal No. 3429: Liège Waffles

My goodness, was it already time for waffles so soon after I'd just made them? Why yes it was, or at least that was the operative answer on the final Tuesday evening of August. This time, though, it occurred to me that I ought to try out those Swedish pearl sugar-infused yeasted Belgian waffles known as Liège waffles, which I'd made once before just over 15 months (and over 400 meals!) ago. With time to rise in a warm spot, this enriched dough creates quite the confection, tasty in the eating but then heavy in the belly!

---

"Liège Waffles," from Nicole Rufus of TheKitchn.com. [Published 10 November 2021]

Red Velvet Cheesecake

After botching one pie on the final weekend of August, I was left with a whole extra chocolate/vanilla cookie crust, formed and baked in a regular pie dish. I dove into my cheesecakes recipe notebook, settling on a red velvet version that I could pare down by one-third to fit the available space. (The filling was just the right amount, in fact!) I baked it to what seemed like the right degree of doneness on that Sunday afternoon; then, on Monday, I whipped up the sweetened cream cheese topping so that it could serve as dessert on August's final Monday evening.

While I definitely dig red velvet creations, and have a wonderfully varied track record of them (ice cream, layer cake, sheet cake, pound cake, cinnamon rolls, cookies, pots de crème, and frosted sugar cookies), this was just the second time I've made a red velvet cheesecake...and first time with this specific recipe.

---

"Red Velvet Cheesecake," by Karen Dively (Chapin, South Carolina). Published online by Taste of Home. [Updated 28 July 2023]

Meal No. 3428: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

When dinnertime rolled around on the final Monday evening of August, I'd left myself only about an hour to pull it together but that helped me to tighten up the decision-making. Since it's been about five months since the house favorite of chicken with coronation sauce was made, that helped me fall into action with purpose and determination. Served over fresh-steamed rice, and still too large a portion, it was so good yet again.

---

"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.

Chocolate Pudding Pie

If I had followed the recipe properly, this post would be describing the glorious chocolate cream pie recipe from Emeril Lagasse's time at the Food Network. Alas, I overlooked a crucial step and left out the folding of sweetened whipped cream, so instead we basically enjoyed a deeply-chocolatey pudding pie in a chocolate and vanilla cookie crust. Once I realized I'd made an error that could not be rectified, a threw up my hands and left it be, in high hopes we'd still think it was a decent pie. As the dessert Saturday night a week ago, it was reasonable enough. The lingering disappointment I still felt was surely due to entrenched memories of the better result when the whipped cream is folded in, and a light airy sweet chocolate cream pie sits enticingly on the dessert fork.

---

A mistake-laden bastardization of "Emeril's Chocolate Cream Pie," by Emeril Lagasse (2007). Featured on The FoodNetwork.com website.

Meal No. 3427: Bacon Egg & Cheese Sandwiches

With bacon too much on my mind on the final Saturday of August, I felt sure the dinner plan would have to somehow feature it when there were three of us at the table. Once I'd gotten two packages fried up in the electric skillet, the plan that then took shape was to serve bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches on brioche buns. The simple step of whipping up eggs with seasonings, a bit of heavy cream, and some swiss and Gruyère cheese, to spread thinly in a baking sheet suitable for shaped cutting (once baked!) to adorn the piled goodness, helped all of this come together quite easily. Two sandwiches on our plates might have been too much, but the compensation could reside in whether they were also too good.

---

"Baked Scrambled Eggs," from Heather Johnson of TheFoodHussy.com. [Published 09 September 2019]

Meal No. 3426: Lamb and Mushroom Meat Loaf

A dish that was once perhaps too popular and much loved here has been brought back after a two-and-a-half year hiatus: lamb and mushroom meat loaf, based on a recipe from the very popular Tupelo Honey Cafe in Asheville. [Interestingly, we have just passed the 10th anniversary of the first time I made the THC lamb meat loaf!] Thursday a week ago was the most recent occasion, because dear friends Amy and Gern were over for supper and I do believe this is one of the dishes they are fond of. To me, the natural and best-suited accompaniment is also from Tupelo Honey Cafe: smashed sweet potatoes. And I always am happy to have some roasted broccoli florets. The extra touch on the menu, though, was a pan of maple buttermilk dinner rolls which were pillowy soft and tasty as heck.

---

"Lamb and Multi-Mushroom Meatloaf" (p. 150) and "Smashed Sweet Potatoes" (p. 128), in Tupelo Honey Cafe: Spirited Recipes from Asheville's New South Kitchen, by Elizabeth Sims with Chef Brian Sonoskus. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing (2011).

Maple Buttermilk Bread based on "Soft and Sweet Buttermilk Honey Bread," by Beth Kirby of The Local Milk blog. [Published 09 April 2014]

Better Than Grandma's Buttermilk Chess Pie

Events combine and I act regularly in response to that alchemy. In my fridge Wednesday of last week was a lovingly hand-crafted all-butter pie crust, waiting to be rolled out and shaped to a deep dish; also sat buttermilk nearing the end of its shelf-life. Once Google worked its search metrics and algorithms, I found myself landing on a much-utilized and frequently-consulted website: TheKitchn.com. And there I found a worthy new recipe to try out to handle this mixed set of immediate demands, leading to a buttermilk chess pie for that night's dessert. It was tall and creamy, and that crust was a suitable container for this not-too-sweet goodness. The last appearance of a straight-up buttermilk version of chess pie here, by the way, was the very beginning of the pandemic shutdown in March 2020.

---

"How To Make Better-than-Grandma’s Buttermilk Chess Pie," by Meghan Splawn of TheKitchn.com. [Updated 20 July 2023]

"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]