Quarantine Cooking, Week 6

[starlady]

Recipes

• Rigatoni with Eggplant Puree – This was very good and pretty easy. I keep thinking I might chuck a couple of cloves of garlic in with the roasted veggies when I make it next time.
• Orange and Almond Biscotti – I found a sizable stash of candied orange peel in my pantry census and didn't want to make fruitcake. These are…fine. I didn't blanch the almonds because life is too short, but the finished biscotti don't have a very strong orange flavor. (My cointreau ran out just before I got to 3Tbsp, but it shouldn't have made that much of a difference. I would up the almonds to 1 cup and up the candied orange peel to 2/3 cup if I made these again.)
• Thai Peanut Chicken with Pomegranate Rice – The year I lived in Tokyo I made a variation on this recipe at least 2x a week. Specifically I made it with tofu then, which is how I make it now; last week I used this as a base recipe to make curry from a kit. It wasn't the biggest success in the world, for which I blame the kit as this recipe has never failed me. Maybe next time I'll actually make the pomegranate rice, which I have never actually done.
• Asparagus, goat cheese, and lemon pasta – The asparagusing continues. I use 6-8oz goat cheese now and I don't regret it.
• Chili crisp tofu with green beans – I got my FlyByJing chili crisp (see below) and then the NYT Magazine published this recipe. I made it with snap peas and it's extremely good.

Drinks

• The Boulevardier – A whiskey variant on the negroni, which I have been drinking quite regularly. The whiskey concept is fine, but I would decrease it back to 1oz.
• The Negroni – Does what it says on the tin.

Fancy condiments

• FlyByJing chili crisp – I saw Soleil Ho talking about this chili crisp on Twitter and I got my order in right before they sold out until June. I'm reordering for then, I expect, since the chili crisp is literally eat out of the jar good. I tried it on my Van Leeuwen honeycomb ice cream (it's not actual honeycomb; it's the German candy known as fairy food in Wisconsin) and yup, it's even good on ice cream.
• Wood's Vermont Syrup, ghost pepper maple syrup – Those of you who shop at Trader Joe's may remember their ghost pepper infused maple syrup, which has been replaced by ginger infused maple syrup, etc. This is almost certainly the company that supplied TJ's with that syrup. I also bought their maple bacon coffee to meet the shipping minimum and that was an excellent choice.

Comments

[cofax7]

I love a good boulevardier! Hard to find them, so if I'm in the mood I often get a manhattan, which everyone knows how to make.

I miss going out for cocktails.

[starlady]

I was just saying I miss going out to bars. Which I didn't even do that much! But I could really go for a good cocktail--the good thing about the Negroni is that it doesn't require much mixology skill.