The Hawthornes Cook Together.

This morning, I took out the pitiful chicken carcass leftover from last night's dinner, dumped it in a pot of water, added coarsely chopped onions with the skin on, some garlic cloves, chopped carrots, celery with leaves, salt, peppercorns, and freshly picked bay leaves, and left it to simmer all day.

Tomorrow, my little chickadees, I will show you how to make consomme. This is just the first step.




Here's the stock after it's simmered for about 6 hours. I will use a few ladlefulls in my sauce for tonight's dinner, but I'll let it set for now to cool off. Then I'll put it INto the fridge to chill (or as Auntie Sandy would say, "come to room temp"). Then tomorrow I'll skim the congealed fat off the top before continuing on to step two for the consomee.






Mr. H. and I went to our irregular groshery shtore the other day and bought sushi grade tuna nuggets. He marinated it (or as Aunt Sandy would say, "marinaded it") in Italian dressing overnight.

I added a bit of soy sauce, some sesame oil, and sesame seeds to the marinated tuna.

In the meantime, I'm getting ready my ingredients for my sauce for the tuna. I have chopped tomatoes, fresh parsley from my garden, shallots, garlic, a bit of dried red peppers from my garden, 1/2 and 1/2, sherry, coarse mustard, and salt and pepper.

Mr. Hawthorne has started the asparagus and the rice (burner back right).

The bottom left burner is my sauce. I melted some buttah (Land o' Lakes Unsalted) then added shallots, chopped tomatoes, and some garlic. Pushed that around for a while in the pan. Then I made some disgusting noises with my almost empty coarse-grained Dijon Mustard with white wine squirt bottle as I added that to the mixture. Added some flour for a roux, cooked it. Then I ladled some of that chicken stock, then some 1/2 and 1/2 into the mix. Salt and pepper, chopped parsley.

Here, I have my sauce on the right, and Mr. H. has his sauteed tuna on the left. Cast iron skillets are the best.














By the way, the rice I used tonight was Lundberg Countrywild. There are, I think 4 different blends of this brand of rice, all very good. This one is the wild blend of gourmet brown rice. Quite good.

















Here's the tuna. I must say Mr. H. cooked it perfectly.










The tuna is slightly pink in the middle, just as it should be.

Here's our plated meal. Starting at top right, we have my Lundberg's wild blend of gourmet brown rice. Bottom right is the sesame encrusted tuna with a tomato-Dijon-Sherry-cream sauce on the side. Then we have the lovely asparagus.

A total hit.

Now, I'll spend longer cleaning up the kitchen, even though I'm using the dish washer, than I spent cooking the meal.

And a damn fine meal it was!