What’s for supper? Vol. 289: Human monster

Can it possibly already be time for another What’s For Supper? I suppose so! And we’re creeping up on Vol. 300, goodness. When I hit 200 food posts, I did it all in rhyme. What’s your vote? Another poetry one for #300, or some other way to commemorate the momentous occasion? As always, I’m open to all ideas and will probably accept none of them. 

Here’s what we et this week:

SATURDAY
BLTs for home kids, and birthday cake; Jamaican food for adults

Irene’s birthday! She requested BLTs and admitted that, although it sounds bad and neglectful for your parents to go out to eat without you on your birthday, actually it’s an awesome opportunity to eat bacon and candy and play Monopoly and watch terrible brain-rot TV without interference. Or at least I think she meant it. Anyway, we threw a present at her, Damien fried up a whole mess of bacon, and then we left.

We tried a Jamaican restaurant. Feeling somewhat enfeebled, we both ordered jerk chicken, coconut beans and rice, and coleslaw, and Damien had fried plantains, and I had a beef empanada. It was good, not amazing, although it did make me want to learn how to make empanadas. We may go back some other day with our adventure pants on and order some goat or oxtail or something. I will say that the table near ours had the prettiest, joyfullest baby I have seen in years, and that went a long way. Solid B+ to Yahso.

When we got home, we had this spectacular Sasquatch cake by Clara:

And a very cryptid birthday it was. Party with friends at some future date. 

She and Lucy left later in the week for a five-day trip to Washington, DC with their class, and sending a flaky diabetic teen out of state for five days has filled me with only the most calm and rational thoughts and feelings, believe me. Corrie helped me prepare some daily snack bags, and who knows, maybe everyone will make it home alive. 

(Of course they will. Their teachers and chaperones are awesome and amazing.)

SUNDAY
Burgers, fries

Damien cooked the burgers outside! Truly it is spring. We got some tender purple crocuses, too, and I spent a happy hour or two finally clawing and clearing the old scraggly last-year’s growth away from the flower beds in front of the house so this year’s youngsters have plenty of room to come up.

Truly, truly, truly it is spring. Still damp and chilly and gritty and a little shuddery and hesitant, but most definitely spring, and not a moment too soon.

MONDAY
Chicken caprese sandwiches, pasta salad

Actually it turns out I forgot the chicken, which is a fairly vital ingredient for this recipe, so I had to run to the store. It’s tips like these that keep people coming back to this food blog.

I drizzled the chicken in olive oil and shook on plenty of oregano, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and broiled it nicely on both sides, and set out ciabatta rolls, tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar, and don’t forget the chicken.

Isn’t this pretty?

So pretty. 

As I waited for the chicken to cook, happily arranging the cheese on the plate and tucking in basil leaves here and there, I thought of my mother. I love arranging pretty plates of food. My mother very much did not. She loved slapping things in the oven and then slapping them on a plate and gobbling them up while you read about wormholes. She once read an essay in a Catholic magazine urging mothers to make meals more tempting for their families by arranging the food in “wheels and spirals of color.” This particular phrase so incensed her that she wrote a long rebuttal in defense of, I don’t know, the Catholic mother who never asked for this shit, which was published in some loony magazine or other, and won her a steady stream of hate mail for years. My mother was crazy, have I mentioned? But my father was crazier, and it was mainly his fault that she had such a bad attitude about food. Or really, it was his mother’s fault. Oh yes. No time to go into that now. I’ll tell you some day. I’ll tell all!

Thanks to folks to gave me advice for the pasta salad and how to make it more flavorful! You were right, I was undersalting my pasta water. This time I salted it very generously, and I also added quite a lot of the brine that came along with the marinated vegetables I added, and it was pretty punchy.

It had cherry peppers, parmesan cheese, red onions, and . . . misc. I don’t know, I just dumped things. I thought we had better pasta in the house, but I ended up using macaroni, looks like ditalini, and some spinach tortellini, which needed various lengths of cooking time. Not my finest effort, to be honest, but it was okay. 

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, fancy baked potatoes

Look how fancy.

I just had a potato for supper because I couldn’t stop eating sourdough bread while I was frying sandwiches, and then I didn’t want a sandwich anymore.

This is really too much heavy, salty, starchy, salty food for one meal, but I am so very tired of serving chips with everything. The sad truth is, the family will happily accept raw vegetables and dip as a side dish, but I’m fully capable of serving raw carrots and then getting mad at people for crunching them. I should have been a pair of ragged claws

WEDNESDAY
Chicken tortilla soup, quesadillas, pineapple, birthday cake

I used this Two Sleevers recipe, and will continue to do so, as it’s easy (you blend a bunch of veg and stuff, cook it up, yum,

dump in your chicken and water and tortilla strips, pressure cook, shred the chicken, and you’re done) but I think next time I do, I’ll use less water. It’s very tasty, just could be a little more condensed. I also upped how much chipotle sauce and jalapeño I included, and do you know, by the end of supper, nobody had a cold anymore. 

As you can see, I cut up some pineapple and made some just-plain-cheese quesadillas for the crybabies who don’t like soup, even though there was sour cream, cilantro, scallions, and avocados for the top. 

Damn fine soup. 

Clara made this cute Chun Li cake for Lena’s birthday

and we’ll be going out to celebrate more swankily later on! Oh, birthday season is really in full swing now. One in February, one in March, two in April, one in May, one in June, and one in July. Get ready for cake. 

THURSDAY
Pork bibimbap

Our pediatrician once said she had a theory that, the more children there were in a family, the more likely they were to have extremely complicated nicknames. Then she asked Benny, our ninth child, if she had any nicknames, and Benny said, well, sometimes people call her “Bem Bem Bop, the Human Monster.” So there you are. 

One of the less monstrous things Bem has done is to ask repeatedly for bibimbap, which you can make in a number of ways. The way I opted for this week was to put it off until Thursday, and then, when Damien asked what was for supper, to look so sad and haggard that he offered to do something with the meat if I took care of the rest.

He made some kind of paste with lots of brown sugar, lots of garlic powder, powdered ginger, a little chili powder, a little white pepper, kosher salt, soy sauce, and rub it all over the meat and cook it at 350 on a rack for about an hour, I believe, until it was cooked but not dried out. It was too salty, so he poured some mirin over the top and that cut it quite a bit. Then I sliced it thinly, added a little water to loosen up the pan drippings, and mixed it all up so it all got involved with the sauce. Friends, you can wake up early and make a marinade, or you can just do it like this in like an hour, and maybe it’s cheating, but you end up with meat that tastes like yummy sauce, so you tell me. 

If you ask me what cut of pork I got, I will not know. I’m sorry. I just buy whatever’s on sale. It was the kind from Aldi that looks like a sandworm.

I set out the sliced meat with a big pot of rice, and here is where my mother would have been proud, because I felt zero desire to wheel or spiral anything. I just chunked out a bag of baby spinach, a bag of crunchy noodles, and a carton of microgreens, and whatever bottles in the fridge door that looked vaguely Asian. Then I fried up a bunch of eggs in hot oil and it was off to the races. 

What a beautiful, action-packed, savory, chaotic meal this is. 

Man. I splashed a little shoyu sauce over the top, but didn’t really need it. 

People have different ideas about what constitutes bibimbap. I’ve only ever had what I’ve made myself, and this is what I like: Plenty of piping hot rice, some kind of meat with a strong flavor, preferably two vegetables, some with a crunch, some without; and a crisply-fried egg with a runny yolk. Cold sprouts and crunchy noodles are great. Do what you like!

 

I often make quick pickled vegetables for bibimbap

Jump to Recipe

Sometimes I sauté the spinach, but this time I just jammed it into the hot rice and let it halfway wilt on the spot, and that was pretty great. 

Here’s a sauce you can use for bibimbap or anything else, really.

Jump to Recipe

Of course I really mean “anything.” Use it on hot dogs. Use it on gelato. Drizzle it over your daughter-in-law’s belly to divine whether she’s having twins, and see where that gets you. Do what you like!

FRIDAY
Fish burgers, chips, ??

I got some frozen fish and rolls, and a bunch of fresh dill and some lemons and pickles, and that seems promising. Probably we should eat a vegetable.  I make no promises.