Food and Football day, October 20, 2024. Did you have a good day... or at least good food?

Bone-in pork loin chop, sous vide and seared. Wedge salad on the side.



Oh, and my Steelers won.

CD

I fried up some lardons (bacon in cubes, I actually buy it that way). Then I added some of that brown basmati rice that I bought already cooked. I added some corn kernels and wax beans from the freezer and some ginger-garlic-onion "pesto", also from the freezer. It wasn't exciting, but it was pretty good and it was food.

Thai Green Chicken Curry

Tovala meals of red curry chicken with sweet potatoes, mini sweet peppers, and rice.

Meat Lovers Pizza with mushrooms and onions, .5 Costco Double Chocolate Chunk muffin. Binged NCIS - no football here yesterday. Dallas had a by week.

I have a small tabletop rotisserie. Using it, I made a rotisserie top round roast with some oven-roasted veggies (Carrots, turnips, parsnips, scallions, peppers, and squash.) The drippings made a really nice sauce to go along with it.

My BEARS were on their by-week. We won't discuss the Browns....

Sunday ragu with meatball and sausage.

My Patriots are on a roll! Six in a row!

Tuna from a can and some leftover salad. Was feeling uninspired.

He had a meal sized salad and brownies. I had toast with pb and berry jam/puree, and a small bowl of fermented 9 grain flakes with pineapple.

Last night, I wanted to make something with that choy sum I harvested from just 2 plants, and looked in Seriouseats, to see if there were any broccoli recipes with mushrooms (I also have a lb of 'shrooms in the fridge). Choy sum is not something I'm expecting to see recipes for, but it's another flowering brassica, so I checked broccoli. Then I found a recipe I made a few years ago, that was really good, so I based it on that - I'll have to use the mushrooms another time. Here's the original recipe, and I used a bunch of choy sum, as you can see, and a little less than 8 oz. of bean thread noodles.

The bean threads I simply soaked in not quite boiling water, while prepping the other ingredients. The leaves I cut the stems from, and cut them into about 2x1/2" pieces. The flowering sections I chopped fine, and those stems into about 1/2" pieces, which gave good crunch to the dish. Not as strong as broccoli, but definitely stronger than bok choy. I only cooked this 3 minutes, before adding the bean threads, and added about a tb of dark soy sauce in that last minute. This, and a tb instead of 2 tsp chili paste (as always, I increase this!) was all I did different from that recipe, plus the different greens.
The choy sum from 2 plants, leaves chopped about 1/2x2", stems into 1/2" pieces, and flowering parts chopped fine. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Ingredients lined up, other than the noodles - onions, garlic, carrots, shallots, vegetable broth, with some soy, ginger, 5-spice, and sesame oil mix. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

After cooking the onions until golden, and adding the garlic, cooking a minute, then adding the remaining ingredients, before the noodles and scallions. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Finished dish, after tossing the cellophane noodles and scallions over med-high heat, before adding a little dark soy, and chopping noodles some. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Served bowl of choy sum, with cellophane noodles and 5-spice seasoning. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Funny thing - just Saturday I tweaked my 5 spice powder mix, because I had gotten some that needed more star anise, and didn't even have any pepper or Szechwan peppercorns in it! And the star anise I had was ancient, so I had to get a fresh batch, and when I got it yesterday, I ground some up, added it to that 5 spice batch in a bowl, and added some finely ground Szechwan peppercorns, until it was well balanced, put some in the jar I keep it in, and vacuum sealed the rest in a bag, to refill the jar from, later on.