Another twofer this week because things have been super busy around here. We dogsat Bear’s bestie, Dubbie, for a few days. 102-yr-old legend, Mamaw, passed away peacefully. And Joey and I celebrated our 6th anniversary. Life, y’all!
*This post contains affiliate links to some of my favorite cookbooks. If you click a link and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.
Here we go:
late September 2022 menu
What we made last week, with notes:
Saturday, 9/17/22: Jalapeno poppers for a friend’s block party! We attended an annual fall block party at a friend’s house this night and I brought baked, bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers from Dinner at the Zoo’s recipe. They were great but the real thing worth mentioning here is the friend hosting the party had a chef friend smoke a half pig and a bunch of chickens for everyone. The aroma! Good god.
Sunday, 9/18/22: Grilled pork and cider-braised cabbage and apples. This recipe was from Anna Stockwell’s cookbook “For the Table” and used a thin cut of pork shoulder I ordered from Porter Road — it was basically a pork steak. And, we braised big hunks of cabbage and halved apples in apple cider in a cast iron skillet right on the grill. Fall, y’all! Also a pickled shallot salsa verde. And to go with, the author recommends a whiskey/apple cider/lemon juice cocktail, which we def did, except with bourbon. Liquor makes me cranky these days but a little wine fixed that.
Monday, 9/19/22: Chickpea and tomato curry with rice and toasted almonds. A slow cooker dinner! I loved this, and am happy I resisted the urge to add ground turkey — I feel like it would have muddled the flavor and this recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli’s book, “Cook With Me” was perfect as is. And toasted slivered almonds on top? Yes. My bowl was half-eaten before I remembered to snap a pic:
Tuesday, 9/20/22: Gyro bowls. This one surprised me! It is gyro meat that tastes like the real deal, made from ground beef. On a weeknight. In a loaf pan. Kinda like a pate of some sort? IDK, IDC — it worked and I thoroughly enjoyed it in a bowl of fresh, crisp veggies with lots of feta and yogurt sauce. Find the recipe here on The Modern Proper. (The recipe calls for ground beef and ground lamb, I only had beef so cut the recipe in half and it was still enough for me and Joey + leftovers.) Please enjoy this too-dark lap shot:
Wednesday, 9/21/22: Leftover pork, cabbage, and apples in Mandarin pancakes. Molly Yeh made me make dim sum and I’m very happy about it. I saw her toasting these Mandarin pancakes in a dry skillet and peeling them apart to make paper-thin wraps for a Peking chicken filling and thought: I gotta do this. Except with leftover grilled pork, cabbage, and chopped-up apples from Sunday sauteed in gochujang, hoisin, and sambal oelek. Come on! It was amazing.
Thursday, 9/22/22: Leftovers! Enough cooking already.
Friday, 9/23/22: French onion soup. Never enough cooking! I’ve made FO Soup approximately 85 zillion times in my life, decided to try this NYT Cooking recipe from Sara Bonisteel this week, and it was by far the simplest and most tasty of the bunch. Way to go. Adding the flour (use Wondraflour if you suck at dissolving lumps like me) and letting it boil for 10 minutes was the trick — it got perfectly thick and the flavors were spot on. Also, no toasting the bread! Just broiling it with the gruyere on top gave it plenty of texture around the edges while the middle stayed soft and melty in the soup. A+
For baking last week I revisited an old fave: my Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies. This time, I actually let the dough rest in the fridge overnight and I think it did make the texture better.
Now on to this week:
end of September 2022 menu
What we made this week, with notes:
Saturday, 9/24/22: Frozen pizza and salad! No explanation needed.
Sunday, 9/25/22: Root vegetable pot pie and salad. It’s not fall until you pot pie something. Joey was not sold on this at first (hello, no meat), but we both fully enjoyed it and ate almost all the leftovers, which is saying something given it’s a double-crust pot pie loaded with hearty veg. This recipe came from the cookbook “To the Last Bite” by Alexis deBoschnek and I highly recommend. The mixture of veggies is customizable; I used turnips, yukon golds, carrots, and sweet potato and really need to remember this one when I have one or two of a few veggies lying around — it’s is an ideal way to use them up. Note to self: always remember the flaky salt on top of the crust. Heaven. Also, someone teach me to crimp a crust. Please.
Monday, 9/26/22: White Chicken Chili. I’m just going to say, the method and the bacon are where it’s at with this. So easy, super smoky, and you don’t even have to add salt b/c the other ingredients are so dang flavorful on their own. This recipe is on repeat in this house. Thanks, Pinch of Yum!
Tuesday, 9/27/22: leftovers!
Wednesday, 9/28/22: Take-out Thai food from Pok’s Art!
Thursday, 9/29/22: Anniversary celebration dinner at Urban Kitchen❤️
Friday, 9/30/22: Skirt steak steamed buns and Maangchi wings. Stop everything and look at these wings right now:
Now, go to Maangchi’s YouTube, watch, and learn. These wings are the reason I need this blog — there needs to be a record of things that are so deliciously crispy, your eyeballs could break from looking at them. I can’t continue talking about these or else I’ll cry. Just know: potato starch is king, and a wing sauce with heat, sweet, salt, and tang is queen. Moving on… Molly Yeh made me make dim sum AGAIN! As our anniversary celebration #2 (neither of which were on our actual anniversay🙃), we made Molly Yeh’s steamed bun recipe and subbed in skirt steak for flank steak and they were so fun and turned out perfectly. For us, the curry powder drowned out the rest of the flavors, but otherwise 10/10. Bonus: the leftover buns are in our freezer!
Good times all around. See ya next time.