MetaChat - Best meal you've made lately?

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28 April 2011

Best meal you've made lately? →[More:]Last night we had a lazy dinner and made grilled cheese sammiches and soup. I caramelized a load of vidalia onions (oh so sweet!) and made sandwiches with muenster cheese, onions, tomatoes and a couple of dollops of goat cheese in the middle as a surprise. Oh holy hell they were great. You?

post by: gaspode at: 10:40 | 27 comments

Do I have to pick one? A few things stand out recently. Jerk chicken (grilled) with grilled fava beans and some grilled red cabbage that I turned into cole slaw. Chickpea/bulgar 'burgers' (need to come up with a better name for them, because they're not really all that burgery) with roasted tomatoes, raita, and avocado. And asparagus/pea risotto with preserved lemon, served with Hog Island clams. I'm trying to like shellfish. I don't hate it anymore, but it still doesn't do much for me. The GF really liked the clams, though, so I assume they were good.

Your sandwich sounds incredible, gaspode. Reading that made my stomach all growl-y.

posted by mudpuppie 28 April | 11:00

I made a Thai green curry soup the other night.

Started with garlic, a serrano pepper and ginger, added carrots and celery, then added some chicken-veggie stock that I had made a few days previously.

Then some green curry paste, and bok choi, finishing with some coconut milk. Forgot the glass noodles, but I had them, so I will add them tonight when we have the second half of the batch I made.

The question is, what to have on the side?

posted by danf 28 April | 11:22

Two days ago I had a great early dinner. I had, left over from Sunday, chick peas and rice with fresh jalapenos, green bell pepper, three kinds of onion, diced radish, toasted cumin, fresh oregano, and chopped cilantro. For a second dish, I made a miso-dashi-wakame-based stew with ramen noodles, chopped brussels sprouts, abura-age, spring onions, and chunks of tilapia steamed in garlic and soy sauce. I always have carrot and celery sticks around, so I served these with umeboshi as a garnish. I enjoyed it all with a Magic Hat No. 9 Not Quite Pale Ale. I took some pictures of it.

posted by Hugh Janus 28 April | 11:26

At one point on Tuesday night I had 3 different kinds of bread on my plate (it was the first meal since Passover began that I could do that), and it was awesome.
I am going to a fancy pasta place tonight for my friend's bday that I haven't been to before and I expect that will supplant the triple bread experience.

posted by rmless2 28 April | 11:27

Made dinner? Does not compute.

posted by Eideteker 28 April | 11:27

Once again I'm having the feeling that gaspode and I are maybe the same person.

Last weekend I made two yummy grilled cheese sandwiches. One with provolone, thin tart apple slices and a bit of fresh basil. The other one was made on nine grain bread with a taco blend of shredded cheese. As soon as it came off the grill I opened it up and added sliced avocado and sliced tomato. We cut them both in half and shared.

Dang, now I'm hungry.

posted by toastedbeagle 28 April | 11:34

Chili lime shrimp with whole wheat angel hair pasta and goat cheese. This is my favorite invented meal lately & very simple. You marinate the shrimp - ideally, this is totally peeled raw shrimp. If you, like me, are lazy and buy the tails on kind frozen then you will be picking shrimp tails out of your pasta with your fingers later. Anyway, marinate for like half an hour in lime juice & chopped garlic & cumin & chili powder. Start the pasta boiling, put a hunk of goat cheese & some parmesan in a big bowl. Right before the pasta is done, saute the shrimp & its marinade in some olive oil on fairly high heat. Dump the cooked pasta on top of the goat cheese, stir, dump the cooked shrimp & liquid on that, stir more, eat om nom nom.

posted by mygothlaundry 28 April | 12:00

What Eideteker said. Does a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese count?

posted by Melismata 28 April | 12:05

On Sunday I made a green lentil dish from my Indian slow cooker cookbook, to which I added a ton of fresh spinach for the last half hour. Have been eating that over hot basmati rice, usually with a piece of roti that has spent a minute and a half or so on a hot griddle. Very tasty!

posted by bearwife 28 April | 12:11

Weekend before last: roasted chicken with rosemary tucked in everywhere, along with some homemade ravioli. And then a big bowl of blackberries. Even better than having it for dinner was sneaking to the kitchen around 2AM to finish off the berries.

Last night I made a zucchini cheesecake and that was pretty fabulous. Very springy.

posted by punchtothehead 28 April | 13:17

Last Friday when sueinnyc came over for a Good Friday meal I marinated chicken in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and home-grown thyme, rosemary and basil and barbecued it. We also had Aberdeen Angus steak, marinated in soy sauce and garlic, along with grilled veggies (including new season asparagus, the most delicious vegetable in the world) and minted new potatoes. Pic here. It was absolutely delicious.

We followed it up with Strawberry Pavlova. That was followed by a food coma.

posted by Senyar 28 April | 13:27

I made this and it's pretty unbelievable. We cried when it was gone.

posted by iconomy 28 April | 13:39

Send me one of those sandwiches, gaspode, pretty please?!

Me, I rarely cook and haven't in ages, unless toast counts. Had a couple yummy slices recently - bread was a nice grainy one and had lots of butter slathered over them. Toast is such a comfort food.

posted by deborah 28 April | 14:39

deborah, I agree. Toast is its own food group, to me. It's such a practical bit of food, too! Perfect for conveying things to your mouth.

posted by punchtothehead 28 April | 14:53

I roasted EM & I a big chook. Made 4 meals out of it so far!

posted by gomichild 28 April | 15:00

I haven't had the energy to make or eat full meals lately, however I have learned that regardless of which meat or fish you cooked, you can use chicken stock to make the sauce/gravy. The chicken flavor pretty much vanishes or morphs. Also and this may just be in my head, but the texture seems a bit smoother as well. This also makes for an easier and lighter bodied breakfast gravy than that made with skim milk.

posted by Ardiril 28 April | 15:17

I roasted a bunch of vegetables, sauted some mushrooms, made a bechamel sauce and put it together with some fresh basil as a roasted vegetable lasagne with some fontina and parm as the cheese. I am hoping the next time I make it, it turns out exactly the same.

posted by Sil 28 April | 16:12

It's been a hellacious few weeks which has shot my cooking and provisioning routine all to hell. It's been scraps and ends at Chez Miko plus a lot of lame-o eating out simply for lack of time. BUT, last Tuesdayish I did make a really good arroz con pollo which I was very happy with. The leftovers disappeared yesterday.

posted by Miko 28 April | 16:22

I made a meatloaf last night so stynxno would have something to eat while I'm gone. Meatloaf made with love.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 28 April | 16:24

I haven't been cooking much lately; a combination of dental problems and laziness made a perfect excuse to eat Indian take-out at every opportunity for the past few weeks. But yesterday I made a pair of little dinner plates for my mother (who was coming back from a trip) and my sister (who has been working nights), and stashed them in their fridges. While I was cooking, I made the same for me to have that night and a midnight supper for The Fella after work:

- mushroom, broccoli, and caramelized red onion quiches, each the size of a soup bowl, and with a perfect crust that made me moan out loud when I bit into it
- roasted potatoes
- a few dark-chocolate peanut butter cups.

Everyone's meals sound so great! You might inspire me to get back in the kitchen soon.

posted by Elsa 28 April | 16:25

I am impressed by all of these delicious sounding complex meals.

Lately, I have been making the standard weekly fare (hamburgers on George Foreman grill, steak, spaghetti, etc.).

The last thing that I made that was truly outstanding and memorable was Mark Bittman's Luccan Farro Soup. I didn't have farro so I used barley. We, husband and I, have made it twice. The first time was best, though both batches were delicious. My husband made it the first time and I'm pretty sure he used "rotisserie" chicken stock in a box. When I made it I used regular chicken stock in a box.

posted by LoriFLA 28 April | 18:22

these do all sound great. I'm getting inspired! toastedbeagle, I like the sound of those sammiches, too.

posted by gaspode 28 April | 18:44

I don't think about food. I am on a diet. "Food" consists of zero fat Greek yoghurt and Special K cereal.

posted by msali 28 April | 19:20

Steak & kidney pie incorporating stout and worcestershire sauce. It was my first attempt, and used a recipe cobbled together from various examples on the internet with all ingredient quantities eyeballed rather than measured. I'd been waiting for the weather down here in the southern hemisphere to get cold enough to try this, and boy, it was worth the wait. Ate the whole (huge) thing myself in two sittings!

posted by Rembrandt Q. Einstein 28 April | 19:40

I don't think about food. I am on a diet.

All those pretty people in Brazil, huh?

posted by danf 28 April | 20:34

I'm not much of a cook. I boiled a mess o' redskin potatoes, took them out of the water and dumped a couple of cans of green beans in with them. Let it cook for awhile and enjoyed with lots of pepper and salt.

That's cooking around my house.

posted by Marxchivist 28 April | 23:11

Convinced my housemate to make wasabi frosting for some of her chocolate cupcakes. Also cinnamon, orange ginger, and maple (via maple extract. tasted identical to maple donut icing).

Chocolate cupcakes with wasabi icing are tasty.

posted by aniola 30 April | 21:40

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