new years eve

so i brought my camera, but it has been sitting too long and had no battery life. therefore this post will just be words...

i know i said i wanted to post more food blogs without any concern for fancy foods, but as it turns out, i guess i still have something for the finer things of life!

this new years eve plans were to go down to my brother-in-law's place, per tradition, to have dinner and wine and ring in the new year together. his wife, lorena, and i decided we should just do a bunch of appetizers and pretend like we were at a fancy party. everyone there either had child(ren) or was with child...who says that should stop us from having a fun time??? anyway, i was in charge of making 4 appetizers and since lorena chose to theme hers around vegetables, i had to come up with the proteins. after researching and just thinking to myself what would be tasty, i came up with the following 4 items:

vichyssoise with cannellini's

three cheese mac-n-cheese pastry's

squash chips with blackbean chicken salsa

mini beef wellingtons

so here's where pictures would be great, but alas, i don't have any. so, i will just talk about them and let you use your imagination to create the pictures!!

first off, i have NEVER made any of these things, which is pretty much standard when it comes to me trying to cook for family/friends. i knew it was going to take a long time and that there was a greater-than-fifty-percent chance at least one wouldn't turn out so i began this endeavor on monday night. i got all my groceries and did any kind of chopping/cutting/prep work that was necessary when i got home. tuesday night i spent most of the time slow baking the squash chips while also prepping the the mac-n-cheese pastry's. the vichyssoise was going to be the hardest challenge as i've heard it's something you must do right if you attempt at all!!! around midnight on tuesday i had decided i was looking good. the mac-n-cheese pastry's were in their muffin pan, the chips were a crisp golden brown, and though the vichyssoise looked a bit runny, it had excellent flavor.

i had to work until 1pm on new years eve so i was left with only 5 hours to finish everything off. when i got home i pulled out the puff pastry's for the mini beef wellingtons. i let it thaw for about an hour while i diced the ribeye into 1/2" chunks. i selected a roasted red pepper with garlic boursin cheese for my wellington's and i let that get to room temperature too. all i had left was the blackbean chicken salsa. looking good as far as time goes right...oops, i went to turn on the grill only to find us COMPLETELY out of propane! i really needed the chicken to be grilled and not broiled as i needed that crispiness. so, with two hours to go, i grabbed the propane tank and dashed off to the convenient store to reload. once back home i heated up the black beans, without their canned liquid, and a can of rotel (also sans liquid) on very low heat with a bit of chili powder, paprika, and cumin. i ALWAYS use mccormick montreal chicken seasoning as it was a gold fork staple that i haven't found a replacement for. once the chicken strips were done i diced them and added them to the salsa. i started to realize my salsa was a bit too thick for the flimsy, half-baked squash chips...remedy? i put the whole mixture into my food processor and added some of the reserved bean liquid (always save the liquid, at least for the duration of the beans themselves). the results, well, it was more like a tapenade than a salsa, but i think it worked.

anyway, everything was finished, on time, and tasted de-lish. i can't wait to try these items again and if i do, i promise i'll take a picture!

W.C. Fields

i came across this quote by the famous comedian and thought it appropriate for this blog...

i cook with wine, sometimes i even add it to the food

patheticism

is that even a word???

so i haven't written or posted on this blog in a long, long time. i feel as if i've said this before too and once again, i have no honorable excuse. i have, however, found my zest for cooking again. i guess i grew tired of trying to cook something that was an attempt at impressing people and instead decided i wanted to cook something that, original or not, was just really good to eat. i also realized i owe a lot, if not everything, to my experience at gold fork during my college years. with that said, i'm presenting a southwest salad that we made at the fork and used a skill/technique i learned there as well.

on our way home from our wednesday night bible study, we stopped to purchase our dinner groceries at vons. as usual, we picked up a freschetta thin crust pepperoni pizza and a zucchini. we're always starving as it's around 8:45 and we haven't eaten since a measly homemade lunch we brought to work and ate around noon. so, we usually get a snack to last us the 12 minutes for the pizza. this time i wasn't that hungry and decided i'd forgo a snack. this lasted until the checkout line when i saw garlic roasted bagel crisps on sale right next to the 3 person line. i grabbed the crisps and then thought i really could go for some roasted red pepper hummus dip. i hastily made my way over to where i thought the hummus was only to not see it and find myself wondering whether the hummus was worth the angry faces waiting in line behind marcela back at the checkout. i decided it was worth it and ran across the store to the "hummus" area. i quickly scanned the items and found the roasted red pepper description, grabbed what i saw and made it back to see everyone looking aimlessly around for the jackass! when we got home i broke open the crisps and ripped off the lid of the hummus only to find a very liquidy looking dip! i had mistaken a red pepper dip for hummus. now it ended up tasting really good, but it wasn't what i was looking for. so, what was i to do with this sour cream based dip??? the following saturday provided me with an answer...

southwest chicken salad

grill a piece of chicken with blackening seasoning, chili powder, or any spicy seasoning you have. rip up some lettuce of your choice, we use plain loose leaf, add a moderate amount of the following: mexi-corn, black beans and black olives. add the amount of roasted red pepper dip you like (a substitute could be a mixture of ranch and the salsa or hot sauce of your choice). toss this combination and serve topped with the grilled chicken. a nice addition, which is how i tie this recipe to gold fork, is to take some corn tortilla's and cut them into strips to fry. if you have a deep fryer, you can fold them into curls instead of straight strips. either way, toss the cut strips into hot oil and let fry for a few minutes. pull them out and salt and pepper them before adding to the salad. i used to spend sunday mornings cutting up hundreds of corn tortillas and deep frying them for the day. it seemed so futile at the time and now 8 years later, i recalled this technique to make a nice saturday lunch for my bride and i.

M.I.A.

i haven't posted in a long time so i thought i'd throw a few pictures from different meals i have photographically documented, but haven't written about...i don't want this site to represent a specific era of interest...i will always love cooking and the joy it brings to me...besides golf, nothing really makes me feel at ease and happy like cooking...so, without further ado...


breakfast from leftovers


"fishsticks" these are swordfish kabobs!


green pea(s) pizza


mediterranean steak con chimichurri sauce


pork chops with apple-tomatillo salsa

for the heck of it

so, this blog desperately wants to go beyond it's conceptual limitation, but because that really doesn't accomplish anything, i will stick to the "roots"...

i don't know if david or david have as many things stockpiled to write about as i do, but it's getting to the point where i don't know how to organize my hard drive!

i've done this before and i really don't like to do it as any amount of words are more appropriate than just an onslaught of visual media. however, i've been too lazy to go beyond snapping a picture of a lot of the meals marcela and i have shared.

tonight i am going to post a bunch of pictures of previous meals, with either captions of what they are or summations of how they came about. i apologize right now for the lack of character they represent.

without any further ado...



this was an asian shrimp salad that i saw in either the may issue of food&wine or the may issue of bon apetit. i'd give you the recipe, but i'm gonna make you use your local library (or internet) and figure it out yourself! it was a really crisp, zesty salad. normally salad just kind of massages the palate with familiar tastes, this one definitely spiked it up, not spiced it up though...just really set your tastebuds a bliss...cilantro, shrimp, terryaki...



the salad was an appetizer which was part of a 3-course dinner i wanted to cook for mami and marcela. this was the main course (2nd). while researching flavors or something, i came across a roasted walnut sauce for fish. i friggin' HATE walnuts, but for whatever reason, this sounded amazing. the creaminess of a roasted/pureed nut with a white fish just seemed brilliant. i have eaten nuts on fish before, but not as a sauce and not as a walnut sauce (note to those reading, if you think you have to have some brilliant reason to do anything, you're never gonna cook...)anyway, i roasted some veggies as a compliment to this dish. it's pretty obvious i was concerned about color. i don't think my veggies complimented this dish, but i never claimed to be a professional!



this is our dessert (3rd course). i got lucky on this one. i was searching and searching for something fun to make for dessert at the store and i came across peaches. it must be their season as they had barrels full for 49cents a pound! i didn't forget one thing!! how can you not grab a dozen! plus, peaches are just a great fruit. i'm not a fruit fan, but i remember always eating peaches in the summer. they're a perfect combo of sweet and tangy, depending on their ripeness. so, i got a pint of vanilla bean frozen yogurt and then sliced/grilled/diced some of these fresh peaches. if you wanna know what addiction feels like, and you A) don't have an addiction already and B) have a sweet tooth...grill a few slices of peaches for a minute or two and then dice up and serve over a highend vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt!



the next post is in response to marcela and i hosting our nephews for the first time overnight. as nervous as i was about this adventure, i was equally as excited. in the larger picture, what kind of impact will i have on manny and joaquin? how can i make a real difference in their lives, not to deter from what they've got going for them, but how, as a somewhat "outsider" can i allow them to share their lives with me. it'll be a lot tougher when airplane rides and stomach farts aren't cool...anyway, my mom always made these for us growing up. i never realized how amazing they are for kids. i just chopped up a bunch of different ingredients and let them choose their own. joaquin ended up sleeping so manny got to make both of theirs. he chose black olives and pepperoni only...man, we actually DO have a lot in common!



for dessert, more of the same. what kid doesn't love jell-o!!! i, unfortunately, didn't read the directions and instead just made the regular recipe in a short pan! WRONG! but, it ended up working out okay and if it weren't for BEE MOVIE playing in the dvd player, i think our jiggler's would have been the hit of the night!

tres tapas

it's been a long, long, LONG time since i've posted. i've got a couple posts to enter too, but for now i'm just gonna concentrate on the last visit from big dave and momberg.

we've had a couple dinners over the last few visits that were a bit larger than what a modern chef would consider a reasonable sized plate. with that in mind, we decided to do tapas. i usually like to make an amuse bouche, but this time it worked out to include the amuse as a tapa and then just make 2 more. i had a piece of ahi in the fridge that marcela and i bought earlier in the week and so we decided to do a fish, a red meat, and a poultry item.

unfortunately, the majority of my memory from the weekend my family visited centers around getting my dad a major discount on a new set of irons he's always wanted. it may not seem like that big of a deal until you understand my dad gave me the game of golf...everything about it i can attribute to him. so, for me, this was a small token towards paying him back for this game that i really, really, really love. the other part of my memory from that weekend was getting to have a barbecue with marcela's side of the family at mami's house on sunday after going to church. i'm so lucky to have married into a family that shares the same feeling of love towards our creator. it seems more and more these days i don't have that in common with many of my friends.

anyway, on to the meal! so, for the tuna, i cut the ahi in cubes and marinated it in soy sauce. while that marinated, my dad pounded out the chicken breast to about a 1/4 inch thickness throughout. i then took that breast and par cooked it on the grill before handing it back to my dad for him to stuff with spinach and gorgonzola. he then rolled it up and used some butchers twine to tie it up for placing in the oven. i then took the filet mignon and seasoned it with salt and pepper and then turned the grill up to it's highest heat capacity for a perfect medium rare steak. meanwhile, my dad was working on roasting some sliced beets and diced potatoes for garnish. the filet's got about 2 minutes on each side, as did the tuna in a frying pan with a little bit of olive oil. then, to plate this dish, as you see in the picture, the tuna went bare on the plate with a wasabi soy drizzle, the steak was placed on top of a slice of beet and then diced potatoes were laid around it, and finally, the chicken was cut roulade style and left alone.

all of these tapas i've had as an entree, but i have to say there was something special and divine about having smaller versions plated together. it was interesting to see how all four of us (mom, dad, marcela, and i) went at the dish...

i really like the idea of tapas. i think we all like to eat, but are often left with over eating one dish because it tastes so good. i think when you have the different flavors you tend to satisfy your hunger much faster without ever getting super full. maybe i was wrong, who knows. even if i was, big dave whipped up his homemade individual chocolate cakes to satisfy any leftover urges!! unfortunately for you, the reader, we were too eager to eat them to take a photo!!!

Complete menu

I. Crispy black pepper salmon
Big Dave's cold slaw
Lo Tengo 'Torrentes'

II. Basil stuffed chicken breast
Asparagus (oven poached)
Big Dave's cold slaw