Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Date Night--10/16-12

So it's a Tuesday.  What's up with that?  Our friends are taking us out for anniversary tomorrow.  So we'll do date night tonight.  We're nothing if not flexible.

So what is Date Night this evening?

The best flank steak Josh has ever eaten...complete with shallot and mushroom "ragu."  A TBD veggie.  I'm thinking asparagus, but I'll see what's available at the market. Oh and those really good cottage fries.  YUM!!!

Dessert.  I'm going to try this apple crumble recipe.  I have all the ingredients on hand; and these days, that's really important.

Appetizers.  Some kind of cheese and crackers.  Maybe with bruschetta.  Maybe just cheddar.  I'll let Josh choose.

Cocktails.  Up to the mix master.

That's all for now.

happy cooking!

my love affair with chickens

I don't mean while were they're alive and bach-bach-baching around a farm.  I mean after they're dead and in my grocery store.  BOGO is best but .$99/lb isn't too bad either.

So what did I do with my BOGO chickens?

I made more stock.  Nothing terribly exciting or different there.  I will add this one word of caution--make your stock when the garbage gets picked up no more than two days later.  It gets noxious and noisome rapidly.

So that took care of one bird.  What did I do with the other? 

I ROASTED it! And it was really good, if I do say so myself.  And I do.

How did I roast it, you'd like to know?  I followed Thomas Keller's recipe exactly!  I even learned how to truss a chicken with this video

I admit, I had to watch parts of the video three, even four times.  But int he end it was easy peasy and the bird was delicious!

That's all from me.

happy cooking!

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Happy Anniversary to US!!


Our 8th anniversary is on Wednesday and Josh is taking me out to dinner.  Not wanting that to be our only celebration, I made a really nice dinner last night.

I'll start with appetizers.  Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms.  Now, I really just used this as inspiration.  I minced the mushroom stems and added Italian sausage to the stuffing.  They were very tasty and we ate them up.  We, however, could not finish our dinners as a result.  (That's okay...no more cooking for me this week!)

I made martinis to accompany our appetizers.  Hendricks gin, vermouth, and a twist of lemon.  Cannot get any more classic than that.



Now to dinner.  I made individual beef wellingtons.  Yum!  I did not use the pate called for in the recipe and I added thyme to the mushroom duxelle.

The wellingtons are accompanied by mashed potatoes (duh) and Brussels Sprout Hash with Caramelized Shallots.  Delish!  Tender and flavorful and not too "brussels sprouty."

Now to dessert.  Oh dessert!  I made (drum roll please)  Creme Brulee.  I do not have a kitchen torch; the broiler had to do.  I followed the indredients part of this recipe.  The technique I used was outlined by one of the recipe reviewers, ChefPeon.  Her methodology made a lot more sense to me and was, in fact, less labor intensive (and scary) than the oen in the recipe.


We had coffee with dinner.  But that's not all.  I had his idea to serve Josh a whisky flight. So I selected three of his whiskys (he said I chose the right ones! yay me!!) and I had a port pairing (we have two ports so I had a little of each.)



If you look closely you can see the single malt glasses and the port glasses.  Yes we do have a lot of specialty barware.

That's all for me .  Yesterday was a long day of cooking (I started at 11 with dessert).  But it's a new day and we have our leftovers (no sprouts!) for todaay.

happy cooking!