Category: Dinner

I was watching a re-run of the Great British Baking Show, and they had them making soufflés for the technical challenge (which, for the record, I have never made, Kevin makes the soufflés in this house generally), and one of the contestants said she’d never made a roux, and they were all ‘what, never?’ and she was all ‘shut up,’ but more polite and British about it. Poor thing!

I can’t remember when I first learned to make a roux, but I was probably at least thirty. Which is sort of astonishing to me now, because I do the basic, stripped down version of it all the time. I mean ALL the time. Basically every week we end up in a situation like the one we were in last night, where we had some leftover chicken thighs that had gotten a little dry, and some cooked asparagus that wasn’t so appealing on day two. We needed a little sauce, desperately. Roux to the rescue!

I generally do sort of a haphazard version of it. I set the water boiling for pasta, then threw a knob of butter in a sauté pan. Added some sliced red onion because I had it on hand and onion is never going to to hurt a savory pan sauce. If I hadn’t been feeling lazy, I would’ve peeled and smashed some garlic and added that too, but I was tired, it was a weeknight, we just wanted to eat something decent. Let the onions get golden, stirring a bit, added the chicken and asparagus, stirred it all together.

Now, I could’ve done a proper roux in a separate pan, but that would make an extra pan for cleaning up. No good. I just scooched the chicken and asparagus and onion over to one side of the pan, and tipped it a little so the melted butter gathered at the other side.

Added a bit of flour — not too much, or you’ll end up with something gluey and sad. Maybe 1/2 a teaspoon? I suppose it depends on how much sauce you want, though! Stirred the flour in the butter for a few seconds, letting it cook a little and start to get golden brown (raw flour, no good). There’s the roux, done! Then I added some milk, stirred it in (maybe 1/2 a cup?). Cream would’ve been good too. I happened to have some shredded Gruyere left over, so I stirred that in too. Tasted, added a bit of salt, and then stirred that lovely sauce in with my chicken and asparagus.

Somewhere in there, the pasta water had boiled, I’d tossed in some fresh tortellini (careful not to boil it too furiously, or fresh tortellini tends to burst; you want a gentle boil), cooked it 7 minutes, then drained it. Gently folded the tortellini into my creamy chicken and asparagus in sauce, and it was just enough sauce to very lightly coat the pasta. The kids loved it. Dinner was saved (and lunch the next day).

It should be a slogan, or a cooking show: Roux to the rescue!

But no worries! Today, we turned it into broccoli cheddar soup, sprinkled some more cheese on the top and served with a loaf of hot, crusty bread. Fabulous for a cool early autumn day. All is well.

This is the last of Kevin’s birthday meal kits from Girl and Goatceries, their SE Asian green beans. I’ve never used meal kits before — they’re pretty pricey, but on the other hand, they do seem like a great way to teach someone how to cook (or to remind yourself how to cook).

Taking some of the labor out of things like cleaning and prepping the green beans, or out of shopping for groceries, etc., makes it easier to actually get through a recipe. And their pre-made sauce was certainly convenient.

This one called for me to blanch the green beans, and I admit, I might normally skip that and go straight to sautéing, because it seems a little more fussy than I want to bother with. But y’know, if you blanch the green beans, you do get a lovely bright crispness to them.

So okay, when I have the time and energy, it’s probably worth that extra step.

Now I’m thinking about what I’d put together in a Sri Lankan meal kit, if there were such a thing….

(Usually these days I’m running so harried that they’re lucky if I cook one proper dinner a week, so I’m not sure the family quite knows what to do with all this bounty, but no one is complaining.)

Kevin loves Chinese food, and while I can follow a recipe fine, I’m still very clearly a novice on this front when it comes to improvising — but the fried rice turned out pretty okay. Practice. Using the wok and the super-hot big burner on our Wolf range definitely helped (the range came with the house, or we’d never have splurged on it, but glad it did!)

We added a mid-week family dinner this week, with candles and setting the table and checking in with the kids, which Kevin suggested and I think is a nice option for helping us get through e-learning. Makes me slow down a little bit too, which is undoubtedly good for me.

I’m mostly sharing these photos because the kids realized I was taking a picture of them and immediately started hamming it up for the camera.

Kevin decided the kids could use a mid-week treat, so made crepes + fillings dinner, which all of us love. I may have eaten several spoons of the apple filling straight up. Shh…. He is such a nice boy.

Anand’s newest food experiment — Nutella + Italian sausage. Um. MIGHT be okay? He ate it, anyway!

Please ignore my super-fuzzy hair. I blame the pool.

Morning peoples! I meant to post this Sri Lankan beef smoore recipe on Saturday, because this Dutch-influenced dish is more of a Sunday roast sort of thing, but this weekend was VERY hectic for me, and I forgot. On the other hand, with so many folks working from home, maybe that’s less relevant than it used to be.

If you do it the old-school way, it’s long, slow cooking on the stovetop — with a slow cooker or Instant Pot, you can speed that up dramatically. Like most roasts, this is great for a luscious dinner, and the leftover slices makes fabulous sandwiches in the days after. It’s the sauce that really makes it spectacular. 

Link to the Instant Pot recipe at the YouTube site. The stovetop recipe is in my cookbook, A Feast of Serendib!