What’s for supper? Vol. 411: You can’t fufu all the people all the time

Happy Friday! The star of my week was MY NEW FRYING PAN. I love this thing. I wish it had two “helper handles” rather than one long one and one helper, but other than that, it’s everything I wanted. Tons of frying space, even heat transmission, high walls, and you can just scrub it clean with no rigamarole. Always Avoid Rigamarole, Guys; that’s my motto. AARG. 

I’ve also been enjoying the paring knife I ordered to bump up my purchase to get free shipping. Feeling very fancy in the kitchen these days. 

Here’s what we ate this week. Well, starting with last week, because it got a li’l weird:

FRIDAY
Seared lemon basil scallops on coconut rice, spicy fried eggplant, and stuffed clams 

One of my earliest memories is going to a potluck in kindergarten and barely being able to see over the top of the table, and being absolutely bewildered and overwhelmed by the array of unfamiliar foods. I vaguely felt that I wasn’t allowed to take anything that I didn’t normally eat (I didn’t even recognize some of the utensils. SALAD TONGS, what??), so I got some baked beans and brought them back to my seat. I was actually fine with this, because I knew what beans were and I liked them! But a mom came over and clucked at me for just getting beans, and loaded up my plate with a bunch of other stuff. I don’t remember what, but the important thing was that someone else was in charge. 

 Anyway, now I am fifty years old, and when I am in charge, I tend to make a bewildering array of unfamiliar foods myself. I enjoy this, but I would also enjoy a plate full of beans. 

So I seared the scallops sort of casting one eyeball at this recipe, and they turned out nice, only I used too much oil 

They do cook up fast, though, so if you happen to have some scallops, this is a very decent choice of preparation. Before I did that, I put some frozen stuffed clams in the oven, and also I fried a bunch of eggplant. 

Here’s my recipe for fried eggplant

Jump to Recipe

It’s good to start at least an hour before dinner, because you need to salt the eggplant to draw out the moisture, then dredge them in batter and fry them, and you don’t want to crowd the pan.

They’re SO GOOD, though. Totally worth it. The batter includes baking powder, so you get those crisp, knobbly, bubbles on the outside when they fry, and the inside is just melty tender. I wish I had made some yogurt sauce or maybe some kind of spicy tomato thing, but there were no complaints.

I heated up the coconut rice from last week’s Thai meal and served it with the scallops, rather than saving it for Leftover Day on Saturday, because I knew the kids weren’t crazy about it, and I was. 

So it was a bit of a weird meal, but undeniably tasty. 

The other kids were eating pizza at the library (which is what inspired me to make a Grownup Meal), but Corrie was home, and didn’t want any of the foods I cooked, so I took the leftover eggplant batter and made a fried Corrie.

And I do believe this is what she ate for dinner. 

SATURDAY
Leftover Buffet, french bread pizza

A little spaghetti carbonara, a little Thai chicken, and this and that. 

I forgot to tell the kids to save the leftover leftover ham, though. Oops. 

SUNDAY
Italian sandwiches, fries

Sunday after Mass, I did something I’ve been hyping myself up to do for weeks: I cleared off the landing. For a while, it was the bedroom of a kid who would rather sleep on the landing than share a room with siblings; and then, predictably, it became a dumping area.

Corrie and I set to work (she owes me money for a book order, and she doesn’t mind being a runner for cleaning projects, as long as someone else is in charge), and three hours and six trash bags later, it looked like this:

Instagram-worthy, no. Much much much much better, definitely. A spot for the Barbie Dream House, plus Corrie’s typewriter and sewing machine. 

I bought a bunch of cleaning products and I’ve been tackling various areas of the house one at a time, lately. Because it turns out that when I feel powerless and overwhelmed for . . . . reasons . . . . it helps an awful lot to clean something! You peek your head over the tabletop, see the news headlines, and are overwhelmed by the incomprehensible and unfamiliar chaos, and you think, “Well, I know one thing I can fix.” It helps! And it’s cheaper than heroin.

I knew I was going to be working on this cleaning project all day, so I planned sandwiches for supper. Looks like we had salami, capicola, prosciutto, provolone, basil, and oil and vinegar. I had bought some tomatoes, but the kids forgot to bring them in from the car, and they froze, so that was out, bleh. 

I did buy a jar of those pickled vegetables, giardiniera? and threw them in the food processor along with a can of black olives, a little olive oil, and some red wine vinegar, and made it into I guess a sandwich spread. I don’t know if there is a name for this, but I liked it. 

We also had fries. Always a popular meal.

Also on Sunday, I discovered that the part of the oven door that I thought was permanently black because the enamel had been burnt off, was actually just coated with burnt-on grease. So I’ve been scrubbing away at that. I just … want things clean. Cleaner. 

MONDAY
Omelettes, roast squash sticks(?), spinach

Monday I tackled the laundry room. I didn’t take a “before” picture, but it was a “there’s a floor here somewhere” situation. Another few bags of trash, and here is the “after.”

You can’t really see it, but I labelled all the shelves. But I did it in CHALK, which you can erase, because there are few things more depressing than tackling a chaotic mess and uncovering permanent but irrelevant labels you put on last time you organized it, back when you were young and still full of hope. Now I am old and full of chalk. But at least I know where my sheets are. 

Also on Monday I got a little bit mad about egg prices and decided we weren’t gonna get pushed around, so I made omelettes. Look, this is a food blog, not a “life choices that make perfect sense” blog. This is the meal I meant to save the ham for, but it got tossed (because the kids were following the rules I had made; can’t complain).

The kids tried to persuade me that deli turkey and raw onion is a normal thing to put in omelettes. IT’S NOT. That’s weird. But I was making omelettes to order, so that’s what they had. 

I myself had cheddar and spinach, which is a DELIGHT. 

As is my new pan! Have I mentioned my new pan? I really like it. 

Then I had a couple of butternut squashes which I cut into thin pieces and roasted, with olive oil, cardamom, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper. This didn’t actually work very well.

The flavor was good, but I think if you are going to cut squash into such thin pieces, it would need to be deep fried to make it crisp; and if you are going to oven roast it, you should cut it into chunks. Also it took FOREVER to cut the squash into such small pieces. 

Don’t get me wrong, I gobbled it up. It was just a little peculiar. I actually mixed it up with some leftover shredded spinach and it was pretty tasty. 

TUESDAY
Hamburgers, chips

I’m a little nervous about the future of ground beef in this country, so I decided we might as well have burgers while we can. A couple of the big kids were over, and we just had burgers and chips, easy peasy. Simple pimple. Pretend I didn’t say that. 

Tuesday I also tackled the infamous White Cabinet and Environs, which looked like this:

I remember buying this cabinet NEW, which was an incredibly splurgy purchase at the time. It was going to change my life and make everything orderly and pristine. And it did, for about eleven days. Then the shelves started falling out, and the frame got all crooked so you couldn’t put the shelves back in, and this is more or less how it’s looked ever since. It looks like it has shelves, but they randomly tip forward and disgorge their contents onto the floor, and then people stack random things on top of that. Which is not my FAVORITE. 

So on Wednesday, I got a saw and a drill and this plank of wood that’s been hanging around in the kitchen, sawed that up, and built a sort of interior frame under each shelf. Then I sorted everything and threw out three more bags of trash, and now it looks like this:

THE DOORS CLOSE. Obviously haven’t gotten up to the “and environs” part yet, and my floor looks how floors look in New Hampshire in February, so I’m not even gonna apologize for that. 

But look! Over three days later, and it hasn’t fallen apart inside yet. 

The kids are pretending to be enthusiastic about having a place for everything, and that’s good enough for me. And I found eleven pairs of scissors (not a made up number).

WEDNESDAY
Chinese pork, pineapple, crunchy rice rolls

Wednesday the plan was char siu, but I was fooling myself about being home at the right time of day to baste a roast pork. So I made a marinade and put it in the Instant Pot with the pork and set it for 22 minutes. 

I have actually done something similar, with pleasant results, on days when I have enough time to take the cooked pork out of the Instant Pot, cut it, and then simmer it on the stovetop with the sauce for half an hour or so, to give the sauce a chance to thicken up and coat the meat. 

Jump to Recipe

But it being Wednesday, I didn’t have time for that, so I just cut up the meat and served it with pineapple and crunchy rice rolls.  

Tasted fine. It did have that nice char siu flavor, even if it wasn’t all glossy and sticky and lovely. 

On Wednesday morning, I realized I had kind of painted myself into a corner with the menu. My original plan was to make injera on Thursday, and you are supposed to start that fermenting at least four days ahead of time. Obviously I didn’t do that. So what I did was prep all the stuff for Thursday’s dinner on Wednesday morning. I’m just basically riding some kind of wave of nervous energy here. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I’m trying to put it to good use while it does.

I’ve also been doing some more wood carving in the evening. I like to listen to the wonderful show Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin in the evening and use that time to whittle. Here’s a couple of works in progress:

The first one is a hair ornament, and I think I just need to sand it a bit and stain it. The leaf, I don’t know what it is. It’s a thing that helps me sleep at night. 

Makes me remember it’s almost time to tap the trees, though!  I was telling the kids how, last fall, I went around identifying all the maple trees while they still had foliage, and tying orange cloth on them so I could find them in early spring. So Irene goes, “ohhhh, so I shouldn’t have been pulling those off all winter?” 

She was kidding. Pretty sure. I somehow ended up with ten kids who are constantly kidding. I am not sure how that happened. 

THURSDAY
Kuku paka, fufu, basmati rice, ube pudding

Thursday was a snow day, so I was delighted to realize I (a) had all the time in the world to cook and (b) had already done a lot of the hard part the day before. Behold, my mise en placing:

Clockwise, that’s onion; coriander, cumin, turmeric, and cayenne pepper; and ginger and garlic. 

Here is the recipe I was following, from my new best friend Recipe Tin Eats. 

You salt and pepper your chicken thighs and drumsticks and then brown them in oil. In your NEW PAN, if possible. 

Then you take the chicken out and fry up your onion, then ginger and garlic, then the spices, then add pureed tomatoes, coconut milk, and some kosher salt. Then you put the chicken back in and let it simmer. 

I let it simmer for about an hour, and then I moved it to the slow cooker for the rest of the day. 

My dears, it smelled incredible. As Nagi points out, this could easily be an Indian dish, but it is actually North African. So I thought it would be a great time to try  that Fufu mix I bought quite some time ago. 

I have never had fufu and struggled a bit to explain it to the kids. As far as I can tell, it’s a staple in Nigeria and Ghana (which I realize is West Africa. Look, I went to public school), and it’s good for filling you up when you don’t have a huge amount of meat, and it’s also good for sopping up sauce or juices. It’s made from starchy vegetables like cassava, yams, or plantains that you boil and then pound the hell out of in a giant mortar. Or, if you are me, it’s made out this white powder from a box:

I watched a few videos and concluded that nobody in this house has had fufu before, so I could basically do whatever I wanted. So I boiled a kettle of water and slowly added it to the powder while beating it viciously with a wooden spoon, until it became a very thick dough.

Then I added more water to the pot and let it cook for a little bit, and then I took the dough and formed it into balls. This was not easy, because for some reason, when I took it out of the boiling water, it was pretty hot. But somehow I managed. 

Fufu is supposed to be super smooth and free of lumps. OH WELL.  
I decided it would be wise to also make a big pot of rice! I made basmati rice (I rinsed the rice and put it in the pot with 1.5 cups of water for every cup of rice, brought it to a boil, then let it simmer for I think 18 minutes, and then turned off the heat, fluffed it, and let it sit for another ten minutes. Turned out great.)

So here’s the chicken curry after cooking in the slow cooker all day:

Dang, you guys. The meat was incredibly tender, and the sauce was MAGNIFICENT. So savory and warming and friendly and rich, but not too spicy. (I did cut the cayenne pepper in half, which Nagi suggested might be wise.) 

I had a thigh and a drumstick and it was such a filling meal, I didn’t even eat all of it, which is kind of. . . not how I usually act. 

The kids all tried the fufu, and nobody was crazy about it, which is understandable. I thought it was super good when you pull off pieces and roll it around in the sauce.

Probably not gonna make fufu again, but it was a fun experiment. I do want to order it in a restaurant at some point, to see how it’s supposed to taste! I will most definitely make this curry again, though. Damien and I really loved it. 

While I was hunting in the cabinets for the fufu mix, I found another little international impulse purchase, and it seemed like a reasonable time to use it. 

This is just basically instant pudding. You just add hot water, stir, and pour it into molds and let it set in the fridge for a few hours. 

We opted for PURPLE HEARTS OF UBE. 

I liked it! Tasted yammy. Again, no one else was crazy about it, but at least now we know. 

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

The last few days were a bit challenging for the kids, so I decided to relent and serve Regular Old Spaghetti today, and they are glad. 

Oh, it turns out the plank of wood that was in the kitchen, that I sawed up to fix the white cabinet? That was a piece of Benny’s door frame that fell off. 

Look. One thing at a time. All one can do is try.