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

One last try before I go to bed!

At least you can't say I didn't give it an effort!!

I give up!

For some reason I can't make the pictures transfer over to the blog. If you can do that, go ahead, Logz, otherwise, we'll figure it out when I talk to you again.

Oops, I guess I have to write the blog, first!

Well, I have had alot of great ideas over the last few months, and lots of great meals, but evidently I'm too lazy to sit down and post my epicurian fancies. My blood sugars have not been too great since I hurt my foot in November, and so I have been much more inclined to follow the "low carb" recipes that I have all over the kitchen. I am particularly fond of a cookbook called "An Idiot's Guide to Low Carb Cooking." We have yet to have anything but excellent meals from this, and all are quick and quite simple. Many excellent ideas in their little footnotes as well. I recommend it to anyone!
The first receipe that I tried last Tuesday evening was "Crispy Black Pepper Salmon."
This was a real keeper, and very easy to prepare. You marinade the salmon filets in a sauce consisting of 1/2 cup of white wine (I used Lo Tengo 'Torrentes,' one of Mrs. A's and my favorites), 1/4 cup worcestershire sauce, a cup of chicken broth, a dash of salt and white pepper and one medium diced onion. Refrigerate in a zip lock bag for 30 minutes, then pull out the filets and press them onto a plate of freshly cracked black pepper. Saute the onions until pearlescent then add the marinade to the saute pan and reduce to 1/2 the volume. I pan fried the salmon until it began to flake, then removed the salmon from the pan, turned the electric fry pan off, and wilted a bag of fresh baby spinach leaves in the pan. I then divided the spinach onto two plates and placed a filet of salmon over the spinach and poured the marinade over the whole lot. I can truly say we both thought it was the best of all the salmon receipes in that book, and there are four or five other outstanding ones!
The next night I tried a basil stuffed chicken breast. This called for 1/2 onion diced, 4 cloves of garlic diced, and 3 tablespoons of fresh basil leaves, finely chopped, one egg, 1/2 cup shredded Swiss cheese and black pepper to taste. I added one Anaheim pepper, chopped coarsely, and a finely diced half of a jalapeno. One sautes the garlic and onion in butter, then removes the garlic/onion from the heat and adds the basil, egg, cheese and peppers. I then pounded out the chicken breasts and divided the stuffing between the two (the receipe called for 6 breasts, but it would seem to be too little stuffing.) You fold the chicken over the stuffing, so it looks like a pita sandwich, and bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes. I served this with fresh asparagus that I poached in foil in the oven for 30 minutes. It was another winner from the "low carb" book that I have come to love. Hopefully the pictures will turn out, but I am not too confident of that!

The long, lost cook

a r e

the worst part about studying is when right before you open up your textbook, you realize that just because it comes across as a FOOD blog, doesn't mean it's only for food...

sometime after thanksgiving last year, marcela and i came across a magazine called IMBIBE. it's kind of like all the other food/wine magazines except it's really focused on drinks. personally, i'm a traditionalist when it comes to drinks, but somehow i think that's just a result of being conservative. both sides have their place, but presently, i'm reminded of how excited i was over a year ago to read about all these unique "fun" drinks. we ended up buying a few different bottles of liqueurs and schnapps to try a couple drinks, but we ended up left with a lot of 1/2 bottles of liquor i didn't know how to drink.

since i need to study, i'll cut this one short. this is our leftover CAMPARI (which can be used quite a bit, but like i said, i'm too conservative and like my REGULAR...) with some leftover roasted lemonade shooters juice (yes dave, from the 11 courser). i crushed up a bit of fresh mint and added sugar to taste. marcela thought it was a bit too tart, but i like tart. it was hers so i ended up adding the sugar...

back to sling psychrometer's and makeup air handling units...

appssert

i've always been interested in doing a "dinner" party that actually wasn't dinner, but more of an appetizer and dessert. so, since we had a really large, moderately unhealthy lunch, i decided i'd try a menu idea i've had for such an event...

it's a cauliflower steak with a carmel sauce pear dessert. the cauliflower steak is pretty simple, just cut out your steak from the head of cauliflower, then braise and puree what's leftover. i added some pearl onions to the puree to give it just enough contrast from the cauliflower steak. i rubbed the steaks with some olive oil and then sauteed them for a couple minutes on each side before putting them in the oven for ten minutes to finish. spoon a hearty portion of the puree onto a plate and then top with a steak.

as for the dessert, everything i tried seemed to work out well except that i used some leftover gorgonzola cheese and i shouldn't have. it was good, but it was too strong for this recipe. start by cutting some pears in half and scooping out the seeds. then heat a generous portion of butter in a frying pan to which you'll add the pears, cut side down. add about a tablespoon and a half of honey to the pears and then cover the pan and let cook until tender. remove the pears and add a teaspoon of cheese to the hole leftover from the seeds. let them sit and add some pine nuts to the honey/butter (caramel) mixture. sprinkle some salt and cook for about 2 minutes. drizzle this sauce over the pears and serve! you really can use any pear and any cheese, but like i said, the gorgonzola was a little too strong in my opinion. also, i think seckel pears are great to use for this because they're so small. any pear will do though.

saint valentine

2 for 2

ok, so tonight's post is 90% not worth writing, but the 10% that is works for me.

like i said last night, we are short on cash until thursday. as a result of our fast, we had a huge piece of frozen salmon in the fridge that needed to be eaten. i pulled it out of the freezer this morning before leaving for work. i figured instead of checking my myspace and gmail 10 times throughout the day, i'd run a couple search engines for salmon recipes. the main reason being that i'm tired of always cooking something sweet and sugary with salmon! i've gone 3 days without anything spicy and i think i'm about to convulse!

so as the day wears on, i see all sorts of recipes and concepts about flavors that go with salmon. the thing for me though is that no matter what kind of glaze or sauce i cook with/for salmon, i ALWAYS taste pure salmon. what could possibly mask the bold flavor of this wonderful fish...then, i find it...scotch bonnet herb sauce for salmon! are you kidding me!!! scotch bonnet??? well, i unfortunately didn't have any scotch bonnet chile's in my fridge, but i did have a wilted old habanero left over from the fast and thought this couldn't be more perfect!

so, to make this dish, cook the salmon however you like. while it cooks, reduce a 1/2 cup of riesling down to about a 1/4 cup and set a side to cool. meanwhile, dice a tablespoon or so of cilantro (left over from some homemade salsa!!), a tablespoon of chives, and a tablespoon of basil. all of these are better if fresh, but if not, dry will certainly do. then, mix 2 tablespoons of mayo with a tablespoon of olive oil in a bowl. add the cooled wine reduction and the rest of the herbs. plate the salmon and drizzle the dressing/sauce over the top. we added a couple slices of sourdough that i actually had marcela buy fresh tonight. i know, it makes me a hypocrite, but she was at the store buying ingredients for a dinner we're making our small group leaders to thank them for their hospitality and commitment and i thought hey, a loaf of bread can't be that much right? would they really confiscate my car for a loaf of bread?

anyway, i don't mean to lower the standards of this blog by writing every night, but i thought this was a good meal as well as a worthy story to tell. also, does it really matter? are there any rules about posting to a blog? isn't the purpose of a blog to post to? well, even if i'm wrong, i'm gonna keep cooking and writing!

capers

as a result of spending a little too much lately, marcela and i are left making due with what's in the fridge until thursday. this is a good thing as it makes me concentrate my efforts and hone my skills. it's also good as it allows us to use up some things in the fridge thus preventing food waste, something i dislike more than even energy waste. so, since marcela had a half sandwich from THE COTTAGE leftover, i was on my own for my dinner...

knowing that marcela had her own dinner planned, i wanted to cook something that i know she's not a huge fan of. as i scoured the fridge, i came across some capers that i've barely touched since i bought towards the end of summer. i pulled out a chicken breast to thaw and began to plan a meal around capers and chicken. my results are as follows...

i got a pot of water going for some pasta and then heated up a skillet to brown the chicken breast. after cooking the chicken for roughly 4 minutes a side, i transfered it to the oven to finish cooking. i added some diced shallots and garlic to the frying pan and sauteed them for about a minute before adding just under a cup of chicken stock. i let that mixture reduce down to a couple tablespoons. now normally i'd add some whipping cream or heavy cream to this mix, but since the theme was to use up food in the fridge, i swapped the cream for some plain yogurt i used in a sauce this weekend. so i put a heaping tablespoon of yogurt into the reduced stock and then added a tablespoon of whole grain mustard and a tablespoon of capers. i mixed these together (lower the heat after the stock has reduced or you'll be left with paste!) and stirred them until fully warmed and mixed. then, i drained my pasta (linguine was what we had and i'd suggest using it for this dish) and added it to the sauce, stirring together before plating it. be sure to leave just enough sauce in the pan to drizzle over the chicken. as a side note, i seasoned my chicken in lemon pepper and it's a great seasoning for this dish, or any chicken and capers dish!

this picture is of a half eaten dinner, as you can see, and is the result of not planning for a post. i really didn't think this would turn out that great and wasn't really planning to share something i scraped together. however, it really ended up good and i'm just so fired up about cooking now and writing about it. not that i can write that well (or even cook that well) but i just love it. it's just so much fun to make eating an experience. forcing yourself to be resourceful and to take advantage of something we're so privileged to get to do. a minimum of 3 times a day none-the-less!! i feel like it's the best way for me to slow down and relax. anyway, i think this was good and definitely worth trying, especially if you've bought capers for a recipe and don't know how to finish them off! i should say that if you're not a salty taste or mustard type person, you may not like this dinner as it's pretty strong on those flavors!

in keeping with the theme, i added a picture of the wine we finished tonight. it was leftover too! and good!

super saturday

somehow i don't think it's fair that today is called super tuesday. especially when saturday night was exponentially more super...at least to me it was...

my good friend brian and his girlfriend came to town to escape the dreariness that is minnesota in the winter. it had been a long time since i've seen him and i had never met his girlfriend. i was very excited about the weekend. it was also going to provide me a couple new palettes to attempt to please. i had done my best to find out any dislikes or allergies ahead of time and was left with quite a bit of freedom. however, i also was out to impress mostly with flavor and not as much with pure creativity. [course maybe that was because we were only a week out of our 3 week fast!] so i decided i'd cook something they would totally be familiar with, possibly even have tried before. that being said, the short and skinny of my theme was STEAK AND SHRIMP.

because i love doing multiple small courses instead of one heaping plate of food, i thought i'd split this traditional meal up. i have a cookbook that has a recipe for grilled shrimp with parsnip custard and microwave popcorn sauce that i'd been dying to try. of course something like this is NECESSARY to try at least once before attempting to impress with! well, i did, the week before and it was awesome. it also required the purchase of some new 2oz oven-safe ramekins that i think will be used a LOT in amuse's to come!!

then, to allow me some time to cook the steaks (and to have a course that could kind of just sit there for awhile unattended), i made a butternut squash and leek soup that i had last made december 31, 2006. i knew it was good and i couldn't wait to serve it. by the sounds from the dinner table, i could have made more, but i still had 2 courses left so i wasn't all that worried.

my entree course was a steak and homemade french fries with multiple dipping sauces. after all, who doesn't like steak and fries?!? so i prepped the filet mignon's by sauting a mixture of portobello mushrooms and some butcher's cut bacon (i added a little rosemary for good measure). as i let the filet's marinate with their stuffing, i cut up some fingerling, red, and purple potatoes for my homemade french fries. i already had most of my sauce ideas, a parmesan peppercorn dip, a fresh salsa, and a dijon mustard aioli, but i needed a 4th. i wanted to do a sweet&spicy barbecue sauce, but i wanted it to be homemade and i needed it to be quick and fast. i had to consult with my dad on this one and even though i omitted half of the ingredients from his "reduced" version, it still turned out really good. i think it was because i used heinz ketchup and serrano chile's (by the way, serrano's have now taken over jalapeno's as my chile of choice...tolerance baby, tolerance...they're just daintier and hotter!). i also used balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. i grilled the filet's for a few minutes on both sides and then added them to the oven with the fries that had deep fried for about 3 minutes each to par cook. with about 5 minutes remaining on the steaks, i pulled them out and sprinkled some gorgonzola cheese over the tops and put them back in to allow it to brown. there's something about serving a filet that just can't be beat. rarely do people "bbq" filet's. most typically men walk in and argue themselves into the 34oz london broil because they want steak that bad and the $10 in their wallet has to cover a six pack of something fairly decent in addition, obviously not leaving any room for veggies... then, one hour later, they realize they made a horrible mistake and are left blaming their college found steak knives as the reason they can't quite hack their way through the medium-rare shoe. (as a note here, london broil is very good if prepared correctly...i have done it, just trying to make a point about filet's). filet's are left for your biannual trip to a nice steakhouse. nobody wants to throw down $12 on a steak from the grocery store, but they seem to justify $38 at a restaurant, though to be fair, the $12 tanqueray ten usually encourages that act of manliness... anyway, i just think filet's are a great cut of meat and if you're gonna eat steak, do it right. AND, if you really enjoy entertaining people with food, remember the golden rule...

dessert was something i LOVE making and haven't made since i lived in PB. a double chocolate terrine with blood orange sorbet....honestly, does that need more description?

a sunday supper

this past weekend I decided to make dinner for a new friend. .. .alya. .it was a cold chicago sunday evening and I decided that I wanted to make risotto. .. and I knew that I also wanted to make a salad but had no idea what it should be. .. so I went to the grocery store knowing that I was going to make a roasted garlic and mushroom risotto and a salad.

while walking through the produce section I became fixated on the cippolinni onions .. . they have such a great shape and I remember reading that they get really sweet when roasted. .just next to these were some beautiful small red onions. I know knew what my plan would be. .. a seared steak salad with maché, roasted onions, roasted plum tomatoes, and a very simple vinaigrette.

once I got home from the store I started roasting. .. first I peeled the garlic and drizzled it with olive oil . .salt and pepper and set it in the oven to roast. .. then I started peeling the onions and slicing the tomatoes in half. .. I coated these with olive oil. .. salt and pepper. .. and then added about 10 sprigs of thyme. .. set these into the oven to roast for an hour or so . .. these perfumed the house amazingly. .. I can still smell it. ..

I had recently read an article about how to make the perfectly seared steak on a stove. .. so I began preparing this by pulling out the filet and letting it come to room temperature. .. and since I put olive oil, salt, and pepper on everything. .. did this as well. .. and set it aside for the time being.

I had decided to use cremini mushrooms because I love their rich earthiness. .. I removed all the stems and decided to leave the caps whole and sautéed them in butter and seasoned with some curry and salt. .

now that I had a fair amount of the prep work done I decided to open the wine that we would be having with dinner. .. a really nice pinot noir. .. but I cannot seem to remember the vineyard right now. .. but I think it was the perfect bottle for the evening. . it was a young bottle but had all the characteristics you would want from a pinot. ..

now it was time to start the risotto. .. I finely chopped an onion and got all my ingredients out. .. butter, oil, chives, warmed the stock on the stove. shaved parmesan.. got out the cream and bacon. I started by rendering the fat off of 3 slices of bacon. .. and set the bacon aside. .. added a bit of butter, the onion, and the rice and began to sauté it until it was translucent. .. at this time I put the bacon pieces back in. .now that the stock was warmed I began adding it half a cup at a time for the next 20 minutes or so. ..

while the risotto was working away on the stovetop I pulled out my cast iron skillet and set it over a burner on high. .. let it sit on high for about 8 minutes and then added the filet to it so it would get a nice sear. .. seared it off on both sides and then put in oven to get it to the right temperature. . a beautiful piece of steak. . perfectly medium rare. ..

now it was time to dress the salad. .. I mixed a bit of olive oil, balsamic, and shallots. . and I am sure it had salt and pepper in it too. .. and tossed the marché in it. .. then I added the onions and tomatoes atop the greens so that they would be just a touch wilted. .. .pulled out the steak and sliced it diagonally. .. and put this atop the onions. .. it turned out to be a great salad. ..

now it was time to finish the risotto. .added the parm. .. then. .i tasted it and added a bit of salt. . then a ton of chives. .. a touch of butter and a bit of cream. pulled out the bacon .. then stirred in the mushrooms. .. .plated this and it was time to eat

conversation was great. .. the dinner turned out really well. .. .

here is what was left at the end of the evening. ..

two-oh-oh-eight

happy new year to everyone!

i just noticed that the only two months of the year i missed posting were the last two. which just happen to be the best months for cooking!! i hope it was more of a result from holiday bustle and less of a result from laziness.

so, with that said, i have something to post. last year marcela and i hosted new years eve with her family and i cooked a 5 course dinner. it turned out wonderful and i hope to post the results at sometime, but for this post, i'll focus on this years family 5-courser! after going to church on sunday, marcela, christina, lucita, heidi, and i went out for lunch. while eating we decided to repeat the idea of a 5-course dinner for new years, except we only did 4 courses. this year though, we'd split up the courses allowing everyone to cook. in true top chef fashion, we decided we needed a theme to tie all the courses together. thanks to heidi, we chose root vegetables. i haven't cooked a lot with root vegetables so i had to do some research in order to get creative. we decided to have mami do the appetizer, lorena and ricardo do the salad, yours truly to handle the entree, and heidi to do dessert. i thought the dinner was amazing. i will only write about what i cooked though...

mami wanted to do tempura carrots and heidi had the limited chore of dessert (ginger being the obvious choice). i didn't want to pick something that would make more sense for a salad so i chose some of the less popular root vegetables. my entree, a pork tenderloin with apple-horseradish dressing, roasted beets with an orange-ginger glaze and i topped the plate with parsnips chips. i have to admit, i had to resort to david for my side dish idea. i realized pork and apple-horseradish are mainly white dishes, parsnips are white, and mami's dinner plates are white! where's the color!?! my dad really likes to cook beets with sweet potatoes, which would have been an excellent choice, but i wanted to do something a little less sweet and something i've never had before. dave's roasted beets with orange-ginger glaze was the perfect solution.

i was able to prep a lot at home and only had to roast the beets and pork tenderloin at mami's house. the apple-horseradish dressing was made by boiling granny smith apples in water and lemon juice, then adding sugar, ground cinammon, and some cinammon candies. this dressing is then cooled to room temperature and you can add the prepared horseradish right before serving. i marinated the pork tenderloin with olive oil and fresh rosemary. the beets were roasted for an hour and the orange-ginger glaze was just an orange juice, honey, grated ginger, cardamom pods, and chicken stock reduction. my parents gave us a deep fat fryer that i filled with canola oil and then fryed parsnip shavings in and then added salt as they cooled to room temperature. unfortunately, not everyone showed up on time and my dinner was a bit cold, but i really look forward to making this again. i thought it had such great flavor and i really did like the presentation of this meal...although i think almost everything looks good on white plates!!

despite a horrid sports year, 2007 brought a lot of happiness to me. i can only hope that 2008 brings more of the same, to me, my family, and my friends.