Vin Rouge Brunch

Continuing my goal to explore the Triangle's best bruncheries, we wandered over to 9th Street in Durham. Vin Rouge is already known for good dinners, but their brunch should not be underestimated.


First up are the eggs Mediterranean, which are scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, shallots and capers. These fillings make for fairly salty eggs, but the eggs made a nice vehicle for the salmon and capers. The side of pommes frites helped to balance out the flavors. Just so you feel a little healthier, there's also a simple side salad. A good breakfast, but it pales in comparison to our other entree.


Vin Rouge serves some unbelievable French toast. Their bread is baked as these large rounds, so they take one slice and cut it in half to make a huge portion of French toast. Crisp yet soft on the inside with cinnamon and maple syrup, this brunch staple is probably one of the best French toasts I've ever had, not to mention the bacon on the side.

A word of advice to the Sunday bruncher: be sure to make a reservation or be prepared to wait. While Elmo's next door may have a larger amount of traffic, Vin Rouge does get very busy shortly after they open. You can make reservations online, which would probably save a lot of time. Their electronic seating system seems confusing, even to the staff. In the end, we only waited 15 minutes for a table, but just keep this in mind when planning your lazy Sunday morning.

Cooking, Baking, Restauranting...Pretty much just eating anything I can get my hands on - 6/29/09

What a week! I managed to do a lot of cooking and eating this week and I'm not sure where it all came from. Let's start with what I made first.


Lunch this week, as a continuation of my soup series, is chili con carne. The recipe was from Cooks' Illustrated. After browning chunks of beef, you cook some onions and bell pepper (or jalapeno). Then, you stir in some cumin, oregano and garlic, then water, beef, diced tomato, and minced chipotles in adobo sauce, simmering it for 1 hour covered, 30 minutes uncovered. At the very end, you whisk in some cornmeal into 1 cup of the chili, then whisk this mixture back into the soup, simmering it until it thickens up. I was very surprised by the consistency of this soup. Most chilis I've had contained beans, but this one omits them in favor of thickening the soup using the cornmeal. The chipotles in adobo are a very easy way to bring some heat and a nice smokey flavor without resorting to liquid smoke. The beef stayed tender and everything else seemed to melt together into the background flavor. This chili was both surprising and outstandingly delicious for something homemade.


Dinner this week is a chicken fricassee with some citrus flavors. Briefly, the chicken is seared, then some root veggies and citrus are cooked in the same pot. Tomato paste is added, then flour, then some chicken stock, orange and lemon juices, white wine, and honey. The chicken is added back in to finish cooking. On the side, you cook some potatoes and blanch some veggies (I chose yellow squash and Mediterranean zucchini). Oddly, you remove the original veggies and citrus, then thicken the sauce using an egg yolk and milk. All of this is combined again to yield the final produce. Everything tastes good, but the citrus disappears into the background. I think adding in some citrus zest in at some point could help make the flavors more bold. But this makes for a fine dinner. The citrus lightens the heavier chicken with its skin on. Plus, lemon and orange are the perfect flavors for the summer.


A great deal of the ingredients used in the foods above came from this week's CSA assortment: corn, blueberries, potatoes, onions, zucchini, squash, cucumber, tomato, and three kinds of melon.


For cake decorating this week, we learned more piping techniques, including some specific to birthday cakes. Since my lab did not have any birthdays this week, I went for an "I <3 Cake" cake. The cake was supposed to be flavored by rose water, but that flavor did not come out. Instead, the major players were the apricot jam filling and vanilla icing. Cake writing is a little difficult, by the way, if you don't have the right size tip for one, but also because you have one shot to do it right (sizing, spacing, shaping). And always, always, ALWAYS remember to spell everything correctly. Here are some examples of what can go wrong with cakes: Cake Wrecks.


The SO (significant other) did some cooking this week too that was quite astounding. It started with some pork that was combined with pureed pears and plums. To this was added some cream cheese, cilantro and hazelnuts, among other ingredients. Wrap it in a tortilla, stick it in a pan with cheese and more hazelnuts, and bake it in the oven. The flavors for this dish were definitely out of left field, but they all combined together for quite a sumptuous dinner. Add a side of fresh cucumbers and raspberries and a cup of dilled sweet potato soup, and you've got one killer dinner.


As for eating out this week, I remembered my camera for most of our meals. First up is Pepper's Pizza on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. This was the second time I ate at this restaurant, and I've enjoyed it both times. The pizza pictured is one we made ourselves. They have some great ingredients and pre-formulated options, but we were in a creative mood. Half of the pizza was Italian sausage with fresh garlic (fantastically garlicky without being overbearing...but then again I don't know if you can have too much garlic), and the other half was a NC-style Hawaiian using pulled pork and pineapple (a great variation on true Hawaiian with ham and pineapple). Plus, they have great music while you eat. While we were there, they were playing Michael Jackson's album Thriller to honor his untimely passing. If you want some non-traditional options for pizza and you're in the area, give Peppers a shot.


While in Raleigh, we hit up the Flying Biscuit. This restaurant serves delicious, truly Southern food (breakfast all day to boot). I ordered my first chicken-fried steak and what an awesome dish it was! The crisp outside juxtaposed against a moist and delicious cubed steak, paired with a wonderful gravy made me want to wrap myself in the steak and never leave. The green beans were a good side, though a little oily. The homefries were seasoned with a house ("moondust," I believe) seasoning that made these tubers really pop. In the midground (between foreground and background), you can see their biscuits, served with strawberry jam. True to their name, these biscuits are light, airy, but totally indulgent with some good saltiness to them. Lastly, in the background, you can spy their sweet tea, which is one of the sweetest you can find without any sugar at the bottom. The South has risen again at this wonderful restaurant. Word to the wise: if there is a wait for a table, the bar seats in a first-come-first-serve fashion, so feel free to grab a stool and enjoy your food while others are still waiting outside.


In the Chapel Hill Timberlyne plaza is a rare find: an Ethiopian restaurant by the name of Queen of Sheba. If you've never had Ethiopian, try to find a restaurant and give it a shot. This one was very good with great service. To start off, we had an Ethiopian soda (flavored with spices and honey) as well as a sweet tea that was also given some depth by some warm spices. We had the vegetarian sampler, which had yellow lentils, a pea flour sauce, tomatoes, green lentils, and potatoes in a horseradish sauce, all atop and with a side of injera, the sourdough-ish spongy flat bread. Everything was fantastic. I love having lots of options when I eat, and this was the best way to get that. All of the flavors melded with each other but could still stand alone. They have many meat options too for compulsive carnivores. To finish, I had a cup of Ethiopian coffee, supposedly made with some butter, sugar, and more spices. The coffee was positively black with a rich and bold flavor that lacked that bitter aftertaste of many coffees. Overall, it was a marvelous experience that could not be beat.

More Desserts than Food Again - 5/20/2009

This was a good weekend for eating. Some friends and I started by taking advantage of Restaurant Week at a French restaurant in downtown Durham. It's called Rue Cler. While we waited for our table (some patrons just don't know when to leave), we were treated to a tasting of some Rose champagne (Bugey Cerdon) and pommes frites. As an appetizer, I wanted to try the pate maison, which oddly enough tasted of Romano cheese. We had a 3 course prix fixe selection. I chose a salad with feta and pecans, shrimp with gnocchi and duck breast with potatoes au gratin (one of the best I've had). All were quite delicious in their own way, but the size of each dish was moderated to make up for the 3 courses. The prix fixe portion of the menu was set at $25. For dessert, we split a terrine au chocolat (an oddly delicious cross of a chocolate mousse with a dense chocolate cake) and a banana-caramel crepe. We chatted and had a good time until they kicked us out around 11pm (they didn't really kick us out, but we got the hint from the way they were cleaning up).


Here's a dish to feed a small army. It is a free-standing lasagna (aka lasagna pie). Instead of a casserole dish, it's made in a springform pan. There are 6 distinct and alternating layers in this dish: noodles, sauteed carrot and zucchini, sauteed spinach and mushrooms with basil, a ricotta-Parmiggiano mixture, tomato sauce (home-made), and mozzarella cheese. The only real trick is that the noodles are trimmed to fit in the round pan. It is baked for an hour, rested for 15 minutes and then unveiled for all to marvel at. I enjoyed this dish (and I'm continuing to enjoy the leftovers), though next time I would probably try to increase the Italian flavors a bit. But this was definitely an innovative recipe that will satisfy both meat-eaters and vegetarians.


I had a Merlot-blackberry sauce, made with vanilla, cinnamon and citrus, left over from a failed recipe, so I decided to use it for poaching pears. Pears are not one of my favorite fruit, but they are growing on me. The gritty nature of the flesh is the least appealing feature, but that's where poaching comes in. It softens the pear and adds some other flavors to distract your mouth. I peeled some medium-sized bosc pears, then poached them in the simmering sauce for about 5 minutes per side, then let them cook to room temperature. The real battle with these pears is making sure they are evenly cooked and colored without beating them up too badly or letting them cook for too long. But in the end, you're left with a sweet treat with full-bodied flavors. I accented mine with Ciao Bella blackberry-Merlot sorbetto (what a coincidence to find that at the store), a cardamom-vanilla whipped cream and a sprig of mint that I'm growing myself.


I received a sampling of Berry-Saffron Cookies recently that were, simply put, amazing. The story behind them is that they started as a chocolate chip cookie recipe that has evolved to incorporate non-traditional flavors so much that you would scarcely recognize the resemblance to the original recipe. This newer version contains a combination of strawberries (dried, I believe), sesame seeds, dark cocoa powder, turmeric, salt, pepper, and saffron, among some other possible flavors. The reason I liked these cookies so much is they are something you must savor to really enjoy. While eating them, you sharply taste the salt and a bit of pepper, but there's a background chocolatey flavor with hints of berry, meanwhile your entire mouth is filled with a plume of saffron essence. Unlike many other cookies, just eating one of these treats is very satisfying.


What do you do when you have a friend confused by baking? Help them out of course!


One problem with this solution that I did not recognize initially was that the item to be baked is from an Indonesian cake mix. The difference with this cake is that it is made of multiple layers that are sequentially baked on top of one another. The goal is to have lots of even, thin layers (easier said than done). As you may be able to see in the picture, the cake is surrounded by burnt shrapnel. Our end product was a bit of a diamond in the rough. The extended baking burnt a bit of the outside of the cake, so some cosmetic surgery was necessary. What was salvageable was an interesting cake, moist from lots of butter and a touch of rum in the recipe, possessing a flavor like vanilla and some other unidentifiable spices. This cake is undoubtedly better when made from scratch by a professional, but how many Indonesian bakeries are there around here?


I'm turning into a baking fiend. Someone in my lab mentioned celebrating something and I was all over it like a fat kid on a box of Ho-hos. I made this beauty of a coffee cake, flavored with raspberry and cream cheese. You start by making a crumb with flour, butter and sugar, saving some on the side. To most of the crumb, you add baking powder, baking soda, salt, sour cream, egg, and almond extract. This mixture is spread into a springform pan as the base of the coffee cake. On top of this is spread a mixture of cream cheese, sugar and egg. About half of a jar of raspberry jam is placed on top of the cream cheese mixture (I pretty much just marbled mine a bit), then this is all topped with slivered almonds and the reserved crumbs. This is all baked for about 55 minutes until it is golden brown on top (no real way of testing it for doneness without just cutting into it). My cake layer was a little dry, but the cream cheese and jam helped to alleviate this problem. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, especially evident from the way it was gone within some hours of it being put out. I'll chock this one up in the win column.

Steak au Poivre with Pasta Pesto and Goat Cheese-Walnut Salad - 9/25/08

This menu pretty much created itself after my mom sent me a recipe for a pesto made with arugula and walnuts instead of basil and pine nuts. Arugula has a nice peppery flavor to it, so what better to pair with it than steak au poivre and a salad with walnuts.


Cook up the pasta according to package directions. I used creste di gallo (rooster crowns - they look like large macaroni with some fringes on them) because I liked the multiple colors they come in. For the pesto, combine one garlic clove, salt, half a cup of walnuts (toasted for extra credit), 2 cups arugula, half a cup of basil, 2 tablespoons of parmigiano, and one tablespoon of lemon juice in a food processor. While processing, stream in about one third cup of olive oil until the pesto is smooth. Adjust the flavor with salt and pepper as desired. Toss the pesto over the pasta.

For the steak, salt both sides of the meat and cover both sides with cracked peppercorns. If you want a lighter pepper flavor (or if you start sneezing uncontrollably), you can use ground pepper, just make sure you use a good amount of it. The pepper is the only real seasoning for the steak, so use as much as you can tolerate. You may be concerned that the pepper will be overpowering, but the cooking process dulls the flavors a bit so you probably won't have a problem. Anyways, cook the steak in a pan to desired doneness. If you really want, you can add a little brandy or red wine to deglaze the pan, then add a little heavy cream and cook until thickened. Be careful with the cream, though, because if you cook it too long past the thickened stage, the sauce will break and become more watery. This sauce is not totally necessary to enjoy the dish, though, as the pesto makes a nice accompaniment.


For a nice side salad, start with a base of fresh spinach and arugula, then add some toasted walnuts and crumbled goat cheese. For the dressing, whisk together some walnut oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and Dijon mustard. Pour a smattering if this dressing on top of the salad and toss to mix.

Chicken in Dijon Sauce - 8/25/08

Here's my first meal of my first semester in grad school.


It's chicken in a Dijon cream sauce. I preheated the oven to 450 degrees F. Then I patted dry three bone-in chicken breasts and sprinkled them with some salt and pepper. I browned the chicken (starting with the skin side down) on both sides. Once brown, I put the entire oven-safe skillet in the oven for 20 minutes to finish cooking the chicken. After taking the skillet out, I removed the chicken from the pan and set it aside. To the pan, I added some sliced shallots and 3/4 cup each white wine and chicken stock. After letting this reduce by half, I added 1/4 cup heavy cream and let it boil until it was thickened. After removing the sauce from the pan, I whisked in about 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard, some chopped chives, salt, and pepper. To serve, I poured the sauce on top of the chicken. One great thing about using a little heavy cream in a sauce is that by cooking it, it turns out nicely thickened. But don't cook it too long or it will "break" and not set up as nicely. On the side, I chopped up some purple onion and sweet potato and I peeled some garlic, then sprayed it with Pam and sprinkled on some dried sage (I was hoping to match the earthiness of Dijon with sage). I stuck these in the oven while I prepped and cooked the chicken until they were roasted and cooked through. Truth be told, I should cook with chicken on the bone more often because it tends to be juicier and tastier than plain breasts.


For dessert, I prepared a blueberry-pineapple angel food cake. I wanted to make something reasonably light to eat so I did not get cravings for chocolate cake all the time. I used a large can of crushed pineapple as the liquid portion for a boxed angel food cake. I also stopped by the Raleigh farmers' market and picked up some fresh blueberries, so I threw some in to the cake as well. They tended to collect on the bottom of the cake while baking, so it almost created a blueberry layer with angel food on top. In any case, I like the cake prepared in a 13x9 Pyrex pan (or larger size) so you don't have to worry about the ring form of the cake falling. With some Cool Whip on top, this cake was quite the delicious topper to a good meal.

Cannes Cooking Lesson - 08/01/08

For our day in Cannes, my dad and I took a cooking class from one of the local French restaurants. Our instructor, Sebastian, did an excellent job. He was very patient and taught us some great techniques.


The first technique we learned was to make tomato confit (kind of like sugared or candied). First you cut out the core end of a plum tomato. Then create cross-hair cuts on the opposite end. Blanch the tomato briefly in boiling water (just until the skin in starting to peel away) and then shock the tomato in an ice bath. The skins should peel away quite easily. For the confit, cut the tomato in half lengthwise and scoop out the insides. Place each half on a baking tray covered in parchment. Season with salt, pepper and copious amounts of olive oil. For a tomato tart version, cut the tomato into slices and arrange these slices into an organized circle. Bake these at 400 degrees until they are nicely dehydrated but not browned. The goal is to condense the tomato flavors and create a delight tomato with balanced sweetness. After removing from the oven, the single tomatoes can be refrigerated for a few weeks.


We also prepared a ratatoille, so we had to cube up red bell pepper, zucchini and eggplant. Each of these is cooked in lots of olive oil separately, then drained. They are all combined together and cooked briefly, et voila! ratatoille.


Our main dish was salmon to accompany the ratatoille. One trick we were shown was how to debone a fish fillet. You use kitchen tweezers and feel around for the line of bones. Each bone can be plucked from the fillet, leaving it completely boneless.


Here's the final product of the main course. The salmon is seared skin-side down in a hot skillet until it is cooked about half way. Then they are finished in the oven. That way you have a nice crust on the outside but the fillet is cooked perfectly on the inside. The salmon is resting atop the final ratatoille. On top was spread some fresh olive tapenade (tapen = caper).


Puff pastry was baked and rounds were cut out. The tomato rings were placed on top of the puff pastry to make a tart. To finish the dish, a fresh pesto was prepared and drizzled on top. An olive oil poached garlic clove was also included. The garlic was similar to roasted garlic, but it had its own flavor. Each dish was garnished with fresh herbs from garden (you could read out of the window for leaves from the bay tree).


For dessert, we had a great pineapple dish. The pineapples were cut into quarters and cored. Then they were arranged on a baking dish, sprinkled with brown sugar and some rum was poured on top. This was baked at 400 degrees for one hour. The restaurant served them with some fresh berries. The version in the picture above is actually one I made at home. I made a sauce of brown sugar dissolved in water with a splash of rum at the end. Honestly, this was probably one of the best syrup sauces I've made, especially since I did not measure anything.

While we were finishing up our cooking class, our tour guide came up to me to strike up some chit-chat. The chef had hovered around us while we were working at times, but he did not say too much unless we were messing something up. The tour guide let me know that he had told her he thought I had some good cooking skills. This may not seem like a whole lot, but this was one of the highlights of my day. A professional chef saw some promise in me. I'm still not cut out for cooking for a living, but this was a big boost to my confidence. Anyways, our cooking class ended as a marvelous (and tasty) success.

Italy & France - 08/04/08

My family and I went on vacation to Italy and France recently. While I did not do a lot of cooking, I did do a lot of eating, so I thought I would share my eating experiences. Briefly, French cooking is quite saucy - it reminds me in some regards of American cooking (meat + sides + sauce). It is good, but Italian food is where the money is. In Italy, I learned to keep everything simple. Go for one or two flavors/spices instead of all of them. Here are some of the foods we had that really inspired me:


In Nice, there is a local speciality called socca. It is a dough made of chickpea flour and olive oil that is cooked a bit like a crepe. In this case, though, it is served with salt and pepper and piping hot as a finger food while perusing the markets.

This is a form of manicotti with a thick filling, so thick that you can cut the manicotti in half and bind them together with some scallion/leek without the filling leaking out. And the tomato sauce was served on the side instead of all around the stuffed pasta.


Linguine with clam sauce never tasted so good. The sauce was perfectly balanced on all of the freshly cooked, al dente pasta. Americans sometimes forget that al dente does not mean crunchy, it just means slightly firm.


Looking for a new use for crepes? Something savory perhaps? How about turning them into beggar's purses. These purses were filled with cheesy deliciousness and tied up with more green onion/leeks.


This dish is not something you find regularly in the US. It is a cuttlefish body that has been stuffed with its own tentacles, along with capers and breadcrumbs. It was very different but quite good. Reminds me of my own stuffed calamari, except pulled off a lot better.


The menu listed this pizza as sausage and broccoli, which interested me enough to order it for something different. By broccoli, they actually meant broccoli rabe, which gave this pizza a great flavor. I need to try this at home.


The "typical" (i.e. touristy) Roman lunch consists of multiple courses and lots of food. This plate shows the appetizer course, which was followed by pastas, meats and desserts. The fresh mozzarella was wonderful with so much better texture and flavor that what I'm used to. Salami in Italy far surpasses what we can get in our local deli. It has more flavor and a richer texture.


I cannot forget beverages. Do you know the 4 Fanta flavors we get in the states? Well, each country has its own reportoir of Fanta flavors. In Italy, they have limone (lemon), a flavor of some citrus that is supposed to improve appetite, and this flavor, red orange. It had an orangey flavor, but without a lot of the acidity of orange Fanta.


One food goal I had was to eat some gnocchi. This one (from Buca Mario in Florence) was served in a wonderful gorganzola cream sauce that was perfectly attuned to the delicacy of the gnocchi. I did not think they could make this dish any better until we went to Pietro's restaurant in Rome:


Yes, the only way to top the above gnocchi was to add freshly grated black truffles to it (and some bacon). Truffles are more popular in Europe and many restaurants had them on the menu. We also ate some thinly sliced zucchini salad with pine nuts, shaved parmigiano, and white truffle oil. I know have an idea to try a truffle turkey or savory truffle cake. Also at Pietro's was a signature drink (champagne with Cointreau, whiskey and muddled basil) and the best cheese bread I've ever eaten. The chef willingly gave me the recipe for the cheese bread, but made me promise I would not reveal it en masse. The directions and measurements are little confused at this point, but I'm going to give it my best shot.


Also at Pietro's was veal covered with mozzarella and, you guessed it, shaved truffles. The truffles add a depth of flavor to the food with a slight air of garlickiness. I've already bought some truffle oil to use at home. I was bad about taking copious food pictures (and I was too hungry to wait), so here are some other delicious meals we had:

• Pasta stuffed with smoked fish


• Mushroom lasagna with very little sauce and no cheese


• Lasagna noodles (unassembled) with a creamy pesto


• Pickled garlic with chiles


• Mimosa dressing


• Spinach sauteed with bay leaves

The basic gyst of all of this is to keep your flavors simple. Let the fresh ingredients and spices speak for themselves. Play off of the foods' subtleties. Lastly, one delicious find was limoncello, a lemon-flavored liqueur. The ones I liked were the less intense (lower alcohol content) versions that tasted like a Lemonhead candy without the tartness. Next post is a special surprise I had while we were in France.

Post-Move Cooking - 6/25/2008

The move to North Carolina is finally over. All of the furniture and my items are in place and I've been cooking again too. I have about 3-4 posts worth of food that I'm going to post as a single entry, so get ready for marathon fooding.


My first meal in the house came after the Fathers' Day/Anniversary hooplah. I've been wanting to try this recipe for oven-baked cauliflower for a while, so I gave it a shot. You blanch the full head of cauliflower for about 6 minutes and let it cool. Then you place it in a pan, base-up, and pat in some breadcrumbs that have been cooked with olive oil and shallots. Bake this in the oven for about 25 minutes until it is fork tender. The sauce on the side is mostly plain yogurt with some Dijon mustard and fresh chives blended into it. Though just a side dish, this came out very nice and the cauliflower seemed very meaty, if that makes any sense. The other side was some oven-baked French fries with Italian spices. I made sure to use my mandolin this time so the fries were about the same size.


The main feature of this first meal is oven-fried chicken. I used the tenderloins instead of breasts for a more chicken finger-like presentation. First you crush some corn flakes and add to them whatever spices you want. I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley, paprika, and smoked paprika (the last two gave it all a nice subtle kick of heat). You dip the chicken into some buttermilk and then (with a dry hand) roll it around in the corn flake mixture. Arrange them in a pan and bake them until they are just done. This was a nice alternative to frying or pan-frying the chicken and is pretty low in fat compared to other methods.


Next meal is for my dad's birthday. The main dish is called fettuccine geechee rosa (I don't know why). It is spinach fettuccine with its healthy green color in a sauce of olive oil, garlic, clams, clam juice, lemon juice, and sun-dried tomatoes. The dish, in the end, needed a little extra punch of some sort. Next time, I would add a little more salt or some lemon zest to it to see if it helps.


The side dish of the meal is an Ina Garten recipe for zucchini gratin. This may sound familiar because of the similarities to potatoes au gratin, a deliciously cheesy and calorie-packed side. This version starts with cooking 2 sliced onions in copious amounts of butter until tender. Then 4 sliced zucchini are added to the pan and steamed a bit. Some flour, salt and nutmeg (surprise) are added and mixed thoroughly to make a bit of a roux. Then milk (I used 1%) is added and allowed to mix with the roux until the sauce thickens a bit. This is poured into a smaller baking dish and topped with a mixture of breadcrumbs and shredded havarti (or gruyere, if you prefer). Bake it for 20-25 minutes until bubbly and the top is browned. This came out very delicious and I will need to remember it for future occasions.


Dessert for dad's b-day is one of his favorites: bananas foster. They often make this dish in nice restaurants right next to your table for the theatrics of it. I actually had a little difficulty with the dish on getting the proper stove temperatures, so this will take a little while to perfect. You first melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium to medium high heat. Then you add in 1 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Stir this together until the sugar is fully melted. Add 4 bananas that have been sliced in half lengthwise and then cut in the middle. Stir them around until they are tender and brown. Here's a picture of what they should look like at this point:

Add 1/4 cup of banana liquer to thin out the sauce. Then add 1/2 cup of dark run, stir it around a bit and take the pan off the stove. Ignite the pan and let the fire burn off the stove until it goes out. Serve the bananas with some sauce over vanilla ice cream. Eat it fast before the ice cream melts, unless you like it that way. I had an idea of mashing the mixture at this point and then putting it into an ice cream maker to make bananas foster ice cream. Maybe I'll give it a shot one of these days.


Last, but not least, is this meal: Japanese basa and coconut rice. I've never seen, heard of or cooked basa before, but it looked very delicate, so I cooked it like orange roughy or some thinly filleted tilapia. I sliced some baby bok choy and cubed up some graffiti eggplant (it's mottled purple and white). I mixed together, in a bowl, mirin (sweetened sake), rice wine and rice vinegar. I don't normally taste test my sauces, but I figured if I'm cooking for other people, I should probably check to make sure it tastes good. Good thing I did cause it was way too vinegary. The final product had a slight Asian taste but it was mostly on the sweeter side. I tossed the veggies in this and then arranged the veggies in mounds in the center of large pieces of foil. On top of this, I placed the fish fillets. I minced some ginger and rubbed into the top, poured a little sauce on the fish and added some salt and pepper. After sealing the packets, I baked them in a 400 degree oven for about 16 minutes until they were done but still moist. In the mean time, I made some coconut rice. You basically make jasmine rice like you normally would, except you substitute half of the water for lite coconut milk. This makes the rice a little richer and slightly coconutty in flavor. I added the toasted coconut for garnish. This is probably one of my favorite ways to make an easy rice, which matched well with one of my favorite ways to cook fish. After the fish came out of the oven, I drizzled on some sesame oil and some sesame seeds, making a very delicious dish indeed. And clean-up is a snap!

Asian-Inspired Dinner - 1/19/2008

At a local fresh market, I found some Keffir lime leaves, so I decided to make a dish based on that and this meal ensued.


On the right is the aromatic rice I made with the leaves. You saute some onion, add the jasmine rice plus cumin, turmeric, salt, pepper, and a cinnamon stick. Cook these for a couple of minutes to release the flavors. Add the lime leaves and some chicken broth, cover, and cook until tender. The overall flavor of the rice was a mild lime-cumin flavor, but it was not overwhelming and it was different than if I had used lime juice or zest. It was a different but very good dish.

To the left is caramel-garlic chicken. It is Asian-ish in that it uses turmeric, soy sauce and rice wine to marinate the chicken. Then it is breaded, cooked at a high heat and set aside. Brown sugar, garlic and rice vinegar are combined and heated to make a caramel sauce that is tossed over the chicken. The outside of the chicken was nicely crunch and savory-sweet while the inside was still moist.

Last on the plate, in the back, are roasted root vegetables. Cut up some veggies (I used potato, carrot, onion, and sweet potato...though if you use sweet potato, you have to microwave it for about 10 minutes since it is a little denser) and arrange on a greased pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 3-4 hours, mixing every 30 minutes or so. You want them to not only be soft, but slightly caramelized. Once they are done, remove them from the oven and place them in a large bowl. In another bowl, combine about 2-3 parts olive oil with 1 part balsamic vinegar. Then mix and add honey to taste (you want a tangy sweet dressing). I used Tupelo honey from north Florida since I got some on my last vacation. Pour this over the veggies and toss to combine. The is a very delicious dish that could easily become a staple side on many tables.


My dessert of the week is banana eclairs. I did not have the right piping equipment, so they turned out smaller than I wanted, but they were still good. They were fairly labor intensive and I should have made them on a day when I wasn't committed to making so many other dishes too. They still tasted good, though, so in the end it all turned out okay.

Raspberry Souffles

Since I brought the truffles I made to a friend's house but forgot to make a dairy-free alternative for his sister, I was challenged to make a raspberry dessert. Using my new favorite baking/dessert cookbook, I managed to concoct my first souffle.


This dessert was a little labor intensive. I had to make a raspberry-merlot sauce first, which took some time although it was easy. Then you have to whip up some egg whites to medium peaks and attempt to fold the liquid into the foam (which I did not do completely, but then again I had to transfer the recipe down the street so it was inevitably not going to be perfect). Pour this into some ramekins and bake. I was worried I would do something to cause the souffles deflate like in all the movies, but they were pretty sturdy. The water in the mixture turns to steam to cause them to rise. They then have a soft, airy and creamy texture to them.

The chocolate sauce is a basic ganache recipe (same cookbook) that has been thinned out a bit. The "master" ganache is 8 ounces of chocolate to 8 ounces of cream. I made this using 4 ounces of chocolate (2oz bittersweet and 2oz semisweet) and 6 ounces of soy creamer. It looks good but it had small bits in it that you could tell it was not a perfect emulsion of chocolate in the creamer. I think it is because the soy creamer did not have as much fat as regular cream. But it all tasted very good, which is what counts.

Truffles - 01/05/2008

After dinner comes...


...a flower? This is one of Martha Stewart's favor boxes. The directions were so anal that I felt dirty afterwards. But the question remains, what is in the box? Let's find out.


Tonight's dessert was truffles. The base recipe came from a great new cookbook I received for Christmas. The nuttier looking truffle is flavored with cherry (grenadine) and rolled in toasted walnuts. The other one is lavender and rolled in cocoa powder. The cherry truffles were nicely flavored, though they did not set up quite right so they were a little soft. The lavender ones were a good consistency, but the lavender flavor was a little overpowering. I think the lavender ganache used to make it is more appropriate as an accent in a dessert as opposed to the main feature. The cocoa powder helped to balance it out a bit, though. I am pleased with the results of this. I cannot wait to try the other techniques in my new dessert bible. Thanks go to Christian for letting me use the gift box for the truffles.