mango with cantaloupe and cucumber, bacon & eggs

This is basically about a combination of mango and cantaloupe with cucumber and then heated up with a single fresh jalapeño, and boy, this particular pepper sure is hot. This intrigues me. It was burning my face off unpleasantly and I ended up cutting off the outer flesh from the inner membrane of individual slices there on my plate to lessen its beastly fire, and even then it was still quite hot. There was no unifying dressing, glop, or glue, say yogurt, to hold it together, just a pile of fruit and melon and gourd, Anacardiaceae and Cucurbitaceae to be a nerd about it. 

Cilantro, which life wouldn't be the same without. Americans call the leafy portion of the plant cilantro and the seeds of the same plant coriander. Other English-speaking nations refer to both portions as coriander and then specify either leaf or seed. 

It is a scientific FACT that some unfortunate people are genetically predisposed to be absolutely cilantrophobic, and that makes me feel pity. It is commonly understood that you either love it or you hate it, but I do not comport with that belief. I myself hated cilantro in the past and I wondered why anyone would ever use it, much less understood why anyone would ever use a lot of it, and now I love it wholeheartedly and I am rarely without a bunch of cilantro held in refrigeration as a growing plant in a cup of water even when I have no immediate use for it. So in my own case cilantro, leafy coriander, was an acquired taste, and that means there is hope for you, if you are a h8r, if you would just keep giving it a chance. Even the Beatles agree, "Give Leaves a Chance".

Thick-slab deli bacon is baked at 425℉/220℃ for 12 minutes, turned and retuned to the oven for another 4 minutes. A crude aluminum foil pan is fashioned to facilitate cleanup. This was done in a tabletop microwave/convection combination oven, handy little thing. 

ARTS !

salad with cucumber and shrimp

The dressing is a simple honey/mustard vinaigrette with light rice vinegar whisked in the bowl before the ingredients were added, leafy vegetable last. 

The onion is a sweet and mild. 

pork cubes, sauce, tomato, cucumber, tzatziki

I sure like having these pork cubes around. Now they're all gone. You know what that means don'tcha? MOAR! Except next time I'm not going to pressure cook 'em.

The flavor forfeited by hard steaming with pressure was recovered by using the liquid for sauce along with other strong flavors, red wine, touches of garlic powder and some kind of prepared curry. Sauce + cubes enhanced further here with my own blend of chile flakes (three separate packages of different types of dried peppers, torn open, seeds dumped, and processed to flakes in a coffee grinder dedicated to everything that's not coffee).

This batch of tzatziki is runny but I don't care. Didn't drain the yogurt, but did squeeze the cucumbers. Added the lemon juice not just the lemon zest. It tasted weird. Needed salt. Still weird, kind of bitter. Added honey. Fixed. Still lacked some depth so added scant 1/8 teaspoon mixed pepper flakes. Now it's wonderful but still runny. Three huge cucumbers, peeled and de-seeded, processed then strained for 16 oz. Greek yogurt plus diced onion, fresh garlic, salt, honey, chile flakes.

sliced cucumber

De-seeded, with shoyu, that's soy sauce to you plebes.



Is that sheik, I mean chic, or what?