cast-iron skillet

so i got a lodge cast-iron skillet for Christmas this year! i've been wanting one ever since i gave my dad and/or brother one for Christmas a few years ago. so, in order to properly break it in, i made breakfast...all weekend long!

the very first food item i put in the skillet was (and should be) bacon. i then made potatoes and finished with a fried egg. below is what i made the second time around as i was interested in seeing the difference between sausage and bacon as a vehicle for helping the non-stick surface of a seasoned cast-iron skillet. i think i prefer the bacon as the sausage ended up sticking a bit. i think that has more to do with the fact that i didn't let the sausage go to room temperature before putting it on the hot skillet surface. this is a rookie mistake that i'm somewhat ashamed to admit. always let food go to room temperature that you are going to put in any kind of stove top pan. anyway, this is a fried egg served over a breakfast sausage that's on top of a sauteed potato slice. i used a 2-inch ring mold to cut away some egg white for presentation purposes. i love hot sauce so that's what you see along the side. it was really tasty and fun to make. i just love this skillet!

Christmas Dinner 2009

every year Marcela and i have a Christmas Dinner with Bart and his family. we have decided to go on a three year cycle, switching amongst eating at Bart's house, followed by our house and then the third year we go out to eat. it was our turn to host the dinner and so i anxiously started planning this dinner only seconds after swallowing my last bit of turkey from thanksgiving!

this was my second time around with cooking a dinner for the Smith's. i was fairly satisfied with my first dinner, which might even be posted in this blog..., but i have come a long way since three years ago and i really wanted this one to be good. i had used the theme of color, specifically Christmas colors (green and red) for my first dinner and thought i'd stick with that for this one.

i began prepping on thursday night and thought even though i was going to take care of Camilo for the better part of friday, i'd be fine for timing. friday morning we woke up to find both Camilo and Marcela sick. i felt bad for Marcela, but it ended up being a blessing as she was able to tend to Camilo and i was able to get on my cooking. now i have made plenty of multi-course dinner's before and i know that they always take longer than expected, but i didn't realize that even with thursday night's prepping, i would still need the whole day on friday to get it done in time! so here's the menu for the dinner.



the first course is from my amature foray into the world of molecular gastronomy. it is a sweat pea "pasta-less" ravioli. basically you just add sodium alginate to a liquid and then drop it into a bath of calcium chloride. the calcium chloride and sodium alginate react to form a "skin" around the liquid, holding into place until you break the skin in your mouth, releasing the contents.



the second course is a roasted red pepper soup which i chose for two reasons. one, it's red, and two, it's a soup and i just love soup's during the winter months. i think it's a nice way to officially start the dinner too. i wanted to use fresh red peppers and roast them myself, but i'm glad i chose the jarred version as i would definitely not been done on time! this was good, but actually might have been the weakest of my courses.



the third course was something i read about somewhere, internet most likely, and wasn't sure how well it'd turn out and/or be received. what's funny is that it actually turned out great and i'm gonna make it again for Christmas eve with Marcela's family! we had a jar of a mustard vinaigrette that some friends gave us for a Christmas gift and so i just blanched and peeled some cherry tomato's, marinating them overnight in olive oil, garlic and thyme and stacked everything up on a kabab skewer and drizzled with the dressing. it was really fun to eat as you could pull everything off the skewer and mix together to make a traditional salad, or, as i did, just eat it like a kabab, right off the skewer!



the entree course was something i was really looking forward to making. i really wanted to do beef as it's just so good and would allow for easy preparation. i followed a recipe by Tom Colocchio off top chef and his craft restaurant's fame. it called for marinating short ribs overnight in a vegetable wine bath. then, a few hours before serving, i cooked them for a bit on the range before putting them in the oven to braise for a couple hours. i served the short ribs over a carrot ginger puree (not necessarily following my color theme!), fried potato rectangles and some pan fried string beans. i drizzled a cherry port sauce around the perimeter of the plate for an added flavor, which was probably not necessary, but provided a nice aesthetic touch.



dessert was going to be the toughest for me as i am just not good with desserts. Bart had mentioned that Marisa, his daughter, loved apple crisp. so, i thought i'd try and get fancy by (somewhat) deconstructing an apple crisp. the two different parts here are frozen apple mousse and an apple crisp cookie. to give some more color and a little presentation touch, i experimented again with science and food! by adding lecithin to a liquid and then whipping it with an immersion blender, you can get an air or foam to formalize on top of the liquid. left setting for a couple minutes, it holds it's form and can be applied by whisking it off the top and dropping it on a plate. i chose cranberries as they fit the season and i had a bag of them meant to go in a bowl to decorate the table. i guess we got rid of the glass bowls i thought we had so all that was left to do with them was to eat them!



so, i have to say that this was my best dinner to date. the reasons for it were that everyone really enjoyed it and i actually was able to finish everything on time and without any omissions. i really owe a lot to Marcela for taking care of Camilo all day friday, especially while being sick, so that i could spend the whole time in the kitchen preparing this fun dinner. of course i owe her for much more than that, but you get the point!

Merry Christmas everyone!

scallop

i found this picture in my phone while uploading the pictures of the yam cannoli's...

the last time my dad visited we cooked dinner for my mom and Marcela, as usual, and we made a potato soup to be used as a "sauce" for a couple large scallops. unfortunately the soup turned out a little thick and didn't present itself the way i hoped for. so, i made it again the following weekend but i only had enough scallops to put one on the plate. it definitely still could use some garnish to provide some color, but i think this makes a great course in a multi-course menu. i really like little serving pieces when doing multi-course menus, but i think serving a tiny course on a huge plate provides a unique contrast that just looks great. the only bad thing is when, like me, you have a very tiny kitchen and no place or time to deal with dirty dishes!!!

thanksgiving

so it's been almost a year since I last posted. I just can't seem to find the time to write on the computer. I want to, I just am not devoted enough I guess.

anyway, it's not like I haven't been cooking. in fact, I probably cook over 5 nights a week as we just don't ever eat out. most of the time I just make something simple that tries to get the basic food groups covered, a protein, a veggie and a starch. I need to get more fruit in my diet and I don't know whether wine really counts! maybe that will be my new years resolution!!!

this will sound like a broken record, but lately I've wanted to get back into gourmet cooking. actually, it's not really gourmet cooking, but fun, creative cooking that becomes an adventure in its process. I think that's what I like about cooking and food so much. flavors and eating are great, but I just love to experiment in the kitchen and then share whatever I come up with, with family and friends. so, with thanksgiving I thought it was a perfect time to try something that would normally not make sense to make for just two people. I think appetizers are perfect for that. it's great to make appetizers for two, but it becomes more of a challenge and often results in a lot of food waste. as tradition goes, our thanksgivings are always filled with lots of family and friends so I knew I'd not have to worry about waste for that day!

most often what I make is a rip-off of a technique or recipe or partial recipe that I've seen in a book or online or on tv, this is almost a combination of all 3 of those! based on it being fall and my dad telling me there wasn't going to be a sweet potato dish this year, I decided to try this appetizer / amuse bouche that'd I'd had minimal success using regular potatoes in. it's just mashed yams inside a fried yam "cannoli" with a sprig of bacon and then on some of them I placed a slice of jalapeno.

it definitely took me a lot longer to make than I had planned for and if, errr when I do this again I'll definitely make a few amendments, but all in all I think they turned out really well. they weren't too off the wall either which allowed the lil guys to enjoy them too!

tis the season of cooking!!! expect another post before (and hopefully after) new years as we are hosting Christmas dinner with my boss's family...