Weekday Meal Schedules 2020

Middle age brings all kinds of challenges, none more annoying than the slightly more delicate stomach and the tendency to keep on weight. So, working up some New Years' Resolutions, and one of them will be to make sure that we have a weekly meal schedule. I let this slide a bit this last Fall.

Never again.

Sample schedule, to match my wife and daughter's rigorous schedules.

Sunday:     Chicken (or some other leftover producing food)
Monday:    Salmon and asparagus and couscous (or other fish)
Tuesday:    Pasta (vegetarian) and broccoli (Also: prepare Tuna for Wednesday)
Wednes.:   Tuna and/or leftover pasta
Thursday:  Leftovers (Sunday food) plus greens
Friday:       Nice meal. Or frozen pizza. Depends on weekend schedule.
Saturday:   Wildcard.

I'm going to experiment with other dishes and add to this post some other schedules. Frankly, I would like one more vegetarian option in here.

chuck steak

Here's one that could become a standby, although it is a bit much for three. We ate it for two nights, and still have leftovers.

Chuck Steak.

I did not even know there was such a thing, truth be told. I was familiar with the chuck roast. With ground chuck But as a steak? The front shoulder is the hardest working part of any cow. It is flavorful, to be sure, but needs slow roasting to break down the fibrous tissue. Steak hits the grill and comes off within ten minutes (maybe fifteen, depending on whether it is two or three fingers thick). No dice.

So, enter sous vide.

I seasoned the steak heartily with four seasons rub, but then added additional salt and a ton of cracked black pepper.

Then I dropped this steak into a hot water bath the night before at 129 degrees and set the timer for twenty-four hours. Come morning I added about two cups of water to the pot. It had lost another two by the twenty-four hour mark.

The grill was prepared to high heat. I melted some butter in a pan, added olive oil, salt, pepper, and red wine vinegar. The steak got the hot treatment for about three flips, one and a half minutes a side.

The cutting board got an olive oil pour, salt, and chopped parsley. I dropped the steak on that, flipped it, and sprinkled the remaining parsley over it.

The result: a tender, tasty, meaty steak. Easy for a weeknight meal. One can pan sear it rather than start a fire, to save on time and trouble.

Tahini Dressing

A batch of tahini dressing:

1/2 cup tahini
1/2 cup water
6 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
3 tbsp olive oil

whisk the batch together. start adding salt and correct the other proportions until you have your desired flavor.

I ended up adding a good bit more tahini and water, because the lemon juice was strong. Olive oil on top of lemon juice is not the best idea either. I'd recommend some walnut oil or hazelnut oil to neutralize it out, although some olive oil is fine.

I also added more tumeric.

weeknight dinner: ahi tuna

Ahi is expensive, but extraordinarily easy to prepare. It also can produce leftovers for lunch salads, giving it real bang for the buck. ADDITIONALLY, if you are making ramen, you can create the soup base at the same time by microplaning some additional ginger. Nothing like doubling up on prep.

Here is a simple recipe:

For the marinade:

1 tbsp lime juice
1 inch ginger, sliced into rounds
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame seed oil

Mix the marinade ahead of time, allow to blend.

Marinade tuna steaks 15 minutes before cooking. Do not marinate longer than 15 minutes.

toast some sesame seeds. Shake them into a single layer on a small plate.

After marinating for fifteen minutes and preparing the vegetables, sear the tuna steaks on very high heat, in an oil that won't smoke like there is no tomorrow. I've tried olive oil (bad) and sesame seed oil (not much better), so now I'm going to try peanut oil or, probably better, grapeseed oil.

Sear for about 1 minute a side. Finish with a torch if necessary, but it shouldn't be.

Set the tuna steaks, one at a time, in the sesame seeds, to give it a crust. Thinly slice the steaks with a sharp sharp knife.

Possible sides:

sushi rice or steamed cauliflower or some kind of starchy vegetable
asparagus or broccoli fried with ginger and garlic. Blistered okra!

Weeknight Ramen

Ramen ought to be an easy meal. I'm not there yet. Here is where I am so far.




STEP 1: THE BROTH

2 quarts water
2 strips kelp
1/2 cup bonita flakes

Simmer the kelp in the water for ten minutes, then add the bonita flakes, simmer another five. Strain out the kelp and bonita flakes. Turn off heat and over.

STEP 2: PROTEINS

I used a sous vide preparation for soft boiled eggs at six minutes, 194 degrees followed by an iced water bath. Then I cracked the eggs and dunked them in warm water and peeled. It was a disaster. The eggs were almost formless. NEXT TIME: cook a touch longer then let them rest at room temperature.

UPDATE: skip the ice bath, and it works really, really well. Eggs were a little too firm, if anything, so maybe a warm water bath?

STEP 3: THE SOUP BASE

the base

2 tsp microplaned ginger
3 tsp microplaned garlic
2 tsp sesame seed oil
3 tbsp soy sauce (low sodium, as it happens)
2 tbsp mirin




Add the base to the broth and heat on low.
Then add: Shitake mushrooms

This is our broth.


STEP 4: FINISHING

Cook noodles (we tried cooking them in the broth and it predictably ate up lots of the broth.)

We added greens to make it a one pot meal.

chili escapade

So, when the weekly schedule backs up, and especially when it is helpful to have leftovers, there is always room for chili. I've been experimenting with several kinds of slow cooker chili, and can make a few recommendations for recipes.

1. Dried beans are fine to use, but you WILL need water to guarantee that they aren't crunchy. Most of my recipes involved using 12-15 oz. of beans. Provided the beans were covered with water, everything would work out fine. If not, I had to go back to the drawing board.

2. Use a mix of beans. My best mix was red beans, white beans, black eyed peas. The black eyed peas are the most tender, and really the best. Perhaps if I had soaked the kidney beans, they would have been better, as they turned out a touch crunchy.

3. Use a BIG can of chopped tomatoes. It makes the best broth. Don't be afraid to add country bacon.

4. spices are key. 1 tbsp ancho chili powder; 1 tsp. paprika; 1 tsp. salt; 1/2 tsp. cinnamon or allspice or something unexpected. 1/4 tsp. cayenne. (More if you don't have a freaking ten year old in the house.)

5. at least one green bell pepper. Green. And an onion and garlic.

Red Beans and Rice

Trying desperately to convert my wife and daughter to beans. Hoping this does the trick...

crockpot recipe. So, take down the crockpot.

2 cloves garlic
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
12 oz. andouille sausage

mince the garlic. chop everything else.

1 pound dried red beans, rinsed

throw it into the crockpot.

1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ancho chili powder
1/7 teaspoon cinnamon

 mix all these ingredients together.

7 cups water.

turn the crockpot on high, six hours.

Dish turned out quite well. Underspiced. Of course, the amount of spices you use must be tempered by the potency of the Andouille. Regardless, I would double the dry spices next time around.

sous vide escapades, vol. 3: pork roast

While it may seem like heresy to put a roast in a plastic bag and cook it in water, well... it is. But I did it any way.

The Joule chefstep instructions were fine, with one caveat. The pork squeezes as it cooks, so I believe it takes longer than stated. Because you have such a big window with the sous vide machine, I recommend overestimating the time in the pot.

Once done, I recommend the broiler to brown it. This will cook it to 145 degrees internally (assuming you come out of the oven at about 135) while giving you a beautiful brown crust.

sous vide escapes, vol. 2: duck breast

I have never cooked duck before. Finally tried it--duck breast. This seemed like a natural fit for sous vide.

The recipe came direct from Chefsteps and I did not vary it in any way.

There was a slightly elaborate preparation ritual that took place.

Score the skin.
Heat iron skillet, no oil.
Sear, skin side down, for three minutes.
Add garlic and thyme to iron skillet.
Sear, breast side, one minute.

Put duck and thyme and garlic into sous vide bag.
Cook at 136 degrees for about an hour (whatever the recipe says)

Reserve duck fat from pan.
Heat iron skillet. Very hot.
Sear, skin side down, for two minutes to three minutes, until brown and crispy.

It worked like a charm. I could have cooked at a lower temperature. The re-sear will cook the duck a hair more. But quite tasty.