Thursday, December 31, 2009

A Christmas Dinner

After an afternoon of National and International Skyping we needed to toast to absent family. We mixed up our usual cocktails, with Jim attempting a new one - a Bourble! It turned out to be a disappointing drink and not one we would recommend (but at least we gave it a try!)

We wanted to have a Traditional Christmas Dinner, so we roasted up Turkey Breast and enjoyed it with homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans.

Homemade Stuffing
Old bread, cubed and toasted in the oven till dry
In a pan, sweat 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic with butter and a bay leaf. De-glaze with white wine and add the remainder of the stick of butter. Add 1tbs each of thyme and sage, 1/2 tbs rosemary and 3/4 of a carton of chicken stock. Pour this over the cubed bread and bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes.

Green Beans & Cherry Tomatoes
Trim beans and bring to the boil in a pot of water. Prepare an ice bath, to plunge them into once boiling commences - you want the beans to still be crunchy. In a frying pan, toast slivered almonds (set aside to garnish dish). Once the almonds are toasted, toss the cherry tomatoes till they are warm. Then add the cooked green beans and toss all together. Serve on a platter with the cherry tomatoes around the outside and the toasted almonds on top.

Sweet and Russet Mashed Potatoes
No big deal here. Dad likes sweet potatoes but they're too sweet for Jim. So we compromised and added two big sweets to two or three Russets. Nice light color and moderate sweetness.

Mom's Almond Puff
We forgot to write down the recipe, but I believe that this one is the same. Jim's brother Mike and he loved it as kids and one of those recipes that doesn't seem as outdated as Betty Crocker creations.

Happy Hollandaise!

I am sure we have already mentioned how much we like our eggs for breakfast - so we really wanted to share the joy with Jim and Dot on Christmas Day. We couldn't decide which to have - the Canadian bacon or the smoked salmon - so we had one of each!

Eggs Benedict and Eggs Royale
Using this helpful (step-by-step) recipe for Hollandaise sauce we made both the Benedict and the Royale. We toasted the muffins, topped with either the Candian bacon or the smoked salon, and a poached egg. The Hollandaise was refreshingly tangy and accompanied the runny eggs perfectly!

Dot's Pecan Pie

Dot recently treated herself to a new Kitchenaid Mixer and a Cuisinart and we were all determined to get the most out of these two magnificent machines during our stay! Dot made the pie using the Kitchenaid the day we arrived, and it was so delicious we asked her make it again!

The original recipe was from 'The Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library' - called "Delux Pecan Pie". You can use the recipe online (also Betty Crocker), but rather than using all that corn syrup, I would recommend swapping it out for the following:
1/2 cup of corn syrup only
extra 1/3rd of a cup of sugar (to what the online receipe states)
1/2 cup whippng cream
1stp vanilla
1/4 cup brandy
I also think the quantity of pecan nuts is too small so add an additional 1/2 cup to increase your satisfaction!

BBQ Lamb Rack with Spinach & Sweet Potato Salad

Being a beautiful sunny day in Florida - we hit the beach and sent Dot (Jim's mom) to the supermarket armed with a list of yummy ingredients that we would need for the following week! The butcher at Publix market was very helpful to Dot, as our description of meat cuts were unfamiliar to her. She ended up with some beautiful cuts that we reveled in preparing with them. We were inspired by the heat, to cook outside on the BBQ, so Peta whipped up a quick marinade for the lamb while we enjoyed a good cocktail (or two!) and had the sweet potatoes cooking.

Lamb Rack Marinade
1/3rd Balsamic vinegar
2/3rds Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Thyme

Do not expose the meat to the marinade for longer than 15 minutes each side, as the vinegar will start to denature the meat.

Heat the BBQ on high. Sear the fat side of the rack first - in order to crispy it up (~3 minutes). The flip over the sear the meat (~ 5 minutes). Then move the rack to the top rack of the BBQ (if you have one) and turn the heat down low. Cook for about 15 minutes an the meat will come out medium rare. Jim Snr likes his more cooked, so it was really easy to slice off his cutlets and grill them individually - while we plated the rest.

Served with Spinach and Sweet Potato salad - only this time using toasted slivered almonds (as we didn't have any pinenuts (still delicious). It was great see that even though Dot was not a lamb lover - so tucked into her four cutlets in no time, giving the bones to Jim to gnaw on!

Crepes and Fruit for Breakfast

We wanted ot start out our vacation with something lite... so we eased int breakfast with fresh fruit bowls (of strawberries and pineapple). We followed this up with crepes filled with ricotta, banana and toasted almonds.

Crepe batter (from Peta's childhood)
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 cup of milk

The trick to getting no lumps in your batter is to put the flour into the bowl and add the eggs to a well in the flour. Add just a dash of the milk and using a fork, turn the mixture into a thick paste. Once the paste is formed and smooth, you can then gradually add the remaining milk. Note for those who may be lactose intolerant - use cream instead of milk, but use only 2/3rd of a cup and thin it down with water, so that your batter won't be too thick. Let the batter stand for 30 minutes prior to cooking. This mixtures makes 4 decent sized crepes (about 1 ladel full each).

Fill each crepe with ricotta (note that the ricotta we used was not sweet enought - as it was a 'diet' type that was already in the frigde, so make sure you have a good kind), sliced banana and a sprinkling of toasted slivered almonds). Roll and serve warm.

Welcoming Crockpot Roast

After a long flight from CA to Florida we were welcomed with some good home cooking from Jim's Dad. This hearty meal served us well as our sole meal for the day. Jim Snr had timed the meal perfectly - putting it on first hing n the morning, so it was ready to eat the moment we arrived (as a late lunch).

Recipe to follow....

Boxcars and Oysters

Boxcar (Wille)

So we decided to get out of our drink "rut" of Sidecars and go for something else with Triple Sec. The Boxcar seemed as though it do the trick. We don't know whether the name is from the freight car or from the country singer and, as you'll read, we didn't care enough to find out.

We used this recipe from the Drinks Mixer website. The pink hue of the drink and the frothy body from the egg white were spot on, but the taste was far too medicinal for both of us. Using the Esquire recipe with lime juice instead of lemon may make a better drink, but for us, it's not worth trying. Back to basics!

Oyster Stew

Our Oyster Stew was just kind of made up using an amalgam of this recipe and this recipe. The jarred oysters have been on sale lately so we've probably ingested all of the Cesium that we'd ever need. But we "needed" to use up the cream that we had gotten on sale, so there you go.

Essentially, we sweated some aromatics (shallot, celery, garlic) and added a bay leaf. Then added some Dry Vermouth (the secret ingredient in our risotti), simmer for a while and then strained. We then added the oysters and their liquor, heavy cream and a bit of parsley and thyme. We apologize for the sketchy recipe, but we are writing this from the future (whoooooo).

Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

The Spinach Salad was from our America's Test Kitchen cookbook. You've got to sign-in to the Cook's Illustrated site, but we found an almost identical recipe here. We had no red onion so subbed shallot for the red onion and garlic. And of course, we would not use Splenda or anything of the kind. As Celia Cruz would say, "Azucar!!".

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Shirred Eggs Redux

As we've written before, we like eggs. A lot. So we've been trying to cook "coddled" or "shirred" eggs the "right" way for a while. It's a baked egg dish with cream and cheese, pretty simply. We thought that we had blogged about it before, but apparently not. The problem that we've been having it that the mixture in the middle of the ramekin remains totally raw and the edges get way too hard. Here are two sites from which we've pulled a basic recipe. Emeril's for the basic gist of the recipe and this one for the temperature (we used cheddar cheese). The ingredients are different in each of the recipes, but the general concept is the same, so feel free to mix and match.

However, the most important thing that you must do is make a bain-manie or water bath in which the ramekins sit inside the oven. Just put the filled ramekins into a pyrex dish and fill it halfway or so up the ramekins with water. Also, if you want to broil the cheese on top of the dishes, take the broiling time into account or you'll hard cook the yolks. This advice is very much a "do as we say, not as we do", because we blew that step. So we haven't yet perfected the dish, but these instructions should work.

Jim and Peta

Homemade Holiday Gifts

We decided to continue to check out of "the system" by making most of our gifts this year. We made candied lemon peel, apple butter and lemon curd. Some successes here and some mild failures follow:

Candied Lemon Peel

This one is easy and helped us to get rid of the lemon peel leftover from Jim's Vodka and Soda with Lemon. We throw most of our vegetal matter into our worm bin, but the wormies don't much care for strong citrus. We collect our peels in a large ziplock bag in the freezer. Once the bag in getting close to full, it's time to candy your peels. The recipe is from Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander's Tuscan Cookbook. It's not online, so we present it here.

  • Using a paring knife, remove the peel from the leftover flesh.
  • In our first batch, we kept the peel in quarters and cut after. Some of the peels were too rubbery to jar, so in the second batch, we pre-cut the quarters into strips and moved to the next step.
  • Boil your lemon peel with two changes of water to remove the bitterness in the pith.
  • Weigh the peels and add an equal amount of sugar and the lemons back into the pan.
  • Cook on low heat until the sugar is dissolved
  • Drain (we reserved the lemony sugar for something else) and dry for a few days out of the way of ants.
  • Roll the peels in castor sugar and jar. That's it!
Apple Butter

Jim scoured the interwebs for appropriate recipes for apple butter and ended up with a free-wheeling, seat-of-the-pants recipe that seemed to turn out alright.

Most recipes that "made sense" had you core and then cook the apples with the skin on and then reomove the skin with a food mill. Because we don't own a food mill, Jim peeled six Granny Smiths and six Jonathan, cored them, hit the skin with the Cuisinart and wrapped half of the chopped skin in some cheese cloth. Peta thought that adding all of the skins would add too much astringency and was probably correct. [For the second batch, we added the long peels into the crockpot and pulled them out after the cooking was done. This technique is not recommended since some peels were left behind. Bummer and sorry to all of our recipients.]

All of this went into the crockpot, filling it, on high and it cooked down for several hours. It started to break down so we added a bunch of cinnamon and lesser amounts of nutmeg, cloves and allspice (all pre-ground). Then we added a pinch of salt and sugar to taste. Sorry, but that's what we did. No measuring cups here. This mixture cooked on low all night and in the morning we'd wake up to the lovely smell of very much reduced apple butter. Slather it on the Crusty Bread that we've blogged about elsewhere and start your engines!

P.S. We got about four half-pint jars from each batch of 12 apples.

Lemon Curd

We used Alton Brown's recipe and things didn't work out as well as we had hoped. Regrettably the sauce didn't seem to thicken the way it ought to. The lemon curd ended with dense "correct curd" consistency at the bottom of the jars, whilst the top was a light 'mousse' consistency. The taste was fantastic, but the image was not. Peta is gearing up to make this recipe again in the new year, in the hopes that it can be the correct consistency throughout. She is working on the theory that the mixture did not heat correctly - so we will keep you posted!

Peta's Italian Chicken

So Peta is decidedly not Italian; however, the woman can cook. She and Lyndy used to cook this dish back in Adelaide when they were poor uni students. You could get the chicken for a buck a leg!!

This dish is super simple, yet flavorful, and it's great in summer and winter. Peta used whole chicken legs because we had them and they are cheap. But you could probably use any chicken parts.

She starts by stuff parmesan slices under the skin (naughty naughty!). Then she massages EVOO and salt into the skin. The chicken pieces are then placed in baking dish and a mixture of chicken stock, white wine (or verjus), bay leaf, thyme, rosemary, 2 cloves of garlic is added to the dish about an inch up the chicken. It is cooked in a moderate oven, covered, for ~30 minutes or until juices run clear and undercovered for the final 5 minutes to crisp the skin.

Easy, tasty and healthier than our usual fair. Jim saved the sauce in the freezer for something else. Ya never know...

Caesar Salad

So the next few blogs may just be placeholders until we get back home to find some of the recipes on Peta's computer. We're blogging from Florida about two weeks after we made the Caesar Salad. The recipe is here (no link yet). It produced a flavorful dressing with a great consistency and we'll probably stick with it since the one that we made later on Siesta Key was not good and needed a lot of doctoring. We'll blog that one soon.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Shirred Eggs

So, we like eggs. A lot. Perhaps too much. Don't judge us! The fact that eggs have their own carrying case never ceases to amaze. All hail the amniotic ovum!

In a seemingly never-ending quest to cook eggs in different ways, Jim came across a recipe for "Shirred Eggs" while looking for the "Sherried Eggs" that we cooked last week. The idea is to coddle the eggs in butter and cream and probably brown the cheese a bit.

Unfortunately, Jim put three eggs in each ramekin along with three tbsp of cream (so slutty!) and the timing was all messed up. We upped the time in the oven which was probably necessary, but they went from looking not at all done and totally jiggly to overdone with none of the runny yolk that the NYT Simple Crusty Bread Recipe (posted bleow because the link requires login) could sop up. We will fix the cooking times, add more cheese and hit it with the broiler and then revisit this recipe.

Simple Crusty Bread Recipe

Adapted from “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day,” by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007)

Time: About 45 minutes plus about 3 hours’ resting and rising

1 1/2 tablespoons yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough

Cornmeal.


1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Place pan on middle rack.

Sweet Potato, Spinach and Pine Nut Salad

This will be a recipe for Peta's homemade Sweet Potato, Spinach and Pine Nut Salad. We brought it to Saturday brunch at Megan and Jim's. They served some really tasty food there, we both agreed and the Limoncello Sunrise cocktails were too easy to drink! Then it was on to Chris and Jason to see some Aussie folk. They had a nice Christmas punch of cranberry juice, pomegranate juice, vodka and something else. Jim was warned that it packed a punch but felt no effects, ill or otherwise. We can't say exactly what that says about Jim...

Sweet Potato, Spinach & Pine Nut Salad
This is a salad Peta's family enjoys during the hot summer months in Perth, Western Australia. It is a light accompaniment to meat and seafood dishes. Use the bright golden (orange) colored potatoes - which Peta has discovered they are called 'yams' in the supermarket here (see Wiki description http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato).

Cube the sweet potato about 1cm squared, then season generously with salt and pepper and a light coating of olive oil. Place on a baking sheet and cook till softened in a moderate oven (about 25 minutes).
On a platter place baby spinach. Allow the sweet potato to cool down a little (can be served warm) then toss generously on top of the spinach. Dress the salad with lightly toasted pine nuts and a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing
Peta likes the acidity of the Balsamic vinegar, so she is very generous in her dosing. Try this once and make your own adjustments accordingly.
50% good olive oil
50% good balsamic vinegar
kosher salt
pepper
1/4 tsp of dry mustard
shake or whisk together

Bourbon Chicken Liver Paté

Jim whipped up a batch of cheap chicken liver paté on Saturday (the 12th) from a recipe on the Epicurious site. Not much to say here other than it is good and cheap and that it does get better with time. Peta liked it so much that she wants Jim to make some for her girls night party. He said that he'll think about it.

Here is the reicpe.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Asian style snapper and stir-fried veggies

Last night, Jim prepped the ingredients for Peta's Asian Style Snapper with Sesame Dressing. The original recipe came from the December 2008/January 2009 issue of Delicious magazine and Peta has doctored it, but since we couldn't find it online, here it is:

Sesame Dressing (make ahead):
1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil (we used peanut oil)
3 coves garlic, thinly sliced
2 small Thai chilies, seeds removed, thinly sliced
4 thin slices ginger, cut into matchsticks
1/4 - 1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/4 cup (60ml) lime juice, plus lime wedges to serve
3 tsp caster sugar (or to taste)
3 tsp fish sauce (or to taste)

Fish:
2 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
1 lemongrass stem (pale part only) very finely chopped
2 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded (we used lime peel due to our kaffir supply problem)
2 small Thai chilies, seeds removed, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup (60ml) lime juice
4 plate sized snapper cleaned and scaled (we used fillets)
1/2 cup coriander/cilantro leaves

For the sauce, add garlic, chilies and ginger into a small saucepan and heat over low heat until the garlic is fragrant but not colored. Remove from the heat and add the other ingredients.

For the fish, preheat a grill on high heat. Combine the ginger, lemongrass and lime leaves with the chili, garlic and lime juice in a small bowl and set aside.

Pat fish dry wish a paper towel and then rub the fish with the chili mixture and enclose with aluminum foil. Place on the grill and cook six minutes per side covered. Let stand for 3 minutes, transfer to plates and drizzle any cooking juices. Spoon over the dressing, scatter with cilantro and serve. (Peta cooked the fillets on the stove in a large pan)

We fired up some baby bok choy and red bell pepper in some peanut oil and drizzled soy sauce and called it a good side. Good stuff!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Watch it, Jerk!

For last night's main course, we cooked Jamaican Jerk Pork with Tropical Mash. The jerk sauce/rub recipe was found here. We halved the recipe but only used one habanero pepper when it should have been two or three. Upon tasting the sauce, Jim was glad that he only put one in, but after Peta took the double thick boneless pork chops off the "barbie", we missed the heat. So be sure to add the right number of peppers if you are going to grill (and lose some of the sauce to the flames). Additionally, we wished that we had butterflied the pork and put in the sauce or just cut the chops in half because the surface area to volume ratio was too low to allow the jerk flavor to be the star. Jim wished that he had remembered to brine the chops as well. They were a bit dry for our liking. Bummer.

For the side, we made Alton Brown's Tropical Mash, which Jim got from Alton's "I'm Just Here For The Food" book, but that we also found here. It was really good as is and would have worked to cool down the jerk pork had we used the correct amount of habaneros. It's shown here on a bed of spinach.

To build a better bread

We have been unhappy with the bread recipe that we've been using. And the bread at the store either has mono or diglycerides or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils which we don't want. So Jim stumbled across this recipe a few days ago and we made it last night.

It had a very short igredient list (flour, yeast, water, salt), came out with a pretty good crumb and it matched pretty well with the Soupe Au Pistou that we cooked for an appetizer. It's from a blog called Recession Recipes and it appealled to us in that it lists the price per serving for each meal. Sweet!

We'll put the main course on another post so that we don't clutter the board.

PS: We cooked Sherried Eggs from the same blog for breakfast and it was pretty tasty. Perhaps a bit more sherry would have made it even better.

Stone's (Dive Bar)

On Sunday morning, Jim got on the world web interweb and searched for places in Napa other than Downtown Joe's that have the NFL ticket. We found Stone's and watched the Patriots get beaten by the Dolphins with a couple Greyhounds and Bloody Mary's.

The Greyhounds were poured with a heavy hand (nice) but the grapefruit juice was the Sunnyfarms brand, which is pretty awful. Then again, the price was right at $3.

The Bloody's were OK and featured a splash of sweet and sour mix that worked, were also poured with a heavy hand, were larger than the Greyhounds and were $4.

Bartenders were friendly and the crowd were locals. Didn't sample any of the free hot dogs, but they were probably like, well, hot dogs.

Festivus (for the restivus)

On Saturday we headed to our second Festivus Party at Mary's house. The combination of good friends, food and wine inspired Peta to bring a little of her 'homeland' to the party - "Aussie sausage rolls"

Having never made them before, she had to look to the internet for some recipes... there are two (see below) - but neither seemed quite right from a flavor perspective - so they were melded together and the result was really good.

Aussie rolls

New Zealand rolls

Peta's version (made 80, 1" rolls):
2 lbs ground beef
2 lbs ground pork
1 medium onion (finely diced)
2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
1 tbsp chopped fresh sage
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp Sweet Hungarian paprika
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp kosher salt
1/2 cup of bread crumbs
1/2 cup of cream
2 packets of frozen Puff Pastry (17.3 oz each)
1 egg white

* Place the meat and herbs together in a large bowl
* Immediately prior to mixing, coat the bread crumbs with cream (to moisten them), then add to the meat - warning here do not let the crumb/cream mixture stand as it forms a really hard mass!
* Fold the ingredients together with your hands - don't over mix, as it will make the meat tough
* Roll out a sheet of pastry onto a floured surface till it is approximately 11 - 12" lengthwise, then cut in half
* Place an 8th of the mixture per half sheet of pastry. Wet the edges of the pastry prior to rolling.
* Brush the pastry with the egg white.
* Your choice: cut now or keep whole. Cut up - it took 40 minutes to cook at 350F. Warning if you space them out too much on the tray they can fall over and fry in the fat (which doesn't make them look too good!). Perhaps space them only slightly apart, so that the fat can still come out, but they don't fall over) or try them whole.

Grade: A-

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Turkey Day Redux

This past Saturday, Peta and I rolled on down to Menlo Park in Lucy, her cherry red Mini Cooper, for a second Thanksgiving with some of my old college friends and their families. We picked up Cliff in SF and kept trucking South.

We brought a chess pie made from the recipe on the epicurious site. The filling was from that recipe sans the compote, but the crust was made by Peta from a Marie Claire cookbook. I highly recommend this Southern dessert, and I am not a dessert person. It won't keep the pounds off, but it's not too sweet either.

Everything was tasty: Angela's salad (with cilantro!), Leah's sweet potatoes (we burned the marshmallows on the top, but she fixed it) and mashed, Michael's turkey and stuffing, my gravy (Peta helped make it better with vinegar because I over did it on the schmaltz manié) and Pam's wonderful chocolate tart.

We brought a magnum of wine from Domaine Carneros, but I can't remember what kind.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Thanksgiving Feast

We had Jim's brother's family and one of Peta's co-workers over for the feast. The heritage turkey (a Black Spanish) that our friend Matt's mother raised arrived Tuesday and we immediately did a dry brine even though we had but two days rather than the suggested three. Didn't even matter. It's called the Judy Bird and it helped us to produce a fantastic turkey.

Here's the menu:
Appetizers
  • Cheese Plate (with too many cheeses to list)
  • Dates Stuffed with Parmesan and Toasted Walnuts
  • Domain Carneros Brut 2006 Champagne

Main
  • Dry-brined Black Spanish Heritage Turkey stuffed with Date, Sage, Walnut and Preserved Lemon Stuffing
  • Herbed Oyster Stuffing
  • Mashed Potatoes
  • Brussel Sprouts with Cider and Bacon
  • Louis Martini M^2 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon, MacMurray Ranch Winemaker's Signature 2006 Pinot Noir and/or Trefethen 2006 Chardonnay

Dessert

  • Apple Crisp with Breyer's Vanilla Ice Cream
  • Kona Blend Coffee

The 15 pound turkey was cooked for around 4 hours at 325 and flipped once until the internal temperature was 145 F, since heritage birds can dry out and they aren't all infected like mass-produced birds. Carry-over brought it to 152 F while the potatoes cooked at an agonizingly slow rate. It was unbelievably good.

While we waited, we played a little bocce and ate the Stuffed Dates (The New Best Recipe) and cheese plate and drank a magnum(!) of Domaine Carneros champagne.

We cooked mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts with cider and bacon from The New Best Recipe book. We subbed apple juice for cider which was a mistake. If nothing else, we should have added a bit of cider vinegar for some acid punch. The dish really missed it. It also could have used Parmesan cheese in my opinion as well. The potatoes were good but nothing to write home about.

Peta's non-US upbringing did not stop her from making up a great stuffing recipe out of nowhere. She used the breadcrumbs from the Peasant White Bread loaves that we baked out of "Daily Bread". It's a sticky, yeasty recipe but serviceable. We used less honey than required and that probably hurts the crumb. We are on the lookout for an easy, quick, tasty recipe, so let us know if you have one.

I cooked the Herbed Oyster Stuffing from Epicurious also with a sourdough and homemade bread mixture. Boom... the bomb.

Jim's brother's family contributed the Apple Crisp which they make with double crisp from the Bride and Groom Cookbook. So tasty!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Dinner for three with Morels, Venison, etc.

So we had Katherine (AKA KP) over last night. Started her off with a super strong Hendrick's Martini. Peta and I stuck with our respective G&T and Party Girl with a Yellow Hat (stupid name for my vodka, soda and lemon) while we made Mussel and Fennel Bisque. We used all of the same ingredients except subbed bourbon for brandy because we were out. The difference was in the cooking order. We did the recipe a couple of weeks prior and realized that we could just sauté the fennel and carrots, pull a few pieces of fennel out, add the shallots then add the clam juice and wine to steam the mussels. It's not as precise and you have to eyeball things, but so what if the bisque isn't as bisque-y and you only use one pot!

KP brought a Round Pond 2005 Cab over to eat with the main that we were serving which was pan-fried sirloin and tenderloin of venison, honey-ginger glazed carrots, simple mashed potatoes and morel sauce. I got the morels in a trade from a friend. We got the morels and would return the finished sauce. Now all they have to do is add the creme fraîche and they are good to go. The sauce recipe came from Sonja Lee's book Sauce, which Peta gave to me as a birthday present. Good stuff.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Takeaway at home

We were rolling by Vallejo on the way back from a night and a morning in San Francisco and stopped into The Asian Market at 1800 Spring St. The staff there was super friendly and although they didn't have everything we wanted (no holy basil, etc.), the owner told us to call him the next time we were coming by so that he could harvest some kaffir lime leaves from his own trees. Sweet!
We felt like some Pad Thai and I figured that we should make some Tom Ka Gai while we were at it. For the soup, this recipe seemed pretty "authentic" and we liked the fact that it went into the story behind kaffir lime leaves. Here's what we did with it.

Thai Chicken Coconut Soup (Tom Ka Gai Recipe)

Photo and recipe of Thai Chicken Coconut Soup (Tom Ka Gai) courtesy of my buddies at Andrews McMeel Publishing. A note on galangal/ginger: while often used together, they are not the same ingredient and taste very different! Many recipes will have you substitute ginger for galangal (which can be difficult to find), which isn’t really a “substitute.” Think of it as – if you can’t get galangal, ginger would be great in this soup too. Find galangal at the Asian market – sometimes you can get fresh galangal otherwise you may find it frozen. ~jaden

Tessa’s intro: “I just wouldn’t cope with not knowing how to make some version of this soup. I love it. You can add a few mushrooms, a couple of fresh spinach leaves or some slices of zucchini in with the chicken. Also wonderful instead of the chicken is to cook some large, shelled shrimp on a barbecue or grill pan and toss them into the soup just before serving. The fish sauce is the salt in this soup so adjust the quantities according to your taste (and the same with the chile). I like it not too strong. Keep the cilantro stems in your freezer to add flavor to a broth or stew.”

1 1/2 inch piece of galangal or ginger, peeled and sliced (we used powdered galangal)
small bunch fresh cilantro with roots
4 kaffir lime leaves (makrut), torn (we used lime peel)
1 stem lemongrass, halved lengthways
3 tablespoons fish sauce
juice of 2 small limes
1 3/4 cups coconut milk
1/2 pound skinless chicken breast, cut into thin strips
1 red chile (chilli), seeded and sliced

(we added sliced button mushrooms)

Result: We could have eaten the whole thing (serves four)

At the same time, we worked on Alton Brown's recipe for the Pad Thai. I don't know how authentic the recipe is, but it was similar to those being cooked by Thai women on other websites. BTW -- If you ever come across a Pad Thai recipe that calls for ketchup, DO NOT COOK IT!

Ingredients
  • 1-ounce tamarind paste
  • 3/4 cup boiling water
  • 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 2 tablespoons palm sugar
  • 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (we used seasoned rice wine vinegar)
  • 4 ounces rice stick noodles
  • 6 ounces Marinated Tofu, recipe follows
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut oil
  • 1 cup chopped scallions, divided
  • 2 teaspoons minced garlic
  • 2 whole eggs, beaten
  • 2 teaspoons salted cabbage (we didn't use this)
  • 1 tablespoon dried shrimp (we used shrimp paste)
  • 3 ounces bean sprouts, divided
  • 1/2 cup roasted salted peanuts, chopped, divided
  • Freshly ground dried red chile peppers, to taste
  • 1 lime, cut into wedges
  • (we added chicken and shrimp)
  • Marinated Tofu:

    6 ounces extra-firm tofu, not silken

    1 1/2 cups soy sauce

    1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

We made our own Chinese five-spice powder from this recipe but subbed ginger and white pepper for the Szechuan peppercorns that we could not find. And we only marinated the tofu for an hour.

Result: Glad we made it for four!!

Downtown Joe's Napa, CA

While watching the New England Patriots dominate the New York Jets at Downtown Joe's Brewery and Resturant, Peta got a little peckish. She ordered the wilted spinach salad, but I did not notice the dish description of "baby spinach, pancetta, pine nuts, olive oil and Laura's cheval goat's cheese". I don't know if that's the exact menu listing (it's not listed in the pdf on the website), but it's close. I love a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing and I was looking forward to stealing a few bites. Unfortunately...

Food:
Wilted Spinach Salad: The goat's cheese was excellent, but things deteriorated rapidly from that high point. The pine nuts were not toasted enough and may have been past their prime. There was a touch of rancidity that may have been the pancetta standing in for what should have been regular ol' bacon. Restaurant folks: don't try to feign class by disrespecting a class-ic, AKA dance with the one that brung ya.

The salad was oily, in part because olive oil was used rather than the traditional bacon fat, in part because there was too much of it and in part because there was no/not enough vinegar to cut through the oil. That's all I can remember about that forgetful dish.

Drinks:
Bloody Mary with well vodka: They come in a big glass with a big price, but celery salt on the rim, the copious amounts of horseradish and the olive and cocktail onion garnish are nice touches. I use Old Bay myself and a bacon stirrer rather than celery salt and celery, but I liked the attention to detail regardless.

Double Secret Probation IPA: Super hoppy and clean tasting.

Staff:
Laid back, not too chatty, comfortable vibe

What we are about and why we're writing this blog...

Who we are:

Jim has been eating his whole life (a lot) and has been an arm-chair cook for twenty years. He brings a scientist's perspective to recipes and restaurant food and is constantly trying to "make it better" along the lines of America's Test Kitchen.

Peta has worked in the wine industry for years and is a self-described "flavorist". She makes the food that Jim cooks far better and is a demon in the kitchen. Just last night... well we'll get to that in a second.

What we are doing and why:

We got tired of spending exorbitant sums of money for bland, weak-ass food and drinks when eating out, but never were bold enough (or jerks enough) to give our suggestions to the staff, even when asked! But if, for example, we asked for the orange-honey butter that a restaurant used to serve and were told that they were under new management and that they did not have orange-honey butter but that they had oranges, honey and butter by the clueless (yet friendly) waitstaff and then were brought margarine rather than butter... Well, we're gonna be a little upset about the lack of attention to detail.

However, we do understand why restaurants use margarine instead of butter: it's waaay cheaper. And if nobody ever complains that the "butter" is not butter, how are restaurants to know that anybody really cares? Well, we care and we think that you care too.

Similarly, years ago, we made a pad thai from a recipe that was insistant that we not forget the ketchup. Ketchup? It was clearly insane and the results were predictably awful. We also got sick of making a recipe that just didn't seem quite right or included a bunch of fussy steps that we felt served only to make more dishes to clean.

So last night, we gave our first "napkin o'suggestions" to the server when asked how everything was. The chef probably just threw it away, but it would be nice to think that we are doing something to help restaurants keep customers and helping to raise the quality of food in our corner of the world.