Viewed and eaten lately
January, more than ever was a month for comfort foods and snuggling in to view a lot of screen.
Jamie Oliver's 5 Ingredients cookbook continues to produce hits for us, the one miss being the chicken mango hoisin lettuce cups. I've already got a mango salad we adore (see Cyberfeasts cookbook No 2) with grilled chicken and its flavors are better and brighter than Jamie's hoisin recipe.
But the beet salad with sliced beef was awesome, shrimp green curry with rice noodles wonderful, rice steamed with fish, basil, tomatoes and olive tapenade is a favorite, and this week I'll try the pasta with garlic oil and herbs. I make one or two recipes from this book each week.
I made a hearty Tuscan bean and veggie soup and chopped some chicken sausage into it--we don't like chicken sausages because they tend to be too dry when grilled or baked or pan-fried but there it was in the freezer and this seemed a good use for it. And we had another soup night with some favorites from our cupboards--I love canned chicken noodle with crackers and Jen favors roasted tomato with pasta shells in it.
One evening when I went off to Sis for a puzzle night, I left Jen with defrosted ham slices from Christmas and butter-steamed herbed baby potatoes (an Ina Garten technique that I love). And we had the rest of that batch of potatoes with fresh spinach and pounded chicken breasts stuffed with cheese and rolled in bread crumbs and baked to crispy perfection another night.
Tonight is a half-breast of chicken on the bone with skin that I roast in a screaming hot oven, a Cooks Illustrated technique, atop a bed of whole carrots. They taste incredible roasted that way with chicken schmaltz dripping onto them.
TV viewing on weeknights is often news and Rachel Maddow and taped episodes of the late shows we like. But we've also watched:
Jamie Oliver's 5 Ingredients cookbook continues to produce hits for us, the one miss being the chicken mango hoisin lettuce cups. I've already got a mango salad we adore (see Cyberfeasts cookbook No 2) with grilled chicken and its flavors are better and brighter than Jamie's hoisin recipe.
But the beet salad with sliced beef was awesome, shrimp green curry with rice noodles wonderful, rice steamed with fish, basil, tomatoes and olive tapenade is a favorite, and this week I'll try the pasta with garlic oil and herbs. I make one or two recipes from this book each week.
I made a hearty Tuscan bean and veggie soup and chopped some chicken sausage into it--we don't like chicken sausages because they tend to be too dry when grilled or baked or pan-fried but there it was in the freezer and this seemed a good use for it. And we had another soup night with some favorites from our cupboards--I love canned chicken noodle with crackers and Jen favors roasted tomato with pasta shells in it.
One evening when I went off to Sis for a puzzle night, I left Jen with defrosted ham slices from Christmas and butter-steamed herbed baby potatoes (an Ina Garten technique that I love). And we had the rest of that batch of potatoes with fresh spinach and pounded chicken breasts stuffed with cheese and rolled in bread crumbs and baked to crispy perfection another night.
Tonight is a half-breast of chicken on the bone with skin that I roast in a screaming hot oven, a Cooks Illustrated technique, atop a bed of whole carrots. They taste incredible roasted that way with chicken schmaltz dripping onto them.
TV viewing on weeknights is often news and Rachel Maddow and taped episodes of the late shows we like. But we've also watched:
- The new All Creatures Great & Small, loving it so far, great casting and stunning countryside and RIP to the great Dame Diana Rigg.
- Escape to the Chateau, originally a PBS series that JRo has loved for years, now on HGTV, wherein British engineer Dick and his wife Angel, a graphic designer, buy a truly rundown 400-year-old chateau in the Loire and embark on the renovation. Dick is a man of many tools and DIY skills and a lot of patience; Angel is a woman of big ideas, eclectic taste, an unfortunate love of taxidermied critters, orange and pink hair, but a winning smile and a warm and welcoming personality. The show is really fun.
- The Last Detective, our latest attempt to find a British mystery series to love. In this one, a sad-sack DC works a north London precinct where he's the last guy to whom anyone will assign a case. He's got an almost-ex wife, a quirky best friend with a new odd job every week, an enormous St Bernard dog, and an old-fashioned gives-a-damn approach to serving the community. Not the best we've ever seen, but a nice show and we're nearly done with its 4 or 5 short seasons.
- McDonald & Dodds, brand new Brit comedy-mystery show set in Bath, only two episodes have dropped so far and we LOVE it. It's clever and hilarious, partnering a hotshot young London detective brought in to shore up the Bath force with a quiet, mousy, 50-ish fellow who's always losing his glasses but catching the little things that the rest of the investigators are missing in their rush to get results. The chemistry between these two is pitch-perfect, the locations around Bath are gorgeous, and we can't wait for more.
- A Confession. This is powerful filmmaking. It's a complete story in 6 episodes, based on the true (and apparently infamous in Britain but never heard of it over here) serial murder case in 2012. Martin Freeman plays Steve Fulcher, the DCI in charge of (at first) the missing person case of a nice young woman who left a bar and never made it home. When good slogging cop work by his team narrows them to a lead with a taxi driver, Fulcher makes the crucial decision to pressure the suspect to lead them to the girl and he does, taking them to her remains. And then says, "Want another one?" The second set of remains belongs to a girl who disappeared eight years before, a drug addict working as a prostitute. The show--unusually-- focuses heavily on the families, especially the two mothers, and Fulcher throughout the invesigation and subsequent court cases. The controversy of this case in courts and media focused on PACE, basically the British version of the Miranda rights of U.S. justice systems, and whether Fulcher broke the rules to find that second girl, thus getting the suspect off in court on this technicality and ruining his own career in the process. It's amazing acting, really well and scrupulously scripted and paced, and just a powerful show.
- Enola Holmes, pure silly and pretty fun about the younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft and starring the utterly charming Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things. Henry Cavill's bulky hunky frame in tight frock coats was a dubious choice but he sure is pretty, and Helena Bonham Carter was a good choice for Enola's free-spirited mother. Made for a nice light change of pace for us the week after the insurrection at the Capitol happened.