Meal No. 187: Tuna & Ginger Shiitake Sauce

After a two-week hiatus (travels have been pretty intense lately), I found my way back to the kitchen Friday night and turned to one of the great stand-by favorites: seared tuna steaks with ginger-soy-shiitake sauce. On the side, mashed potatoes (covered in that same delicious sauce) and fordhook lima beans. To wash it down, a Viru followed by a Newcastle. All that, and then I watched the entire third season of Torchwood.

---

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

Still Down a Bathroom

New Furniture in the North Parlour

I don't suppose it does any good to talk about clearing out and cleaning up the North Parlour (see yesterday's blog post) and not give you an idea of what went in there.

After a lot of back-and-forth with the furniture delivery folks, trying to find a date that put me in town to receive the new sofa and loveseat, if finally worked out for Saturday, October 30...just in time for the annual Roediger House Halloween Party. So here's what the North Parlour looks like now:




By the way, here's a picture of the North Parlour back in November 2005:

Resurrecting the North Parlour

During the renovation and addition project from 2008 to 2009, it ended up being easiest to move a bunch of random furniture into the north parlour and close it off. After all, with the demolition of the kitchen and the creation of a temporary kitchen in the dining room, it meant there was plenty of good-sized furniture that simply had to go somewhere.

And true to form, I left it that way much longer than was necessary. But I also had it in my mind that the north parlour needed some new furniture to make sitting and visiting more comfortable than what I had in there. Fortunately, there was a good find at a reasonable price on a Sunday excursion to Boyles' Furniture back on Labor Day weekend. So it was time to get the north parlour ready again.




Now, it's the south parlour that's a repository of furniture that needs repair or that doesn't currently have a place to be.

Leaves: Round No. 2

When I got home from my week working in Virginia last Friday night, the City crews were working into the dark of the evening vacuuming up the two big piles of leaves I managed to gather up during a long day of work near the end of November. Here are the piles on the street after I'd finished my raking and leaf-blowing. I probably could have gone over the yard another time but I may just mow it instead and let them mulch down and feed next year's growth.

Tell Me About the Telephoto

More recent fun with the telephoto lens:

Small Dusting of Snow

When I got home late Sunday night from an overnight trip to Oklahoma, I found that Winston-Salem had gotten just a bit more snow. These are cold temps this December, and I guess this is the fate of any precipitation that decides to fall.

Harvest Moon

I find that I've got a lot of catching up to do when it comes to blog posts and pictures that I've taken. These two are actually from mid-September but I just love the way they capture the beauty of that night's moon, as limiting as a photographic representation is.



I took these photos standing on the upstairs porch/balcony, looking up through the rotting tree in the front yard.

Hey, Hey, Blue Jay

A few weeks back, I took some time on a lovely afternoon to sit outside with my camera and its telephoto attachment. Fortunately, it was a day when one of the blue jays was hanging around, and I managed to get at least a couple of shots of this one that I sort of liked.



I still need to keep practicing and work on my technique. It helped to get my tripod out; it is not good to have any shake at all when using the longer lens.

Nuts About a Squirrel

It's winter, and that means that there's been a lot of squirrel activity regarding nuts: tracking them down, running around with them, burying them in various locations.


I was reading in my old man chair in the kitchen area, by the fireplace, when this one caught my eye. Not a great shot because it was through the window and screen.


But I went on outside with my new camera and its telephoto lens, and this is a shot of the reclining rascal in one of the trash trees right behind the house.

Strangers in the House Freezer

Let me just assure you that this is a very unusual site in the Roediger House, so far as I'm concerned. Since I love whipping stuff up, and I've also got some great recipes for ice cream to play with, it grieves me to go with store-bought.

However, this Boston Cream Pie version of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream was strongly recommended to me, and for excellent reasons. It was pretty darned good stuff. I thought I'd be able to stretch it out over several days.

But no such luck.

I managed to eat the whole pint within two or three days.

2010 Jaycees Christmas Parade

The Christmas Parade was this past Saturday evening, and the unexpected extra amount of snow we got made it that much more Christmas-y.


Although it's another reason for Spring Street to be closed off in front of the house, I do not mind it. Ever since I moved in back in 2003, I've enjoyed watching the staging of the floats. It used to be that the mayor was always getting situated in his convertible in front of the house, but that's not his spot anymore. But there were still floats out front and also visible over on Fourth Street when I look out from the kitchen bay windows.




And the Fox talk radio van clearly had no idea whose house he'd parked in front of. I am not a fan.

Weekend Snow in Winston-Salem

Meal No. 186: Sunday Roast Beef Feast

By special request, this evening was a true Sunday roast beef meal, although instead of the noontime gathering of family it was a 10 pm convergence of good friends. I think I could get used to a meal this late at night, if only because it made preparation seem so much easier and casual. I even decided to make yeast rolls, although I got such a head-start on them they ended up collapsing on themselves because I let them rise too long.

Anyway, here's a shot of the beef roast, a top round that was on special at the Harris Teeter. It's not my favorite cut of meat, and I found it tough. And of course I managed to overcook it.



I went ahead and prepped a demi-glace marsala wine sauce to go with it.



Since there were to be five in attendance for the meal, I reached for the bulk bag of baby lima beans, and they were a lovely shade of green when I dumped them out into the pan:



The other side dish was a spot-on recipe for potatoes au gratin in the slow cooker, that I've done once before.



While I usually enjoy beer with most of the meals I make here at the house, this evening called for the substantive shiraz pictured alongside.

Meal No. 185: Lamb Chops & Bok Choy

Two friends were invited to this evening's dinner, and it's my intention to show them that they made a grave mistake and missed out on something quite good by not being able to come. Not sure these pics will elevate to the level of "food porn," as was a suggestion not so long ago, but this meal was freakin' awesome.

What we have here is lamb loin chops, marinated in a mix of garlic, white wine, lemon, cayenne pepper, and fennel and then pan-seared on the cooktop.


One of the side dishes was bok choy, and this is the first time I've ever bought and prepared it. It was pan-seared also, and then a ginger-soy-garlic sauce was reduced and the boy choy was added back into it. I overcooked 'em, but these bok choy stalks were still delicious.


By the time the dinner was plated, at nearly 10 pm tonight, I had added to it a side of stuffing and a bright and delightful pan sauce using some of the marinade and also adding in some additional spice and flavor. It retained the heat of the cayenne pepper and also picked up the lemon zest and juice that had been added.


The lamb chops rested on a bed of lemon-splashed fennel bulb, sliced thin and functioning almost like a small salad underneath.

It felt like a lot of work this evening, but what an incredible result.

• Wine-Marinated Lamb Chops with Fennel Salad: clipping either from Gourmet or Bon Appetit (personal recipe collection)
• Sesame-Soy-Glazed Bok Choy: Cook's Illustrated, May 2001.

Meal No. 184: Pecan-Crusted Chicken Breasts

Tonight's meal (after a few days away at a conference) was another new recipe for me to try out: pecan-crusted chicken breasts. This came from Virginia Willis, author of Bon Appétit Ya'll and was published in the Winston-Salem Journal back in April 2010. It was actually fairly straight-forward to put together but the results made me think I'd whipped up something fancy.


It did remind me just a bit of a pecan crusted chicken dish I used to get at a short-lived New Orleans-inspired restaurant on Glenwood Avenue south in Raleigh, walking distance from my old apartment there when I was teaching in Wake County. With a stupidly large baked potato and some fordhook lima beans, along with a garlic butter sauce, it was A-OK with me.

Williamsburg Outlet Shopping

So, my only occupation this week in Williamsburg, VA, isn't limited to the Virginia Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development annual conference, although the presentation this afternoon is important to me. I did manage to scoot to the other side of town where the Premium Outlet Center is and yes, I did find my way to some kitchen places. Here's a sampling of what I found it necessary to bring home (along with a buffet caddy tray that I stumbled across at Sam's Club after getting back to Winston-Salem):

A Few Less Bricks in the Wall

Those darned trash trees on the back wall of the property!

I guess this is going to be the pattern, because the longer I leave them there and let the problem continue unaddressed, there will be further deterioration of the brick wall along the back of the property. Here's a shot of the results of more tumbling down of bricks:


It is from the same spot pictured in the background of this blog post and its accompanying picture; you can see that some of the bricks were already dislodged by the mass of roots growing through the wall.

Meal No. 183: Open-Faced Tacos

Once again, I was in the position of needing a quick and easy meal to whip up, since I'm driving this evening to Williamsburg, VA. This week it's the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development conference, and I've got a team of folks who will be joining me for a presentation.

Tonight: open-faced tacos on flour tortillas that have been griddled to melt four cheeses on them. Typical burger meat with taco seasoning, and lettuce and tomato to top it off.

And I love some Pepsi Throwback to wash it down.

Meal No. 182: Creamy Feta Chicken over Pasta

This may qualify as the first meal I ever just made up. It was my hope to strive for recreating a delicious dish called MoJack City that I used to enjoy at the old Raleigh Rathskeller on Hillsborough Street, an establishment that it depresses me to know has long since closed.

And while the results were tasty, they were not what I had hoped for. Although I do think it's safe to suggest that this might be just the kind of dish one might get at Carraba's or Macaroni Grill, two places that I find putrid.

Meal No. 181: Turkey Drumsticks

As if Thursday's Thanksgiving meal wasn't enough, I managed to fall into line with hundreds of thousands of other bargain shoppers and take advantage of cheap prices on turkey drumsticks. So last night's meal was a miniature recreation of the Thanksgiving feast with turkey drumsticks in wine and broth with onions, mushrooms, garlic, and herbs; a thrown-together sweet potato casserole; a small batch of stuffing; and some green beans. With Marquis Phillips 2008 shiraz alongside, this was some good eating.

Meal No. 180: Peanut Butter Bacon Burgers

After all that cooking for Thanksgiving, and the accompanying clean-up, you'd think I would have had enough of involved and intensive meal preparation for a day or so. In fact, when I got started on the meal earlier this evening (well, last night), I wasn't even really finished cleaning up from Thursday's feasting and company.

But a recent trip to New Orleans cemented my resolve to attempt a re-creation of one of the Quarter's new iconic menu items: the peanut butter bacon burger from Yo Mama's Bar and Grill on St. Peter [Update: Yo Mama's closed in early 2016].

It started with making my own peanut butter:





Then, another new thing for me: grinding my own hamburger, using a mix of boneless beef short ribs and sirloin tip:



Then, you divide the ground meat into four rough piles and nudge it all together gently (rather than pat and mash and roll and squeeze):



Then I cooked 'em up along with some bacon, toasted the buns in butter in the skillet, and smeared on the special sauce I'd made earlier...




The final result: delicious.



That was Meal No. 180 in the new kitchen. [Recipe and Instructions from Cook's Illustrated, No. 93 (July/August 2008), p. 10.]