Chicken Fried Gourmet

Cocoa Crusted Flat Iron Steak, french fry "onion rings",rosemary olive oil pudding with other stuff.....

This is what we had for Father's Day last weekend. I had the butcher at Kroger slice a Flat Iron steak thinly and then I combined it with Activa, rolled it up then marinated it with a mixture of cocoa, worchestire, garlic, olive oil and a few other things. I made french fry "onion rings" a rosemary olive oil pudding inspired by the Alinea cookbook and a reduced beef stock red wine jus. For an appetizer I made the Mango Soy Bonito dish from the Alinea cookbook as well. Since it calls for a piece of equipment that is obviously out of my range for purchasing - an Anti-Griddle- I improvised and used a sheet pan on top of a piece of dry ice. With the leftover dry ice I just threw it in the pool....cool...smoke :) The frozen mango puree is topped with soy sauce pudding and shaved/dried bonito ( I skipped the sesame oil). This was a really interesting flavor combination and one I would like to experiment with other flavors. For dessert we had fresh watermelon topped with tomato sorbet, reduced balsamic vinegar and a basil sweet syrup.

............in the midst of gardening

............in the midst of gardening, planted some new things this year at the new house : golden beets, kholrabi, corn salad, arugula, lemon thyme, sorrel, purple basil, several diffrent types of heirloom tomatoes, pimento peppers, ancho peppers, two types of radishes, garlic and micro-greens.

 

we'll see how this year goes........

Chicken Caesar Sandwich with Bacon, Parmesan and Granny Smith Apple

Tonight's dinner was leftover Caesar salad, grilled chicken, Bacon, sliced Granny Smith Apples, Parmesan shavings and toasted French baguette.

very tasty........

 

Toasted English Muffins with Butter and Blueberries

just a simple breakfast of English muffins topped with butter and fresh blueberries then toasted under the broiler.

Sunday night Lasagna

nothing special, just using up leftover meatballs and pasta sauce for lasagna on a drizzly Sunday evening

some random pics from Easter weekend

Here are some pictures from this past Easter weekend.

We had a couple of get togethers and family meals. We had mini burgers with fried green tomatoes on Saturday while we dyed Easter eggs, on Friday we had some snapper with steamed snow peas, passionfruit vinaigrette and balsamic syrup. I really wanted some texture with the fish dish, a crunch if you will. On the way over to my in-laws I stopped at a local convienence store looking for corn nuts. I wanted to grind up the corn nuts to give the fish some crunch, a sprinkling if you will after plating. For some reason this store did not carry corn nuts at all, bummer :(

Happy Easter everyone, hope everyone remembers the real meaning behind it.

Rosemary grilled beef tenderloin with mushroom ravioli & popcorn sunchoke puree

Just playing around in the kitchen with some new flavors/techniques......

New house, new baby, new kitchen..............

Again sorry for the lack of updates recently ( man I really should just post more so I can stop apologizing) but there have been a lot of changes recently in the past couples of months, some good some bad but the biggest and best things are we have bought/moved to a bigger (and better) house BECAUSE we are expecting another child. One of the benefits of the new home is the kitchen, a great place to cook for me considering what I had before. Below are some pictures of what little cooking I have been able to do recently in the new kitchen, there is also a b&w pic of the old kitchen (while making pasta) just so you can really appreciate it. Look for good things to come with this new setup.

BTW the shrimp on the grill are outside, no inside grill :(........yet

Guinness and Happy St Patrick's Day

I had this idea to make a dinner around a few Irish ingredients, okay really just potatoes and Guinness beer. I went to the store and picked up some oxtails (google it) and a 4 pack of Guinness Draught beer in a can.  I planned on making a ravioli filled with Guinness braised oxtails, a Guinness brown butter sauce and diced potatoes cooked in duck fat. Nice concept right? Well after cooking the oxtails in my slow cooker I realized that the weather outside was very "springy" and thus this dish seemed really heavy and more suited for colder weather. I will figure out something else for this Guinness braised beef but in the meantime I need to take care of the rest of the "ingredients" so they do not go to waste ;) My name is O'Boyle isn't it........

 

 

 

 

 

 

Piquillo Pork Tenderloin with Manchego Cheese Potatoes and Piquillo sauce

So this will be a quick post. This is something I did a few weeks ago - a piquillo pepper marinated pork tenderloin, grilled then sliced over a manchego cheese potato au gratin and served over a piquillo pepper and honey sauce. I have been on the hunt for authentic jarred piquillo peppers for some time and have had no luck finding them in the different upscale grocery stores in Dallas. I finally came across them in Whole Foods in Baton Rouge when we were there for an LSU game back in November. Here you go, enjoy......