Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Four Course Valentine’s Dinner Part Four: Oysters in Black Truffle Cream
The final course of the Valentine’s Day dinner is a dish I stole from Le Bernardin. During a 12-course tasting menu there, one of the first courses was a single oyster served with a black truffle cream on top. It was incredible. Since then I have recreated the dish twice, and it’s always been a big hit.
Four Course Valentine’s Dinner Part Three: Truffled Foie Gras, Honey Balsamic Port Reduction
Course number three in this Valentine’s Day feast was foie gras with black truffles on a toasted baguette with a honey, balsamic and port reduction. This dish is simply decadent, and would elevate any dinner party from the mundane to something extraordinary. If you serve this to your guests, you will look like a pro.
For the Fairfield County Readers…Bar Rosso
Last night I was having drinks with friends at Napa, here in Stamford, and our friend, bartender and musical mixologist Eric Ribeiro shared a link from CT food blog CT Bites where he is quoted, about their new restaurant opening on Spring Street.
Here is the link to the article:
From CT Bites:
“The menu will focus on a culinary tour of Italy from Sicily to the Dolomites with robust offerings of reasonable small plates and starters that casually elevate “bar food.” The current menu will include inventive appetizers including Marinated cauliflower, Truffle Polenta, Buttata and olives, Crushed Potatoes, and Whipped chicken livers. In addition the menu will include dry plus homemade pastas with delectable toppings including sausages, lamb, rabbit and shrimp. A selection of heartier meat and fish entrees, many of which will be cooked in the wood burning oven are also in the works. Additionally Chef Kardos will prepare his own mozzarella and in house charcuterie.
Bar Rosso will also offer a 250 bottle Italian wine list and the 25 wines by the glass, the cocktail menu will feature Italian classics that will include one of the five homemade bitters plus lemoncello, orange-cella and grappa. Overseeing the creation of this inventive “Libations” menu is a passionate master mixologist Eric Ribeiro, whose experience as a chef and a passion for drink has created some incredible specialty cocktails. His remarkable cocktail menu is a wonderful complement to the Bar Rosso experience and it mirrors the attention given to the food. For months Eric as been formulating a selection of homemade bitters with flavors like “In Bloom” (blending rose petals, 151 proof rum, lavender, and star anise), “Orange” (with orange peel, spices and roots and caramelized sugar), and “Vanilla & Cherry.” Each bitter combines roots, spices, and alcohol which he marinates for 2 months, strains and then bottles. The result is intoxicating, and a cocktail only requires a few drops of Eric’s bitters for the flavors to reach their intended intensity.”
I’m definitely looking forward to the opening. I’m going to have to pick Eric’s brain to get to the recipes for those home made bitters…
WTF Should I Make For Dinner?
I stumbled across this site via a blog I read…and couldn’t help laughing. If you don’t know what to make for dinner, and you’re mad enough to swear about it, you should probably visit this site.
**Warning: STRONG, BLUNT LANGUAGE.**
Le Chef Goes to San Francisco
Last weekend I had the amazing opportunity to go to California to put together a cocktail menu and tend bar for a private party in Lafayette, CA, just across the bay from San Francisco. If you read my last post, you will remember that Michelle Edmunds took the wonderful photos of the dinner party that Sous Chef Jeff and I catered on Cape Cod. Apparently my cocktails that night were impressive (or potent) enough to convince the Edmunds to fly me out to San Francisco to be their bartender for a party they were throwing at their home. How could I possibly say no?
"Slightly Stormy", Photo courtesy of Michelle Edmunds
Cold Cucumber Soup with Lobster and Scallions
As I mentioned, this is the final week of the Food52 year-long recipe competition. Cucumbers are the theme here, and I have simply modified my cold avocado soup to incorporate cucumbers, since it was such a big hit at the Food52 potluck picnic. By the time I added it to the site there were already five other cold cucumber soups in the competition! Oh well…may the best dish win, as always!
How to Eat (or…pick the meat from) a Lobster
In the vein of learning to deal with crustaceans, I am posting a step-by-step guide to breaking down a lobster. In this case I am removing the meat to serve with a soup, so the photos are from that process (instead of using lobster crackers on the claws, I’m using a rolling pin like a hammer). However, the general ideas of how to eat a lobster still apply, so this guide can be used by anyone who has never eaten a lobster, or anyone who wants to get every last morsel of tasty meat out of that shell.
Brilliant?
Ribs in a can. I can’t decide if this is the best or worst idea that a food company ever had. I’m leaning towards worst, but if I’m stocking my bomb shelter for the apocalypse I’m going to want ribs, so maybe I’m being hasty in my evaluation of canned meat. Also, I just love the verb “sauced”. Sauced canned meat. Mmmmmm…. Via boingboing.
How to Clean Soft Shell Crabs
I’ve been eating a lot of soft shell crabs recently. It’s the season, and I love them, so I’m going to get my fill while I can. I have posted recipes here and here, but in both cases I never talk about how to clean the crabs. Most of the time I have the fishmonger clean them when I buy them, but the other day I was down in Chinatown and I got half a dozen live crabs, which were packed up on ice and carried home to make soft shell crab buns, Momofuku style. So, if you find yourself with live soft shell crabs that need to be cleaned, here’s what to do.
Cooking and Evolution
I’m going to deviate from my normal recipe posting to put up an interesting article about a new book coming out by Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham that sounds intriguing. Wrangham postulates that cooking gave early humans an evolutionary advantage, making those who cooked their food more attractive (biologically) to potential mates and thus more likely to procreate. Sounds about right, from my perspective, if you know what I mean…everybody loves the cook!
From the article:
““The extra energy gave the first cooks biological advantages. They survived and reproduced better than before. Their genes spread. Their bodies responded by biologically adapting to cooked food, shaped by natural selection to take maximum advantage of the new diet. There were changes in anatomy, physiology, ecology, life history, psychology and society.”
Link to New York Times Article
