Mardi Gras dinner and others...

• Recipes discussed:
• Pancakes: The King Arthur Flour Baking Companion
  
• Salmon fillet, marinated and seared on the grill.
• sforzola: Baked cauliflower from Marcella Cucina
• pasta al forno: Marcella Cucina to used leftover pasta
• Fried pasta
  
• fasolada

Dinner last night was:

• pancakes from the King Arthur baking cookbook recipe for pancake mix; just add 1 egg and a cup of buttermilk; wait 5 min. They were excellent.
• Nancy made a lovely salad.
• I cooked a 1 lb. piece of salmon fillet, briefly marinated in a oil and balsamic vinegar marinade, then seared on the grill until the skin turned black - excellent.
• Had a bottle of Charbaut champagne to top the meal.

Recent dining dishes:

• I had a cauliflower I needed to use before we go to Jamaica. I found a couple of recipes in Marcella Cucina, one which made a sforzola (perhaps): a blanched cauliflower, then cut into small pieces. Mixed with a bechamel, topped with grated parmesan, the whole baked until golden. The recipe calls for 1/4 lb of diced boiled ham. As I don't eat ham, I needed to omit or substitute. I remembered I had made a batch of "blox," i.e., bluefish cured as one would salmon. I had not approaced this, as I was afraid it might have been a disaster, related to some fish I failed to use in a timely way. But, wonderfully, the cure had fully preserved the bluefish and it had the suitable oiliness to work as in same way as salmon. It turns out to be quite subtle and worked well as an alternative to ham. Outstanding, surprizingly subtle. The bechamel followed someone's advice (probably Marcella, again) to add some nutmeg; also, after heating the milk, let it stand for a few minutes with rosemary and bay leaves steeping in the milk.
  
• I conceived of "fried" pasta. Not finding a recipe ready at hand, I saw another in Marcella Cucina, I think, for pasta al forno. Which I made, as it used the leftover bechamel - I think I made these dishes in the reverse order, the cauliflower appealing because it called for the 1 cup of 3 made left from this dish. Yes. And instead of a meat sauce, I used the remaining chili and fasolada for one layer of pasta, then a layer of pasta with 2 cups bechamel, then another pasta layer covered with, believe it or not, leftover thick split pea soup, finally covered with grated parmesan. Note that first the buttered baking dish was sprinkled with lemon zest and several seeded, sliced thinly kumquats, in place of the zest of a whole orange that Marcella called for. This dish, too, was rather wonderful.
• The leftover from the pasta served to be the base for the fried pasta I had desired. On Monday night after yoga class I fried the pasta in a stick free skillet with plenty of olive oil. Tasty and crunchy.
• We went to dinner at Alex and Neil's Saturday night. I made another batch of fasolada as my contribution. Alexandra, who's been to Greece, is Greek, and has run the kitchen of the family restaurant, was very kind to the fasolada. This time I again used cranberry beans, but I cooked the vegetables with a couple cups of red wine as well as plenty of garlic. I also only pureed a small amount of the soup, so that it was a little thinner than my previous trials. I liked it best this time. A considerable dish.