Milo has been getting hungry earlier lately, which puts some tension between our respective ideal dinner times. I’ve been trying to adapt by making multiple courses so that there’s something for him to nosh on a little earlier but we still get to eat at a reasonable hour. There’s still some work to be done, but I refuse to make separate meals; I think it’s important for kids to eat the same food as the…
Category: Small Plates
I was in the city for the weekend, doing a bunch of errandy things, and having a nice dinner with Kris & Ken. They very kindly gave me the Alinea cookbook as a late birthday present, and I was overjoyed. Other weekend highlights included picking up a whole lot of wine- details to follow shortly- dropping off my La Pavoni to get fixed, and, best of all, finally getting the bug Milo had last week…
After three days of work, occasional stress, and a couple of failures (this molecular gastronomy thing is not an improv-friendly medium) the day arrived and I threw down another eleven course meal- although with a very different feel than last year. The number eleven was coincidental, though now it’s probably going to have to become a tradition. Lucky me. The more casual and homey vibe was the direct result of my markedly lower level of…
Christine had a girls night out tonight, but it started a little late, and outside it’s Witchtit, Wyoming cold, so I made a little extra food figuring that she would need an appetizer prior to going out. I had some fantastic ingredients to work with; yesterday I stopped off at my new source for ultra-fresh premium seafood and received around 10 pounds of various goodies, including a whole turbot skeleton and many fillets of cod,…
High quality ingredients inspire. Yesterday I made a vegetable curry with cauliflower, sweet potato, carrot, and peas; puréed radish greens with yogurt, fenugreek and mustard seeds; and tofu simmered in one of my patented mutant soups. It started as the dashi in which I cooked the radishes for Sunday’s dinner, then turned into a funky addition to some pappa al pomodoro- Tuscan tomato soup with stale bread- which I made for lunch. That puréed bread…
Milo has another cold, so I made chicken broth today. I set some aside for him with the soft broth carrots in it- the way he likes it best- and added coconut milk and some red curry paste to the rest to make a simple tom kha gai. I shredded some of our cabbage with a little garlic, ginger, and radish, and rolled the mixture into wonton wrappers and fried them in a little oil.…
I’ve been keeping it pretty clean lately, taking a break from red meat, alcohol and other things as required by my occasional shamanic tune-ups. Some of the limitations- especially on soy and all fermented things- make cooking interesting food a challenge. The key has been to go the small-plates route, and let variety compensate for the quieter flavors. And I LOVE multi-course meals. Love them. First up, the finally-ready duck prosciutto, with perfectly ripe local…
After the decadence of the steak frites, we were in the mood for something cleaner. I had a bunch of ideas swirling around, so I got to work and let them take shape around the ingredients at hand. To begin, I wanted to make a simple broth to warm us up at the end of a raw fall day. So I simmered some soba-cha, dried shiitake, and toasted walnuts in water for about an hour.…
I was talking to a friend last week- who teaches fish at the Culinary Institute- and I mentioned that we tried some organically farmed salmon from New Zealand recently and that it was excellent. He said that when they can’t get the Alaskan king salmon, that’s what they use. I’m still trying to decide how I feel about farmed fish, and there are certainly degrees of difference between how varying companies do it. I need…
John came over on his one free night before the touring begins again; it’s always a treat to have some real time with him since he’s so busy and we usually get together in bigger groups for dinner parties. I didn’t have a lot of time to put together anything fancy, but this time of year the ingredients are so great that they really just need to be arranged on a plate. We began with…