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.
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.
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........
So does the title of this post have you wondering how in the heck all these things go together? Well they do and they don't, let me explain.
The Monday before Christmas we had a dinner party with some friends. We have been planning this for it seems like months trying to coordinate everyone's schedules and a location. I have been thinking about the menu for some time as well while constantly tweaking the recipes, coming up with new ideas and dishes and generally second guessing myself the whole time.
There were a few dishes that either did not make it on the final menu because of time constraints, amount of prep or just the fact that they did not work during execution.
Back in October my wife bought me the Alinea cookbook by Grant Achatz. This is no ordinary cookbook by any means, it is also not for everybody. It can be a source of inspiration and frustration ( in a good way) at the same time. I find myself reading it on a daily basis as it stimulates my food way of thinking and leads to new ideas. I have tried a few of the easier recipes in the book with mixed success. One of the great thing as about this cookbook project is that Grant Achatz and his partner in Alinea, Nick Kokonas, have added a companion website, Alinea-Mosaic, where some recipes are posted as well as a forum where you can share ideas, ask the chefs questions as well as interact with others who are enjoying this "not just a cookbook".
The way I cook is to constantly try to find new ideas, new ways of cooking something,and to always try to push myself to make restaurant caliber/quality meals in my home kitchen. I consider myself a pretty ambitious home cook and am actually working on a few projects that should push me into the professional cooking arena but not tied down to the usual culinary career.
For this dinner I decided to use some stand by recipes with a little tweaking, some new ones that were safe and some that were just out of my league at the moment.
The menu as planned follows:
Miso Caramel Apples coated with crushed Wasabi Peas ( this idea I got from Chef Jonathan MacDonald formerly of SnackBar in Philadelphia and currently at Pub & Kitchen)
"Cheese Crackers" ala Alinea.... oh so good but messy this time.
Chorizo crusted Scallops with Granny Smith Apples, Micro Cilantro and Manchego Cheese broth - this is one where I have seen components of this dish go together and I combined it with flavors I thought would work well as well as new techniques ( broth). The chorizo is frozen then shaved on a microplane over the scallop once cooked.
Pineapple Bacon "bite" ala Alinea - this dish did not work out for multiple reasons, the biggest is that I do not have the right equipment :( I tried to improvise and make a pineapple "caviar" and serve it over the bacon powder but I used to much sodium alginate and it was too "gelly" if that makes sense. You can go HERE to see someone else who had better success with it. I am going to keep trying on this one.
For dessert I made a chocolate ganache with gelatin that just did not set up right. It was difficult to cut and tended to spread too easy. It was tasty just not what I expected,maybe more gelatin next time. I served it it with smoked oreo crumble which is basically just the chocolate wafers scraped clean of the creme and cold smoked then put through a food processor. I have made this before but this time they cooked a little too long and had a burnt smell to them. I served this with a blackberry cabernet sauce that was thickened with Ultra Tex3 to give it some body but without taking away from the natural taste of the blackberry. I sprinkled some Maldon Sea Salt on top of the chocolate. This dish did not photograph well at all,maybe next time.
I had a few more ideas for this dinner but time and resources did just not permit them to happen. I was okay with this meal but not impressed. I tend to be my own worst critic and everyone else loved the meal, or so they said ;)
Overall I felt good about the dinner to a point and had a great time with our friends who we have not seen in awhile, I am btw especially proud of the Chorizo & Scallop dish. There are some tweaks to be made to how I did things and I will definitely try and refine some of the dishes that just did not work out. I don't know..... what do you think of it, any questions ?
On a side note there are two people ( that I am aware of) that are cooking their way through the Alinea book. Much too ambitious for myself but I commend them for it - Martin at Alineaphile and Carol at Alinea at Home.
This year for Thanksgiving we decided to keep it simple and low key. Our dinner consisted of Ann and I and our three children. We stuck to the basics with small twists and had a somewhat simple holiday meal. We had a simple Roast Turkey,three mushroom & wild rice stuffing,balsamic potato salad, fresh cranberry and orange sauce, canned cranberry sauce, turkey "extras" gravy and finally green beans with almonds. The only thing I really went out on a limb was with the Pumpkin "pie" dish.
I made a pumpkin pie marshmallow using THIS recipe and paired it with graham cracker crumbs sauteed in butter and sugar with a whipped cream sauce. I tried toasting/melting the marshmallows but it looked more like a creme brulee topping. All in all, it was a good meal and even though we did not have a lot of family present we had the ones that mattered most.
So a few weeks ago I made these "gnudi" which are basically a ricotta version of gnocchi. I previously have made a different version of these awhile back for a valentines day dinner, you can see it HERE. I used pumpkin puree and "attempted" to make a brown butter sauce. The sauce did not work like I thought so although it tasted good it did not look too pretty on the plate. I topped the gnudi off with fried sage leaves and some grated parmesan. A very light but filling and tasty weeknight meal.
Originally we were planning on having a Halloween party at our house but plans fell through and instead we settled on trick or treating in our neighborhood and going over to a neighbor’s house for a Halloween party. I had a menu in mind and I may still try some of the newer dishes before Fall is over.
Miso - Caramel Wasabi Apples
“Liquefied” Caramel Corn (from the new Alinea Cookbook)
Pumpkin Ale braised Chicken Wings
There were some other things I was thinking of but they are escaping me as I write this.
This past week Louisiana has once again suffered at the hands of a hurricane. It might not make national news since it is not New Orleans but Baton Rouge (our state capital) and Alexandria were the hardest hit besides Houma and those on the coast. Shreveport, luckily, did not have Hurricane Gustav park itself and dump tons of rain. We were expecting it but it never came to pass.
The basis of this post is that this was not a typical Labor Day weekend. I had plans to make many things and originally we were scheduled to be in Charleston for Richard Blais'dinner at McCrady's.
Ann's parents came over with her sister Alex, who was home from LSU, on Sunday night. My go to dish, my comfort dish, my first dish I learned to cook is Spaghetti. I never get tired of it, its easy to prepare, can last for several weeknight dinners and all in all it is not too bad for you. I prepare the meatballs according to a recipe from a restaurant called the Little Owl. Its fairly easy and very tasty. Sometimes when it is rainy and just plain miserable outside, it is nice to warm up to a nice bowl of spaghetti and meatballs with the ones you love.
NOTE : this is just 1/2 of my family - the other half was bunkered down 90 miles east in West Monroe. My parents had a house full of cousins, aunts and uncles from the Lake Charles area who were waiting out Gustav.
For the 4th of July we kind of kept it low key. We joined our neighbors down the street for simple BBQ (Grilling for the BBQ purists) and fireworks. I had some baby back ribs in the freezer so the 4th holiday would be as good as anytime to cook them.
I wanted to go with a peach based marinade and sauce for the ribs and was trying to find a peach based iced tea to incorporate into the marinade as well as the sauce. For convenience sake I just needed a bottled version but everywhere I went they were sold in packs of 12 or not at all. For a flavor I had never tried before and the fact that I do not drink tea I chose to go with another method. I marinated the ribs in peach nectar, bourbon, garlic and chicken stock. I made a quick BBQ sauce with peach nectar, bourbon, ketchup, red wine vinegar,honey and brown sugar. I added the usual seasonings and reduced it down to a sauce like consistency.
Other dishes I decided to make were Grilled Chicken wings with a black bean garlic sauce ( black bean garlic sauce from a Chinese market, honey, siracha, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar), a corn dishI saw on StarChefs.com and fried pickles with a bacon ranch sauce( I saw this item on Graham Elliot Bowle's new Chicago Restaurant menu).
Usually during holiday events like this I am cooking most of the day and do not get to relax, this day was different. Most of these items could be prepped and pre-cooked ahead of time so it left me more time for having fun and hanging out (plus more time to relax and enjoy beverages of the adult nature).
We lucked out and the forecasted rain never came our way so it turned out to be a good night for fireworks. The only downside of the night was when ,in my sheer stupidity, I attempted to light several sparklers at once in turn burning my thumb and index finger. Yes only I could get injured, not by real fireworks, but by sparklers. Oh and at one point, one of the kids accidentally knocked over several lit fireworks causing everybody to run for cover – I wish I could have gotten a picture of that,it was funny afterwords.
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