what's for dinner?

Roasted chicken quarters. Tromboncino rounds gently boiled to just crisp tender, drained then coated with dilled butter. And sour kraut.

someone gave us some really nice smallish ocean fish, about the length of my hand, they were cleaned but otherwise left whole, I took off the heads (into the comfrey tea with ye! the plants will have their dinner in two weeks....) and coated them lightly with plain flour, salt and pepper (nothing to make it stick, just what stuck on its own) and pan fried on top of scallions, turn and add a shot of sake, cover for a few minutes and crisp up, they were perfect.
with that some white rice and the slew of sides. The rest of the family will travel this weekend, and I'll just eat leftovers, so I made plenty with the ripe veggies. I plan to make jam, so I'll not be wanting to cook otherwise.

There were perfectly ripe tomatoes, so I made fresh tomato kimchi (plenty of recipes online, it's not a ferment, just a quick pickle), topped with cilantro and scallions from the garden.
Yamitsuki cabbage (another quick pickle. there are a lot of recipes online, if you like sesame and garlic and want to eat more cabbage-- and who doesn't want to eat more cabbage??-- you really should try it. it's one of these recipes people come to my house and rave about, and it takes zero effort)
the first long beans were ripe this week, so i cooked them sichuan style in a hot wok with garlic and mushrooms. the current lot are purple [green ones are on the way in a few weeks], but unlike purple string beans, they do not turn green when cooked, i had forgotten!
and some lactofermented chayote i had in the fridge hanging around, with chili crisp on top.

We had another tray bake with potato, purple and orange sweet potato, carrots, beetroot and chicken portions marinated in crushed new season garlic, lots of ground black pepper, lemon juice, olive oil and salt.

Served with homegrown asparagus.

I decided to make a pasta dish with homemade alfredo sauce for a quick dinner earlier this week and it really threw together quickly. I boiled up some fettuccini noodles and made some garlic bread to have on the side. It made enough for my wife and I plus leftovers.

I'm generally more of a fan of using chicken thigh meat for the recipe but I had a thawed chicken breast so it worked well in a pinch. Usually I cut up meat with a knife but I tried out kitchen shears this time and really liked the experience. I might have to sharpen mine up a touch but they still performed well.

Carla Burke wrote:Well, it's John's night, it's 4:25, and the chicken John planned on is still half frozen. I'm not sure what he's going to do, now.

Have tried the trick of setting your frozen food on a cast iron griddle or pot - it defrosts everything really quickly.


Admittedly not tried it with a whole chicken, only portions.

If I forget to take my lunch out of the freezer the night before, I place the frozen container of food inside a casserole pot as soon as I wake up, take to work and leave on the bench in the office.

By lunchtime it’s totally defrosted.

Great to, Megan! Thank you!!

The boys went to the Festa das Varas do Fumeiro (festival of poles of smokes) yesterday, and came home with this, which is now cooking...



I think it's a butelo which is made "by stuffing a pig’s stomach with rib bones, vertebrae cartilage, and rump meat"

That plushy raven of mine is attempting to claim it on the grounds that the welsh word for raven is cig fran, which means meat crow, which means it must be for him. It's not that he doesn't understand logic, it's just that he tends to twist it a little and then apply it to his own ends...

The festival seems to involve people walking around with sticks holding smoked meats which are auctioned off by the stick.



Will post an update photo later. I think we're having potatoes and green beans with it, and my son is coming over to share the feast. Seeing as he bought the thing. He's a good lad!

Well that turned out to be just about the tastiest lunch I've ever had in my life



Served with green beans and potatoes on an old Portuguese plate.  With a dollop or two of butter and a bit of parsley.



No bone, which is great, but a good selection of smoked meat, belly draught, pig's ear, fatty cuts of meat, all in a pig's stomach!

Burra Maluca wrote:The boys went to the Festa das Varas do Fumeiro (festival of poles of smokes) yesterday, and came home with this, which is now cooking...

It looks deliciously rich.  How did you cook it? Boiled, steamed/baked?

Megan Palmer wrote:It looks deliciously rich.  How did you cook it? Boiled, steamed/baked?

Ah, this is where I'm afraid I'm going to lose a bit of my permie-street-cred because I followed the instructions that my son was given as closely as possible, which involved tying it up in the plastic bag it came in and boiling it for three hours. The thing was expensive at €15 a kilo, which is way out of our usual price range, and I didn't want to find out the hard way that it would be ruined or fall apart and turn into soup if I didn't follow instructions so I bit the bullet and did as I was told for once in my life. It was too big to fit in my small slow-cooker so I used my ginormous one and gave it four hours, just to be on the safe side. My son came over half an hour before lunch time and the boys cooked up the potatoes and green beans together while I just left them to it, except to take photos.

A load of water had managed to work its way into the tied bag, which we saved and I used to cook up a batch of black eyed peas the next day. I have a feeling that if I'd just boiled it in water without the bag, a load more of the flavour would have escaped into the water. And without any kind of wrapping, I thing the whole thing might have burst. The slow cooker was the only viable option for a boil that long as the rocket mass heater is only run in the afternoons and it doesn't usually run for three hours. Three hours on the gas stove seems excessive to me.

If I were to try it again, I would probably plan it more in advance so that we would use the rocket mass heater, tie the thing up in a piece of cloth to hold it together, and use a pan that was better suited to the size and shape so that there wasn't quite so much water to wash the flavour away into.

The boys had been working on a renovation job in that village. The back streets are so narrow that the truck doesn't reach the house so deliveries end up being carried or barrowed to the job site. On festival day, loads of the houses open up little stalls outside their front door and this butelo was purchased direct from the couple who made it from a table set up outside the house. The man gave my son very strict instructions on how to cook it and my general policy is to follow instructions the first time I cook something new. I have a feeling that my son will end up knocking on their door one day in the relatively near future to tell them how awesome it was and do they have another one. He likes his food, and both the boys like to cook. I just get to wash the dishes up later.

My son cut the left-overs in half, took one half home with him and left the rest for us. I had my bit cold the next day - it sliced well as it had set into one big lump. Austin fried his bit up and he said that was delicious too. Not sure what my son did with his but I bet it's all gone by now.

I did find this link about the spanish version and how to cook it - botillo with potatoes and turnip greens

And also this spanish youtube video where she wraps it in cloth. I didn't find this until after I'd cooked mine though...

It stopped raining just about long enough for me to go out and harvest a few fartichokes out of the GAMCOD bed yesterday.



And yes I know we're supposed to be trying to call them sunroots, but it was Austin's mum who introduced me to them over forty years ago and they always called them fartichokes so I can't see us ever referring to them as anything else.

I cleaned them, cut them into chunks and put them in the slow cooker with diluted bone broth and dry white beans and cooked them up all morning. Then while Austin was playing with the soup and blending some of it to make it thick but saving chunks to keep it chunky, and adding onion and chouriço, this fella showed up with some parsley for me, also from the GAMCOD bed, because he says it's good for me and makes the photos look nicer.



He left some in the kitchen, too, but Austin has a habit of forgetting all about it. Which he duly did...

He did, however, remember to bring me a slice of buttered cornbread to go with it!



Warm, delicious, thick, and full of goodness.

Fried congee patties!

We made an all organic sunchoke and ground pork casserole!

Eggs, pork, onions and sunchokes are all from our garden!

Burra Maluca wrote:The boys went to the Festa das Varas do Fumeiro (festival of poles of smokes) yesterday, and came home with this, which is now cooking...



I think it's a butelo which is made "by stuffing a pig’s stomach with rib bones, vertebrae cartilage, and rump meat"

Hello Burra!

That looks so good!

I had not thought of doing anything with the pigs stomach.  I will be harvesting pigs in a few months and I would like to try something like this!

Thanks!!