Stimulated by my son's creativity

Logan has done it again! His creativity just turns on the right side of my brain (miniscule as it is) and gets me to want to create dishes. Mom had seen a recipe in a Simple magazine for asparagus and prosuitto with just salt, pepper and a touch of oil. Well, I could not do something that simple, so when I came home from Starbuck's today I whipped up a reduction of 2TBS of molasses, 2TBS of soy sauce, and one TBS of balsalmic vinegar. Then I crisped some prosuitto in the oven at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. While I was doing this, I steamed some fresh green beans (about 2 large handfuls.) I then soaked the partially cooked beans in iced water for about 15 minutes. I then crumbled the prosuitto, mixed it with about a tsp of diced scallion and a tsp of diced garlic. After tossing all the vegetable ingredients well, I added the reduction sauce and refrigerated the entire business for about an hour, which so happened to be just the appropriate time for a libation!
I then served the cold beans (modestly crunchy) with a grilled piece of halibut. Like I said before, when Mrs. A gives it a two thumbs up, that means something. It's another good hot evening meal. Maybe this will be the best Summer, yet!!l
BIG DAVE

spring time

my cooking bug is back. making something with my dad got me back in the game, or so i hope...

spring is definitely here and so are light menu's loaded with fruits and vegetables. i'm pretty excited as i think i've been lazy about cooking because i've worn out all the heavy winter meals that have me crawling into bed only minutes after washing the last dish!!

ever since cooking a filet with a chocolate wine sauce a couple years ago, i've been interested in how many different flavors you can pair with meats. sweet, spicy, zesty, salty, bitter, tangy, the list goes on and on. now i've never been good at eating fruits, both my mom and marcela can attest to this, but i know that if i have to eat fruit, i'd prefer something tart or a bit sour. so i did a little research and found out that a lot of scottish lamb dishes are paired with berries. this was perfect. we had lamb chops in the freezer!! so i went on to find this recipe and decided to give it a try.

the blackberry relish is made by sauteeing the blackberries with sugar until they've softened up a bit. then, in a separate dish, mix together some chopped mint, olive oil, prepared horseradish, and lime juice. add the softened berries to the mix and softly stir until well blended. you can grill or pan fry the lamb, but it's best to cook no more than medium. the salad here is just shredded english cucumber with whole milk yogurt. i added a little chopped mint as garnish to add even more refreshment. we had a 2004 cabernet-shiraz with this meal. i thought the wine was a pretty good match. anything light, but red, would be good with this meal.

cooking with my son

Three additional photos of the "meal." What a great evening with my son and his wife. Thank you, Logan and Marcela, for sharing this evening with Mom and me. The entire week-end was fantastic.
David, send me the e-mail about your foundation. I am super interested and think that you have touched on the most neglected area of modern medicine, that is the relationship of physician to his patient.

rained in

so my parents visited this weekend for a few reasons. to pick up my old mattress, to partake in my church's home building ministry, and of course to let my dad (big dave) and i play some golf! well, two of three activities came to fruition...golf, was not one of them. we attempted to get a round in on friday, but after 9 holes we were soaked and freezing. we decided to call it quits. that may have been the first (and hopefully only) time my dad and i will ever walk off a golf course short of the 18th green. since it was only 2:00pm, and we weren't expecting to be home til 5, we were left with coming up with something to do. a glass of chardonnay and some pei wei cuisine later, we came up with cooking dinner. now we didn't need any incentive to cook together, but having this blog site set up really provided some inspiration to do something extravagant. after all, this would be the first collaborative post. i knew i had a pork tenderloin in the freezer that needed to be eaten so we decided to force ourselves to design around that. then, to add a sense of challenge, we decided to go home and test the refrigerator to see what we had and how we could improvise instead of just buying everything new. we had shallots, carrots, ginger, heavy cream, shredded parmesan, and a tiny bit of prosciutto. all we'd need from the store was another couple slices of prosciutto and a vegetable. while at the store, i felt the need to come up with a dessert as well. since our company included my mom and my wife, i knew chocolate would be a winner.

splitting cooking duties went amazingly smooth. my dad took control of the asparagus, the carrot-ginger puree, and of helping both marcela with her appetizers and all 4 of us with our libations. meanwhile, i prepped the tenderloin by cutting it transversely in approximately 1" x 2.5"dia. pieces. i then wrapped them with a slice of prosciutto and then dredged them with a light layer of crushed pecans. while i was doing this, i had a pan on the stove simmering together the semi-sweet morsels, sugar, and water for my chocolate sorbet.

this meal was amazing. besides my 5 course new years eve dinner, this may have been my finest home cooked meal ever. it was soo much fun too. i've cooked with my dad plenty of times before, but not necessarily like this. i thought everything not only turned out good aesthetically, but more importantly, it tasted soooo good. the flavors all complimented each other so perfectly.

something that must be mentioned, and i'd like to get into this, but that's another post, is my dad's suggestion of a sparkling shiraz from australia. W-O-W. marcela and i are hooked. i've never had a sparkling red before and i've got to say, i'm VERY impressed. in fact, i write this on tuesday night, 3 nights later, and we are actually having another bottle tonight!

Sheila picked this menu from a diabetic cookbook. The chicken was great (made with a plum sauce and Asian spices) and the broccoli and peppers were similarly spiced. Went well with a almond cream dessert and an Argentinian Torrontes. From a vineyard named LoTengo, and I emphatically endorse their wines, both the Torrontes, a white, and their malbec.
Who knows what happened here, but clearly I didn't make alphabet stew!
BIG DAVE

Big Dave's first blog. Technology has tried very hard to pass me by, but the opportunity to share culinary delights allows this old geezer to plug through, of course with much help. I threw the above concoction together with Mrs. A 8 days ago and then took the pictures, one of which is above, to post on the blog. Sheila and I worked like mad to get the picture posted, but it took the next generation to pull the strings to let me be e-literate!

This was mashed red yams, mashed in a blender with heavy cream and butter, after boiling diced yams for 30 minutes. The entree was a boneless chicken breast sauteed to brown it, then I sauteed mushrooms, onion, "Hatch-type" pepper and red pepper in the chicken residue.

I pulled the veggies, put the chicken back in the pan, added one cup of chicken broth and simmered the chicken for 30 more minutes. I added the veggies back for the last 10 minutes. It tasted even better than it looked, but Mrs. A said that she would have preferred that I had sauteed the yam as well.

What do you think of that for an old fart?