Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. Arguably the greatest holiday of the year. When else do we get 2 days off to celebrate food and family. A holiday centered around one huge meal, and subsequent side meals of sandwiches made from leftovers (my favorite meal of the year happens to be the post-thanksgiving sandwich). My family, like all others, has its traditions and general hoopla surrounding this epic meal. We are pretty traditional in our turkey dinner with all of the normal things you would see on a thanksgiving table. Ive been trying in the past few years to push the envelope and get my family to try new things at thanksgiving. This year I was handed the assignment of appetizers, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. Given that my family doesn't deal with a change in tradition to easily, I took these standard assignments and tried to dress them up a bit without fully straying from the traditional flavors of the dishes.

My appetizer was a take on bacon wrapped figs. With a minor miss communication on a shopping list, I was handed 2 boxes of dates, and crumbled goat cheese. Not really ideal for starting this dish on Thanksgiving day. So, I ran with it. I've never used dates in cooking before, and realized quickly that they are much sweeter than figs. So my first step, fry some bacon. 'Cause bacon is just magical. I took the rendered bacon fat and added some fine diced shallots. Once those were soft I added the dried dates. Seeing that the mixture needed some liquid, I quickly found a cheap bottle of red wine and added it to the pan. Now, I was getting somewhere. I decided that no one really would like a big chunk of date being stuck in their teeth before dinner, so I took the mixture and put it in a food processor. Capriciously, I added a little bit of goat cheese and hit blend. Not bad, I thought. So, i added the whole lot of the cheese, while taking out some of the date mixture. The puree was delicious. To finish this dish, I had decided earlier with the figs I was going to serve it in an endive wrapped in prosciutto adding salt, bitterness, and a nice crunch to the app.
So, I piped the mixture onto the endive and quickly realized I had to completely hide it with the prosciutto due to its unappealing look.
All in all, it turned out pretty good. The family dusted the tray before the Turkey went into the fryer.

Mashed potatoes. Pretty sacred in my family. One way, simple, kinda boring. I saw a trick on Food Network that called for boiling the potatoes in milk. So, I tried it. Whole milk, water, fresh thyme, salt & white pepper boiled the yukon gold potatoes. Once tender I just added some butter, and placed some of the milk mixture back into the potatoes. Finished with a handful parmesan cheese and these potatoes were outstanding. Try this, you wont be disappointed.

Chili Lime Shrimp w/ citrus cous cous & grilled broccoli

So, going back a few months on this post too. Summer provides a great variety of fruits, vegetables, and cooking methods like grilling. On a sunny Sunday, our adventures took us to the grill. After the purchase of some Tahitian Lime butter from a local festival (also mentioned in the Fish Taco post), my good friend Chris and I headed out to make a delicious meal around this ingredient. We bought some shrimp, broccoli and some white peaches. And built from there. We rendered an incredible summer meal, complete with a delicious white wine.

Chris took care of the broccoli with a spicy marinade, I took the shrimp and the cous cous. The shrimp were marinated in the tahitian lime butter, garlic pepper sauce, olive oil, and some fresh lime for good measure. The cous cous had some fresh parsley, lemon juice, and a touch of balsamic added to it. We complemented the meal with a half a peach toasted on the grill, and being californians we completed the plate with a big heaping portion of fresh avocado to top.
Summer sundays are fabulous.

Iron Chef 2

So, after the first Iron Chef Pine St. my roommate wanted another challenge. I gladly accepted. We had a few more people, a simpler score card, and some more fun indgredients:

Shrimp, Fennel, Serrano Chilies, Yams (really?), and Mushrooms.

My dishes:

Tequila shrimp cevice
- Lime juice, a nice blanco tequila, finely diced serrano chilis, finely diced fennel, and some nice sized chunks of white peach. Garnished with a big slice of the peach for a nice sweet finish.

Chili fennel shrimp w/ mushroom risotto
- The key to this was adding all of the shrimp shells & discarded pieces of fennel to the stock.

Cajun shrimp with bourbon yam fritters
- Having never made fritters before this event, the experiment worked out with flying colors. First roasting the yams, then mashing together the yams, egg, bread crumbs, bourbon, maple syrup and a touch of salt. These puppies were deep fried to a beautiful dark caramel color. Garnished with a maple bourbon butter sauce. The shrimp were simply prepared with some cajun seasoning and married next to the fritter.

Sausage Penne w/ Brown butter sauce

An impromptu lunch invite led me to Whole Foods for a quick and cheap lunch. Pasta was brought up, and pasta is what I made. Simple, easy, and quite delicious:

Penne
Loose mild italian sausage
Zucchini
Mushrooms
Browned butter sauce with sage
Topped with fresh basil & parmesean cheese

Instead of drowning the sausage & veggies in butter, I mixed in all the goods to the pasta first, then coated with the brown butter sauce.

A great cheap, Autumn lunch!

Iron Chef 1

Being food network junkies, my roommate and I had talked for ages about doing an Iron Chef battle. Dividing the kitchen, having friends bring over the secret ingredients, and doing battle the best we could.
Not only was it a blast, we surprised ourselves on how good we did in 90 minutes.

Secret Ingredients:
Cherries, Mint, Pork Loin, bay scallops, Polenta, Heirloom tomatoes, chives.

My dishes:
- Crostini w/ goat cheese, cherries marinated in balsamic, heirloom tomato, and a sliver of mint to top.
- Heirloom tomato stuffed with polenta & parmesean cheese
- Roast pork loin, stuffed with cherries, mint, chives & shallots. With a cherry, cabernet reduction to top.
- Cherry Polenta crostini topped with goat cheese.
- Deep fried heirloom tomatoes, topped with a bacon wrapped scallop.

Short Ribs

I recently had dinner with my friend Ruthie who is an aspiring chef getting prepared to attend culinary school in St. Helena this winter (read her blog! - http://ruthinfood.blogspot.com/).

Upon talking about & roaming the store for what to cook for dinner, we settled on short ribs, which we would marinate in an asian style, rice, and green beans.

The ribs were delicious, and could easily be improved with a longer marinade time.

Marinade:
Soy sauce
Mirin
Fresh ginger
Seasame oil
Siracha hot sauce
Brown sugar


Cooking - Meat side down to start. Rotate until cooked through (about 12-15 min total cooking time, depending on thickness)

We also had some savory cilantro rice - cooked by adding cilantro stems, soy sauce and a dash of seasame oil to the rice cooker.

For my first ever attempt at cooking short ribs, I concluded with "I like short ribs."

Tortilla Soup & Pork Sliders

Thursday football.
Good beer. Good food. Horrible game. And then, a night out.

Tortilla soup:
All good soups start with a great stock.
- Homemade chicken stock
- Chicken thighs - dredged in flour, browned with a bit of oil.
- Corn tortillas cut into strips
- Leeks, cut the same size as the tortillas
- Can of diced tomatoes
- Cilantro
- Jalepenos
- Pablano pepper
- Chili powder
- Cayenne pepper
- Seasoning salt
- Paprika
- Hot sauce

Soups are pretty straight forward. Cook everything a little, then throw it in to one big pot and let it cook for a while. My steps were to crisp some of the tortilla strips up first, then add leeks, then add a can of diced tomatoes. Let that simmer for a bit, then add it into the stock pot. Once the chicken is cooked, remove, then shred, then place back into the pot. I garnished this dish with crispy tortilla strips, fresh cilantro, and fresh diced tomatoes.

Pork Sliders - Keith, please comment and leave your bbq sauce recipe.

Sunday Perfection

Sunday; a day of relaxation, sunshine (hopefully), and hangover management. This past Sunday was one for the books. A corner market cigarette run, brewing another batch of coffee at 1pm, a move to the park complete with blanket, portable speakers, and ice cold beer, some delicious cheese, and some of the best people I know (take that for a run-on sentence).
My ideal Sunday was exactly what was written above, with an addition of a great, big, enjoyable family style dinner. And, we had one:

Skirt steak marinated in honey mustard, Dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt & pepper.
Fingerling potatoes boiled whole, then fork mashed with some par boiled brussel sprouts. Browned in butter, a little garlic, green onions, salt & pepper. And some fresh parmesan to top.
Spinach salad with avocado, pear, goat cheese, and shallots with a balsamic vinaigrette.
And some fresh bread toasted golden brown with a subtle butter & olive oil topping.

The neighbors brought over an incredible Cabernet from the Wente vineyards.

This was truly a treat, and an incredible day.

The toast of that night: "Happy Sunday"

Fish Tacos

I have made fish tacos dozens of times, and each time yielded a different result. This one, may have been my best yet.

Fish - Alaskan Halibut (Courtesy of my good friends Jess & Brandon)
Batter - Egg wash w/ a little water, Flour w/ chili lime salt.

Fish was broken down into managable strips, lightly battered, then pan fried in about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil.

Salsa - 1 mango, 2 avocados, 1/2 red onion, 1/2 bunch of cilantro, 3 limes, honey, mustard (sweet & spicy, and tahitian lime butter.

As always with food, especially fish, the better and higher quality ingredients, the better the food will turn out. This fish was incredible. I got a little lucky by finding a jar of this sweet, delicate butter I got suckered into buying at SF's Aloha fest. But, it turned out to be a great rediscovery in my fridge.

Mission Statement

Hi, for those who may actually read this thing, this is going to be my sort of online recipe book. I have failed at keeping recipes from capricious meals scraped together from left overs in the fridge that turned into outstanding meals. This blog will hopefully reconcile that.

I love food. I love to eat. I love to cook. I love a great meal that brings friends, family, laughter and memories all to one table. At my current residence in SF, we have had a small tradition of Thursday night dinners. These meals have yielded outstanding cuisine by my self and also my roommmate. They have produced a fierce Iron Chef rivalry between us, and also produced some of the best nights of the year.

So, although this is mainly going to house recipes, I encourage any of the followers to take, steal, manipulate and comment on the food published here.

Happy cooking.