Bite. Sip. Repeat…

I’ve been working from my home office for the past couple of years.  My wife and I almost always eat lunch together.  We talk for a while and sometimes put on Food Network.  Usually, the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten is on.  We laugh at the Ina-isms like “Be sure to use *really good* vanilla” and at her husband Jeffrey always hanging around the kitchen ready to sample her dishes.  We speculate that she’s always at home because she’s under house-arrest for some trumped up drug trafficking charges.

Ina was even mentioned on NBC’s “30 Rock” this season.  Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is dating a pilot who she only sees every couple of weeks.  She says “I’m like that woman on Food Network whose husband only comes home on the weekends and she spends the rest of her time eating and drinking with her gay friends…”

Foodnetworkhumor.com has a funny spoof on Ina, link is here.  I actually laughed out loud.  Enjoy…

Tags: Humor

Full title: Modernist Cuisine: the art and science of cooking.  I got news of this book in a tweet from Bill Gates, of all people.  So, of course, I had to check it out.  It turns out that one of the authors is Nathan Myhrvold, the first Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.  The book isn’t out, yet, but is available for pre-order from Amazon and B&N.

From the teaser web site here, the photography looks amazing. The website has a lot of pictures, including the wok cutaway above.   There is also a 10 page PDF file on the site with excerpts from the book.  It *is* 6 volumes, but I think the $500 price tag is a bit steep. We’ll see how well it’s reviewed…

Interesting link with lots of recipes here from the last 25 years of the LA Times Top Recipes of the Year.  The 1985 list has a recipe for *nachos*.  What’s next, a recipe for a PB&J sandwich?

Two, actually.  Cheese for the boys, pear, Gorgonzola, arugula and parmesan for us. Expect a full post on this soon…

My kids like an occasional chocolate milk and we sometimes have chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream.  We usually buy the “chocolate flavored” syrup from Trader Joe’s.  I remembered an Alton Brown show about cocoa and decided to make my own syrup.

The recipe is pretty simple: water and sugar to make a simple syrup, then add cocoa powder, vanilla, corn syrup, and a pinch of salt.  Full recipe is here.  The recipe calls for “Dutch Processed” cocoa, while I only had Ghirardelli Cocoa Powder on hand.  I took a tip from the comments and added a single tablespoon of butter to the mix with the cocoa powder.

In later research, it seems like it was unnecessary.  The Cooks Illustrated website had done extensive testing and found no difference in using Dutch Processed cocoa or regular cocoa.  I’ll try it next time without the butter.

When it was cooling, it looked like this…

We sampled a bit and it’s very good.  I’ll let you know how it is over ice cream.  Enjoy!

I met Doctor Steve at Sushi Bar Blue Fin for lunch on Friday.  I’ve been meaning to try this place, it has good comments on Yelp and Chowhound.  Doctor Steve and the Cooper…

We started with the trio of hand roll specials: scallops, spicy salmon, and salmon skin.  Very tasty, the scallops were very fresh.  The spicy salmon wasn’t ground finely like it is sometimes.  We could see the chunks of salmon…

We worked through some nigiri sushi: tuna, hamachi, unagi and salmon.  All very nice.  Sam also made us a Rainbow Roll and a King Crab hand roll for dessert.

Blue Fin is in Encinitas, about a mile from my house.  In addition to fabulous sushi, they also have the distinction of having one of the best sushi websites I’ve seen, check it out here.

Tags: Sushi

Easy dinner, tortellini and salad.  I made an quick white sauce for the pasta, thickened a cup of milk with roux and seasoned it with salt, white pepper, parmesan cheese and a bit of garlic.

Tags: Pasta

Got some nice looking wild salmon at Costco.  Made a tossed salad, oven roasted some baby potatoes.  Seasoned the salmon with Essence of Bargabus and lemon, baked it until just barely done.

Tags: Fish, Potatoes

One of my son’s friends joined us for dinner.  She tries to eat a gluten-free diet, so I decided to keep it simple and serve oven-baked chicken breasts, rice and steamed veggies.

Seasoned the boneless, skinless chicken with my spice mix (Essence of Bargabus, recipe here) and baked it at 350° until it was at an internal temperature of 165°.  Rice in the rice cooker, steamed veggies for the kids.

For Lisa and I, I made some collard greens.  Sautéed a slice of bacon, a small onion (diced) and two cloves of garlic (pressed) in a large stock pot.  After the aromatics had softened, I added the greens and cooked them until they were wilted. The greens almost filled my large stock pot, but wilted down to about 2 1/2 cups of greens.   Then I added a cup of chicken stock, covered the pan and let the greens steam on low for 20 minutes.

Tags: Chicken, Potatoes, Vegetables

B: breakfast tostada (fried egg on toasted corn tortilla, cheese and salsa

L: leftovers

D: Pork Stir Fry (pork tenderloin, veggies, pasta)

We had a bunch of miscellaneous fresh veggies, so a stir fry sounded good to me.  Younger son complain about having had this meal a few days ago, but he ate it.

Cooked a pound of capellini (angel hair pasta), drained it and added “the mix” (5 Tbs soy sauce, 2 Tbs each of honey, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil).  Stir, cover and let the sauce soak in.

Meanwhile, I had sliced a 3/4 lb. pork tenderloin into small strips and marinated it in 4 Tbs of oyster sauce, 1 Tbs corn starch and 1/4 tsp of ground ginger.

Stir fried the pork, set it aside.  Stir fried the veggies (onion, sugar snap peas, broccoli, green pepper, mushrooms and carrots) in the same pan.  When nearly done, I seasoned them with 2 Tbs of soy.  Served in individual bowl, pasta on the bottom, veggies, then pork.  Yum.

Tags: Pork