This has been a week of many soups; we all had the flu and tonight we sent the last sniffles packing with a nice finale. Previously, I had made minestrone from the fried lamb chop bones, then a chicken broth that began as something similar to tonight, but larded with copious hot sauce, ginger, and garlic to napalm the wretched microbes, then ended up as fridge soup a couple of days later with pasta, beans,…
Year: 2007
This is why we moved up here; what began as a casual plan to get together expanded into dinner for 6, plus two kids. Chris & Sirkka brought some lamb chops, and I coated them in egg and soba then deep fried them (it would have worked better with rib chops, but oh well) and served them with tapenade that included half of a preserved lemon. John brought some brown rice and aduki beans, and…
A broth of shrimp shells, dried shrimp, dashi, garlic, and ginger was the base for this meal, since Christine had bought shrimp and tilapia and the harsh cold demanded something tropical. I puréed half the tilapia with ginger, sesame oil, coriander seeds, garlic, lemon juice, and pepper, then formed it into little balls. The rest of the fish got dusted with curry powder and crisped up in a pan while the balls and shrimp bodies…
This one didn’t even get a garnish, but time was of the essence and the sauce made up for the lack of elegance. Good wild salmon, with a celtic salt/pepper/cinnamon/sesame mix, seared up nicely while a halved kabocha got nice and soft and caramelized in the oven and a pot of brown rice bubbled away. I added only oil, lemon, and salt to the squash purée, since it was so sweet already, and made a…
Pretty straightforward, but with a couple elements that I think made it more interesting: first, using dried kidney beans which required cooking it for 3 hours, and second, a good dollop of smoked duck fat at the beginning to get the aromatics going that worked as an excellent substitute for smoking the meat. A bit of goat cheddar, scallion, and lime juice on top, and a 2003 Faugères by H&B (since I didn’t make it…
First, a pot of brown rice (with plenty extra for leftovers.) Then, dal of red lentils with fenugreek, coriander, cumin, and mustard seeds. Last, a tomato-based curry of tofu, carrots, onions, the last of some sheep yogurt, and various powders and pastes. The dal is really worth te few extra minutes; dried lentils keep forever and it adds so much to the plate to have a rich, creamy counterpart to the much sharper curry. Perfect…
A fantastic party, up at Allaire studios, on top of a mountain, on a freezing night. Colin from The Tasting Room in NYC came up to make about 20 of us a crazy dinner, and we brought wine to go with. The meal began with oysters, then crostini of smoked trout, accompanied by Sine Qua Non’s “Backward and Forward” which tasted like mutant Sherry, as well as some Kistler Chards, and then we sat down.…
In honor of my Grandfather, J. Howard Beck, on his 100th birthday, we made an updated but still honest version of borscht and blini (he was born in Poland, specifically in the shtetl of Rozvadof) that I think he would have enjoyed. Having beet salad and red cabbage already in the fridge, I added the last half pint of lamb demiglace from the freezer, as well as some broccoli stalks, and simmered it for an…
The remaining barley with the addition of milk, agave syrup, and bananas, simmered this morning into a yummy breakfast for Milo. For lunch, we all had tortellini in a classic fridge sauce: the stuffing from Xmas, which Christine puréed last week with a can of tomatoes into soup (like a chickeny pappa al pomodoro) mixed with the kale pesto left over from a recent pizza, plus the last of the short rib liquid and the…
I got home later than I had hoped, but still had time to get these pretty tender. Browned, then simmered in wine, tomato paste, soy sauce, onion, dried porcini, and chard stems, served on barley with the strained and reduced cooking liquid and red cabbage braised in more wine and soy, they found a special place between beef-barley soup and corned beef & cabbage. We tried two different 97 Bordeaux: a Pavillon Rouge de Margaux…