What did you cook or eat today (June 2023)?

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blades said:
Picadillo is nothing more than ground meat, sofrito and rice on which to serve it. Beyond that it is up to the cook. Ground beef is more common than ground pork. My wife has an allergy to beef so we use pork. Olives and potatoes are excellent additions. So are raisins and dried cranberries. In Cuba (I was raised there as a child) adding raisins was a common addition in our kitchen. It is an authentic and traditional ingredient for our family.

Mincemeat in Spanish is "carne picada." The term "picadillo" derives from that. As always, recipes are not rules. They are recommendations for you to motivate your cooking skills and adapt as you prefer. I'll bet the Cubans you know make a fine picadillo. It is a basic comfort food all over the Spanish speaking world with as many versions as there are cooks.
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For fun I called one of my sisters who is an accomplished cook and asked her what she puts in her picadillo. I was surprised by her ingredient list.

Ground beef (ground pork for us)
sofrito
pimiento olives
sherry
Worcestershire sauce (Not Cuban)
Tabasco sauce (Not Cuban)
raisins (the old family tradition)
capers (Not Cuban}

I will use her ingredient list today and let you know how it went. She also adds some tomato sauce but I'm not going there. I don't have measurements so I will work with common sense and a process of season and taste. Where I say "not Cuban" above I'm not saying that the ingredients are not available to Cubans. I just mean that you don't see these ingredients in traditional Cuban food. My sister has Americanized the basic ground meat and sofrito to her preference. Fingers are crossed.
 
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Oh dear.. that was dissapointing. When we arrived we were the first customers
and the servers didn't even greet us, then ignored us for 15 minutes to do their hair.
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No bread basket was brought, which was given to other customers. The soup was decent, but my tuna tartar was completely overpowered by pickled cucumber ' spaghetti ' , capers and gherkins. And clearly frozen tuna too.
Then the mains:
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The steak was served somewhat cold in the middle, bland and clearly not seared well. Bland sauce, and vegetables from the ready made section of the restaurant store! Very sad.
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Potato gnocchi ok, sauce ok, fish clearly reheated ( soggy skin) . The best thing? The homemade fries and mayo.
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.. Yeah we fled before dessert.. This was a sad pretentious place. The owner seemed to only pay attention to his friends who received bread baskets. ' Mes amis' ( my friends) certainly was only for HIS friends. Not worth a 100 Euro.

This is one of the so called best restaurants in Delft.. well I guess this is where Dutch restaurants get a bad reputation.
 
blades said:
Picadillo is nothing more than ground meat, sofrito and rice on which to serve it. Beyond that it is up to the cook. Ground beef is more common than ground pork. My wife has an allergy to beef so we use pork. Olives and potatoes are excellent additions. So are raisins and dried cranberries. In Cuba (I was raised there as a child) adding raisins was a common addition in our kitchen. It is an authentic and traditional ingredient for our family.

Mincemeat in Spanish is "carne picada." The term "picadillo" derives from that. As always, recipes are not rules. They are recommendations for you to motivate your cooking skills and adapt as you prefer. I'll bet the Cubans you know make a fine picadillo. It is a basic comfort food all over the Spanish speaking world with as many versions as there are cooks.
Click to expand...

I cooked picadillo today for the current recipe challenge. Its my first time cooking it. I put ideas together from various recipes, starting with Spain so it may differ somewhat from American versions.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
Lunch ended up on the road today. After shopping we needed to buy some firewood. 440kg later... (our combined unbreaked towing weight is 750kg, so we had about 60kg spare! )

View attachment 101073View attachment 101074View attachment 101075the burrito place was unexpectedly closed, no idea why especially given its a public holiday weekend here, so back to Sushi & Nori. Hubby had the veg tempora roll and 1 rice & avo, I had 2 rice and avo. Plus we had a donut each.
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Daughter just told me they have stacked away $800 worth of wood for winter.

Russ
 
Morning Glory said:
I cooked picadillo today for the current recipe challenge. Its my first time cooking it. I put ideas together from various recipes, starting with Spain so it may differ somewhat from American versions.
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Excellent. What did you put in it beyond the ground meat and sofrito? I made a version of my sister's version as I posed above. The addition of capers was brilliant on her part. It really made the dish sing. I didn't put the sherry or raisins in it beause I wanted to try it without anything sweet. Next time I'll put them and then I'll be able to adapt it. It's been fun discussing picadillo and useful for me because I'm improving mine as a result.
 
rascal said:
Daughter just told me they have stacked away $800 worth of wood for winter.

Russ
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Yeah, we usually use over $1,000 on the average winter but it is our only source of heating except for when I put the oven on or have a shower. But the price is high this year, of wood. It has been badly affected by the fires 4½ years ago. Properly seasoned hard wood (but not pine) needs a decent length of time to season properly. It's one reason a lot of places have padlocks on their woodsheds, but leave the houses and vehicles unlocked!
 
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