Hey, where's the meal plan for last week? my loyal readers (both of them) may be asking. Well, in case you haven't noticed, it's the silly season, aka the month leading up to Christmas, and we had "outside" events affecting dinner four of the seven nights. I had a meal plan, and it was tested and twisted much of the week.
For 12/7-12/13, to keep in the archival spirit of these pages, however, here is our retro meal plan:
Monday - Pasta night with salad. I was occupied with something and dished this one over to my sous chef, so I can't rightly remember what went on here.
Tuesday - a big mess of gyoza, egg-fried rice. I was insane to try this on a weeknight. It took portions of much of the afternoon to get the dumpling stuffing ready -- lots of chopping -- and even though I used store-bought wonton wrappers (NOT the same thing as specialized dumpling dough, fwiw) -- and of course I was only able to get a couple dozen dumplings made (more than enough for the dinner, of course) of both meat- and vegetarian fillings, freezing the rest. I also froze a dozen pre-made. The good news is I've got the makings of about five dozen gyoza in the freezer now, waiting for a night when we need a little comfort food and don't have all the time in the world. As fun as this is, family tradition and all, etc. etc., I can't help but thinking we're actually better off buying Trader Joe's dumplings in bulk sometime instead, though.
Wednesday -- a school fundraiser pizza night out, which ended up in taking the pizza out as my eldest had an unexpected onset of some kind of social anxiety. We will perhaps post about this another day, but it was very odd, as he normally loves restaurants and adores pizza no matter how good or how bad.
Thursday -- we "grazed" with some simple foods from home, some snacks purchased out, and treats from the Christmas at the Adobes in Monterey. The kids' nutritional balance was definitely off this week --- a meal consisting of at least 50% cookie content is not containable inside the food pyramid.
Friday -- potluck -- more grazing.
Saturday - we had another school event during the day, so I ended up making Mac and cheese (with roasted brussel sprouts, yum). I had planned on doing latkes but ran out of time.
Sunday -- I had one feast on the menu this week and it got bumped to Sunday, and it took a while. I made Indian Red Stew with lamb, ala Madhur Jaffrey, with Samosas ala Mark Bittman. The stew (pictured) was superb -- I have not had a single recipe from this cookbook turn out badly. I am cursed with the duality of absolutely adoring spicy food, particularly Indian cuisine, and having quite the stomach for it --- but not the digestive system. I suffer greatly when the spicing is overdone, and my tongue thinks if it's overdone by that standard it's underdone. That said, I have been able to cook using Jaffrey's recipes without modifying the spice content much and come out with digestible and wonderful dishes -- only the kids won't eat them right now (they even rejected the samosas, deep-fried and all, as too spicy.) So we don't make much Indian these days. But I do have to give props to my sister for giving me Jaffrey's Indian Cooking some years ago, which was just the delicious reference cookbook I needed.
While I spent more time than I probably should've cooking on Sunday, it was deeply satisfying, and I also used up one of the on-sale legs of lamb I bought some time back and threw in the freezer. The lamb, slow-cooked, was utterly deliciously tender. And there were enough leftover that both my spouse and I could have it for lunch the following day. Yum!!
I did do one moderately whacky thing with the stew: I used a big turnip for part of the volume (I only used about a pound and a half of usable lamb, the recipe called for two). Turnips are not unheard of in Indian cuisine, at least as Jaffrey creates it, but they weren't in this recipe. I thought they were outstanding in the dish, adding a certain something potatoes occasionally lack in the deep sauces of much of Indian cooking.
