phood adventures

snowy night in new england

Roman — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:31:12 GMT

my housemates and i had planned to have a few friends over for a nice little dinner, but unfortunately the weather got in the way and only one guest showed up.

here’s what we made:
as an appetizer we had an époisse cheese with baguettes and champagne.

janice made a vegetarian french onion soup from scratch, so no beef stock since she and the guest are vegetarians. the soup was amazing, you could taste the cognac and the gruyère was melted just right.. i could have melted gruyère anytime, let me tell you. we paired this up with a nice beaujolais nouveau.

the salad was a quick all organic salad that the guest brought over. lettuce, colored peppers, radishes, tomatoes, covered in feta cheese. she made a balsamic vinaigrette with a touch of maple syrup. the dressing was just amazing.. need to remember to get the recipe from her for the summer greens that we grow in the garden!

the main course was a “paella” of sorts. i made an asparagus risotto with leeks, shallots, orange zest, saffron and garlic. i used white wine (chardonnay, i think) and lobster broth and got it nice and creamy. daniel made the other part of the “paella,” a bouillabaisse of sorts. he made it with different types of clams, scallops, shrimp in a leek, garlic, shallot sauce. we then combined the bouillabaisse on top of the risotto and voilà! the wine was a nice, crisp sauvignon blanc.

for dessert we had a nice crème caramel that janice made all day. it was nice, creamy and had a nice subtle vanilla flavor; it was paired up with a sauternes i had bought earlier in the year just to have with this dessert. amazing.

this dinner definitely made up for having to shovel the driveway with all that snow, let me tell you.

What to do with all the basil?

MJ — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:26:02 GMT

I harvested a load of basil from the Aerogardens today, and it’s now too cool to just make salads out of the stuff, so I decided to do soups. I made a HUGE pot of tomato basil soup. I found this recipe that emulates La Madeleine’s soup. It’s a pretty close approximation. Yummy! I also made a vat of coconut basil soup. I glanced at a few recipes online, but none of them were exactly what I wanted. Ultimately, I ended up dumping in a couple of cans of chicken broth, a couple of cans of coconut milk, a can of evaporated milk, basil, ginger, cilantro, coriander, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, cumin, and lime juice. My Braun hand blender came in very handy for making these soups. I was able to puree them until they were silky smooth.

Cups of the soup went down nicely with slices of the Sally Lunn bread I made in the bread machine last night. I cheated and used a mix that we bought in Williamsburg last year. Made things simple.

I’ve made gallons of these soups, so I’m going to package them up in individual serving sizes using my food sealer and toss them in the freezer for consumption at a later date. They’ll make great lunches!

I am supposed to make my three bean salad for Turkey Day at my cousin’s house, so I bought kidney beans and garbanzo beans. I put the garbanzo beans in the pressure cooker, but I let them go too long and they got all mushy. So I just broke out the hand blender again and whirled them up with garlic, parsley, paprika, tahini, olive oil, and lime juice and made a big old bowl of hummus. I suppose I’ll either have to freeze that, too, or I’ll have to take it to Thanksgiving. The thing is that I’m not sure that either my family or Lex’s likes hummus. Hrm.

Believe it or not, but after all this cooking, I still have basil left over. I suppose I should just make some pesto. I bought some walnuts today, but I’m running low on olive oil. Hrm. We’ll see what happens, I reckon. I should make ice cubes from pureed herbs and water and freeze them for use in soups and stocks. That’s the way to do it!

I'm in foodie heaven, and everyone here seems to be Japanese!

MJ — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:02:52 GMT

My girl bought me early birthday/Christmas gifts last Friday. I received an amazing new rice cooker, the Zojirushi Micom NS-TGC10 fuzzy-logic cooker. It’s incredible! It has settings for brown, white, sticky rice, and porridge (risottos, puddings, cereals). It will even bake a cake! A cute feature: it plays the “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” melody when it starts and “Amaryllis” when it stops. So far I’ve made brown rice, sushi rice, basmati rice, and steel-cut oats, and that’s only since Friday!

The other gift I got was a Mr. Bento Japanese lunch jar. The Mr. Bento is a stainless steel thermos with little Tupperware-like containers inside. One is made just for rice, another just for soup (has a no-leak gasket), and the other two are for side dishes. It even came with its own metal spork and spork cover! I packed my first bento today. It had a couple of rice balls, baby carrots, a sliced up orange, and a bowl of miso soup. Now I’m fascinated by the art of bento and am collecting little cutters, molds, and other goodies to help me build a better bento. Geeky, maybe, but fun!

Making pizza

MJ — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:03:22 GMT

A few days ago, I made a luscious homemade pizza. I cheated a bit, though. The Italian deli down the street makes and sells dough balls, so this is what I used for the crust. I also picked up some of their fresh mozzarella (didn’t feel like making my own). I sliced some roma tomatoes that I picked up from the farmer’s market, harvested and washed some of the basils that we’ve been growing in the Aerogarden, and grated some Parmasean. I brushed the crust down with some good olive oil, sprinkled some oregano over it, spread the tomatoes and basil all over, and then heaped mozzarella and parmasean on top and basked it on Lex’s pizza stone.

It was soooo good! We gobbled it right down.

Sprouting

MJ — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 21:58:29 GMT

Once upon a time, I used to grow my own sprouts. As it turns out, I have managed to hold onto my old sprouting jar (a glass quart jar with a screened lid on top). There’s a natural foods store just up the street, and I found a package of sprouting seeds that includes clover seeds, alfalfa seeds, fenugreek seeds, and radish seeds. I’ve just harvested my first batch.

Now, what to do with them? Does anyone have a favorite use for sprouts?

I like to make a sandwich from mashed avocado, sprouts, red onion, and swiss cheese on a good wheat bread with brown mustard.

As I’m currently fresh out of red onion, avocado, and swiss, I suppose I’ll have to come up with something different.