The joy that came from a not-yet-thawed chicken breast.

Wherein Mr Ullman discovers the usefulness of soaking very dry fennel in soy sauce for twenty minutes

I came home and discovered that the chicken I was planning to cook tonight wasn't thawed. It was kinda thawed but I would have to regig my plans for it and would likely be eating around 9 pm.   Time to re-plan.  

I had a half of a pork steak sitting in the fridge.   That was a start so I went from there.

Cooked up some lentils, chopped some sweet onion, shallots, garlic, fennel leaves ( my last organic box included some really dry fennel.  The flowers are very usable but the leaves leave much to be desired) and a small potato.  

I put the potato and fennel into a bowl to soak in soy sauce while the lentils were cooking.  The potatoes would cook slightly  in the acidity of the soy sauce  and I figured that it couldn't cause the dry fennel leaves any more harm.

Once the lentils were done I seared the pork , put everything into a bowl, added some cream of mushroom soup and capers and tossed.  I sprinkled a small amount of Sage Derby on top and baked for twenty minutes.

For a shot in the dark it worked very well.  I won't repeat it as such but it is worth playing with.

Dill sauce and other wonders.

Wherein Mr Ullman discovers Chocolate mint and becomes a better man.

Unlike my usual entry here I am going to give you measurements this time. This is because the entry has more to do with the sauce then the entrée. The sauce is a dill sauce and the entrée is salmon.

I have a tried and true dill sauce for fish. I have made so many times that I really don't need to measure things out any more. I know what a ¼ cup of baby dill feels like in the hand and can draw a tablespoon of capers by sight wins me bets and impress the hell out of women who have a sense of humor. The capers thing has actually won other people money in bets but that is another story.

Ok, the usual dill sauce is built like this:

1. 8 oz of plain yogurt (Something of a problem these days since the industry has seemed to embrace 6 oz or 32 oz packaging)
2. A quarter cup of green onions.
3. A quarter cup of fresh baby dill weed.
4. A tablespoon of capers.

Fairly straightforward and yummy. However, last night I didn't have a quarter cup of dill so it was time to do some adventuring.

In the organics box I got some fennel. The problem of a lack of dill weed was solved by adding fennel greens to to make up the difference. That wasn't all the notable. Fennel is sweeter then dill but they they do work well together.

What is notable is chocolate mint. The apartment building I live in has an herb garden that consists of a few easy plants and a number of volunteers. The chocolate mint is one of the volunteers and since I never have used it before I thought what the hell. I took five leaves, chopped them up and put them into the sauce. This turned out to be a great idea.

Chocolate mint tastes like chocolate in the same way that Watermelon Jolly Ranchers taste like watermelon – you can see the point of the name but that is about all. Chocolate mint added a fine bit of sweetness to the tartness of the dill. The salmon was wonderful.