Friday Food: Dad's Seafood Feast

Friday 

Short version: Barbecue pork sandwiches, coleslaw, popsicles

Long version: I had a lot of pork left from the big pork shoulder I had cooked the day before, so I made some barbecue sauce to simmer shredded pork in for sandwiches. 

There were two cabbages in the refrigerator, and I used part of one to make coleslaw again.

The popsicles were mostly a way to use some little bits of things: the last of jars of apricot jam, peach jam, and yogurt. I added some milk and heavy cream, too, which makes them much more, well, creamy. Instead of icy. Very good.

Saturday

Short version: Pork fried rice, chocolate chip cookie bars

Long version: I made rice in the morning, using up the juices left from cooking the pork shoulder. Then I made fried rice with more of the pork, collard greens, asparagus, garlic scapes (all three vegetables from the garden, of course), and eggs.

Garlic scapes are so ridiculous looking. I find them very amusing. Sort of tricky to chop, however.

Sunday

Short version: Father's Day seafood fry, German potato salad, green salad with ranch dressing, Bonnie Butter cake with Chantilly cream and rhubarb compote

Long version: A. had to be in one of the cities on the Mexican border a week or so prior, and while there, he stopped at the Mexican market to pick up meat and seafood. It's much cheaper there, and pretty good quality. He bought pollock, shrimp, and "octomari," which I guess is squid tentacles that's been processed to be more like octopus? Or something.

Anyway. He wanted to fry all these things for his Father's Day feast, and he asked me to take care of all the side dishes and make them all cold ones so everything would be ready to go when the frying was done. Accordingly, I made a German potato salad and a green salad with ranch dressing.

I also made tartar sauce--extra dill pickles instead of the capers, and green onion instead of the shallot--and cocktail sauce for dipping. Cocktail sauce typically has horseradish in it, which I don't have, but the Internet assured me I could use chile powder, which I did. I didn't have the right hot sauce, either, so I didn't use that. A. said this didn't taste really like cocktail sauce, but he liked it anyway.  He called it New Mexico cocktail sauce.

He did the frying, using the thermometer I had got from my parents for my birthday and not yet used. It was perfect for this.

A very professional set-up.

That's lard in the pot. He did a real deep-fry, first coating everything in eggs and then a breading of flour, cornmeal, and Old Bay seasoning. It took a long time to fry the great quantity of seafood he had.

An impressive quantity, in fact.

There were many rapturous expressions of satisfaction among the family about this feast. A. did a very good job with the seasoning and frying. I don't even like seafood, and I thought the shrimp was good.

A. had said he would like a yellow cake with rhubarb for dessert. Knowing his pleasure in anything in great quantity, I made a layer cake instead of a single cake layer, using an online recipe for Bonnie Butter cake. The MiL used to make Bonnie Butter cakes when she was a kid. It's a simple and very tasty recipe for a yellow cake. I layered it with rhubarb compote--I guess that's what it's called when you just cook rhubarb down with sugar?--and Chantilly cream, and then frosted it with the Chantilly cream, too. Chantilly cream is just whipped cream with vanilla and sugar. I added a bit of sour cream, too, both for the flavor and because it helps it to hold its texture better. 

This cake ended up being a bit over the top.

I even made a heart on top using my cookie cutter and some of the compote. And mint leaves, just for fun.

It was really delicious. And certainly abundant. We didn't even eat half of it this night.

Monday

Short version: A feast of leftovers

Long version: There was a lot of fried seafood left, which I just re-heated in a skillet on the stove. Also potato salad, although some of the kids had leftover lamb-y rice with butter instead. They had some still-frozen green beans, too, and the adults had pureed calabaza.

Most excitingly, there was leftover cake.

Quite a lot of it, in fact. It held up very well in the refrigerator, surprisingly.

Tuesday

Short version: Burgers on the road, tuna salad and cookie fool at home

Long version: A. and one child were in town at dinnertime, and they went to a fast food restaurant to get hamburgers before starting their drive home. For the other three children, I made tuna salad. Two of them elected to have it in a corn tortilla with melted cheese, like a taco tuna melt. One had a sandwich.

I made a sort of odd dessert to use up the last of the chocolate chip cookie bars that were getting pretty crumbly, and the rest of the extra whipped cream from the cake. I crumbled the cookies and folded the crumbs into the cream, sort of like how fruit is folded into whipped cream for a fool. Then I drizzled some chocolate syrup on top.

It was not photogenic, but it was eaten.

Wednesday

Short version: Bulked up fried rice, more tuna, sauerkraut

Long version: I got the kids up at 3:30 a.m. to drive to a small airport, where we met one of their former teachers who has a plane. He took them all up for a short flight.

The plane is so small, it's just moved around by hand.

This was very fun for them, but made for a very tired rest of the day. Which is why dinner was not too exciting.

I had some leftover pork fried rice, but not quite enough. I had more plain lamb-y rice I needed to use, though, plus some cooked collard greens. So I added those two things to the fried rice, then scrambled more eggs to add, then put in more soy sauce, ginger, garlic powder, and vinegar. Plus some butter. I didn't fry this, instead just heating in the microwave. It would have been better fried, but I just didn't feel like washing a big skillet.

The three younger children had the rest of the tuna, in flour tortillas with cheese. I microwaved this, too, to melt the cheese. And they had raw sauerkraut, at their request.

A very odd mixture of various cultural foods. America on a plate, I suppose.

Thursday

Short version: Spaghetti with meat sauce, sauteed garlic scapes, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: I took out some ground primal blend--elk and cow heart--and made the meat sauce with that. I feel like I make taco meat with ground meat more often than not, and maybe everyone would appreciate something different.

They did. I cooked probably a pound and a half of meat, plus a pound of spaghetti, and most of it was eaten.

Garlic scapes are the stalk of what would be the garlic flower if I left them on the plants. I don't. I cut them off, cut off the flower part at the top, then saute them until they're soft. They taste like slightly garlicky green beans. Yum.

LOTS of spaghetti, and some garlic scapes.

I had just a bit of ranch dressing in the refrigerator, and just a bit of washed lettuce that needed to be used. So I used them both. In salad, with cucumber, too.

Refrigerator check:

My deli drawer has broken AGAIN on the runner, for I think the fourth time in seven years. So annoying. It does get an awful lot of hard use, though.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?