Monday, January 07, 2019

Best of 2018, part 2

We had as much good food at home in 2018 than in restaurants. Probably more, TBH.

I made profiteroles for Valentine's Day. Yes, they were amazing.

Perhaps my favorite salad of all time came from Emeril's in Orlando. The dressing is made with sausage drippings, and it's super easy to recreate at home.

Peppers can be stuffed with anything. Like Kung Pao turkey.

Who knew that beef stock, coconut milk, and Dijon mustard made an extremely reasonable facsimile of gravy for Swedish meatballs? When one can't have either cream or flour (Whole30 diet), one has to do what one has to do. And I'd do this again even if we weren't dieting.

It's nice to find leftovers in the freezer, like this lasagna made several months earlier.

When ShopRite has a sale on lobster, that means lobster rolls at home, especially when they also sell properly top-split hot dog rolls (Pepperidge Farm).

2018 was the year that we started making pasta at home. It didn't always turn out pretty, but it was still tender and delicious. This particularly uneven pappardelle was served with a lemon feta sauce and wee meatballs.

Neal's birthday cake this year was the usual chocolate, made in a fancy new bundt pan, with homemade green tea ice cream on the side. If you've never tried that combination, you're missing out.

We were introduced to Hu Kitchens chocolate in 2018 and found that it was not only good for out-of-hand eating, but also for making some of the best gigantic chocolate chip cookies ever.

I try to make ice cream at least a couple of times in the summer. This one, a home version of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby, was well worth the effort.

One of the few things I can eat on a regular basis without getting bored is an over-easy egg sandwich. My new thing is putting Urfa Biber, a Turkish chile pepper, on the egg to add a hint of heat.

Neal made this pretty apple galette with Cortland apples, which I think worked very well. The apple flavor seemed more complex to me than other apple varieties we've tried in the past.

I make pretty fine chili, if I do say so myself. This was no exception.

It's not difficult to make Chinese dumplings at home, and they're delicious to boot. Make enough to freeze for future noshing.

Neal's homemade gumbo is always aces. This one was totally from scratch, but he also made one earlier in the year with the carcass of a smoked tea duck and leftover fried chicken, and it was one of the best things I've ever eaten.

This burger, made with meat from Mighty Spark, was the best home-made burger I've ever had, hand's down.

Neal's pasta carbonara was fab.


Posted on Minxeats.com.

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