A couple of good friends came over, so we had a fancy 3-course dinner: 1. Puréed soup of roasted Kabocha and yellow beet with 1998 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne 2. Shiitake risotto with Carciofi alla Romana (Roman style artichokes) and poached quail eggs with Thackrey‘s Pleiades XII 3. Pan-roasted duck breast on burdock-parsnip purée with pomegranate-tamarind-blood orange reduction with the 2001 Carver Sutro Petite Sirah Our one vegetarian guest had patties made from mung beans…
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Got a bit of perfect wild Alaskan salmon and ate half of it sashimi style with just nama shoyu, then cut the rest into cubes and added capers, lemon, parsley, onion, and oil to make a tartare. Let it sit for half an hour to marry the flavors and served it with a raw quail egg on top. Then some ground lamb went in a bowl with choppped Kalamata olives, cumin, cinnamon, lemon juice, a…
Normally we try to eat vegetables which are in season and local, but this time I had a craving for some summer flavor and made a stir-fry of tofu with yellow bell pepper, zucchini, and grape tomatoes. Very simple, but good alongside burdock braised with arame seaweed, dried shiitake, and a bit of soy. Served on top of the red quinoa from the other night. Both went remarkably well with the 2002 Beringer Sbragia Chardonnay,…
Came back from a night upstate and had this in the fridge: chicken thighs, collards, and the usual assortment of grains and condiments. So I defrosted the chicken (I know, I know) and rubbed it with some cumin and cinnamon, rubbed some lemon slices with the same, plus smoked salt, and seared up the chicken in the big sautée pan. Drained extra fat, then added minced onion, garlic, and chopped collards plus a bit of…
I like to have a variety of curry pastes and powders around, as well as the individual components; it allows for fine-tuning flavor without having to grind your own from scratch every time. In this case, it was onions, chick peas, sweet potato and cauliflower with one small can of coconut milk and a dab of tomato paste, mixed with some curry powder, some vindaloo paste, and a few fenugreek and cumin seeds, then left…
Another perennial comfort food, and to me further proof that one should go for either the best or the cheapest cuts; the best can be barely seared and are tender as can be, while the cheap cuts with proper slow cooking are magic. The key is a good braise with good ingredients. In this case, adzuki beans (dried, which cooked up perfectly and soaked up all the excess liquid,) mirepoix, porcini, garlic, fresh rosemary, bay,…
This one has been a staple since I first learned to make it in Rome as a student 17 years ago. It’s essentially a perfect plate of pasta, balancing the sweetness of tomatoes with the heat of pepperoncini and the depth of garlic. The key is to cook the peppers and garlic until the garlic JUST colors, then dump in the tomatoes. I always use whole peeled organic; the purées and “sauces” have the wrong…
Rubbed some legs and thighs with remaining pesto, plus the chardonnay smoked salt and herbes de provence and threw them in the oven with onions, garlic, olives, and cherry tomatoes. Once they were close to done I switched the oven to broil and got them all crispy. Poured off the excess fat and quickly cooked some shredded kale in there, then warmed up the half a baked kabocha we still had. I poured some wine…
A couple friends joined us last night, so as an appetizer I made a galangal-blood orange sauce and poured it over some sautéed shrimp. For the main dish, I made kabocha-pine nut wontons and spicy pork meatballs and served them in a soup made from the liquid I saved from the Moroccan chicken stew from a few nights earlier (about which I didn’t write, but see below) to which I added thai curry paste, tomato…
Our local grocery sells pretty good frozen pizza dough, which on principal I’m against yet in practice find myself buying occasionally since it’s so damn easy and rolled out super thin tastes good too. (Thick it just turns to ghastly white bread.) But for times like this, when reaching the bottom of the fridge, and with the regular rhythm interrupted by a fancy meal out, it’s a perfect time to bust out the calzone. In…