What have you cooked lately?

Staring into the fridge last night, nothing but leftovers and wilting organic produce stared back. I cubed beets, carrots, parsnip, rutabegas, tossed with olive oil and zatar, then roasted covered for 75 minutes at 350 F. It looks incredibly festive. Chopped up approx. 4 oz leftover roast pork, julienned 1/2 a jar of sundried tomatoes in olive oil, coarsely chopped 3 cloves garlic, sauted in cast iron skillet for 10 minutes. Added 1/2 cup jellied pork stock and 8 oz. leftover bowtie pasta with a smidge of mushroom fennel tomato garlic sauce and simmered for 10 minutes more until everything was good and hot. Not bad.

short ribs "provencale" (this means some herbes de provence and nicoise olives went into the gallon of red wine the meat stewed in). yay!

from i

I've been ridiculously sick, so skipped the family xmas eve dinner in upscale restaurant experience yesterday. This morning, I coached Mr. Jaq through the baking of a cream coffeecake (which turned out perfectly), then drove the cat totally mad by roasting a duck this evening. We really need to catch his grovelling, plaintive meowing, and pitiful "I'm-so-weak-I-must-have-duck" casting himself to the floor theatrics on video.

duck yesterday, stuffed with prunes and apples.

My first gravlax went into the fridge* 90 minutes ago. Hopefully in 2-3 days I'll have good news.

*The extra fridge! We bought a new fridge for Christmas and put the old one out in my old office for drinks, less-often used condiments/marinades, and special projects like this one.

Kiddo goes back to school on Thursday and has requested a meatloaf before she goes. Yes, my meatloaf is that good. So tonight is that plus garlic mashed taters.

I'm about to just make a big messy improvised Italian stewy chicken dish - I usually just combine browned chicken thigh pieces with a mixture of fresh and pureed tomatoes, peppers, onions, basil, garlic, olive oil, maybe some other spices, and whatever I feel like throwing in (perhaps some olives tonight), and just let it simmer. Good with rice or pasta.

For NYE dinner: beef and mushrooms braised in red wine with bay, thyme, celery seed, ginger, garlic, juniper berries, peppercorns. It was the wrong cut of beef (top round, too lean), but tasted and smelled great. Broccoli sauteed in browned butter with a squeeze of lime. Mixed apple/cranberry crisp with heavy cream for dessert.

I want to make that chicken stewy thing! With potatoes, to get all the ingredients into one dish.