Culinaria: What's for dinner ?

[mitchellmckain]

Sounds good. How was it?

Last time we got tamales from a restaurant, everyone complained. They just were not as good as mine. I told them it was because of using cheese instead of lard. I have heart that starting with corn (nixtamal) makes the tamales and tortillas even better, but my one experiment with that just proved to me the difference wasn't worth quite that much work -- maybe if I had better equipment...

As for the homemade tortillas, they are good, but I wouldn't mind discovering the recipe used by some restaurants for the tortillas they make for soft tacos, for it might help me to improve my own.

[Watson]

You should try asking? Maybe not for the recipe, but if there is something different that they do, or an ingredient that kicks it up a notch. Can't hurt, if it is not a busy part of their day?

[mitchellmckain]

Today I made Gnocci Bolognese with Italian sausage and tomorrow it will be Chicken roasted in a spicy lemon sauce with pasta Carbonara on the side. These are the result of my search for new and different pasta sauces. I made the spicy lemon chicken before and my youngest really liked it. It was entirely my own creation and consisted of cooking assorted chicken piece in the oven with a sauce made from squeezing one whole fresh lemon with garlic, chopped peppers and onions, a tablespoon or two of sugar and a table spoon of Vietnamese hot pepper sauce called Sambal Oelek (and probably salt and fresh ground black pepper).

The itallian sausage was a mistake for it made today's dinner more spicy than I wanted. I need to learn to read "Italian sausage" as "spicy sausage" and go ahead and use the Bratwurst even if it is for an Italian dish. Both the Gnocci and the Bolgnese sauce were a bit of work. For the Gnocci it is rolling out the dough (made from mashed potato, flour, and egg) and chopping it into bite size pieces. For the Bolognese sauce it was roasting the spices (bay leaf, clove, peppercorns and fennel) and then grinding them up.

[Event Horizon]

This might get some bellies rumbling!

https://t.co/M3sLwwkppw