Dinner (June 21st, 2009)

I was pretty excited about this meal...so excited, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures of the preparation process. Oops, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again.

The reason I was so excited is because this is the meal I wanted to make the night before (see previous post), which features my new favorite ingredient - grass-fed ground beef. I was working in the meat department at my job the other day and got a chance to try this stuff...it was love at first bite. I generally try to avoid beef, because I only like the fatty stuff, and eating all that saturated fat makes me feel guilty, but this product is 96% lean. Usually when I get ground beef I go for the 85% lean, because I feel like anything leaner is generally dry and flavorless, but the grass-fed meat has a great gamey flavor and stays pretty moist, especially if you cook it properly. Plus, at only $6.99 a pound, it's an economical meal option. Long story short, if you haven't tried this stuff, you should.

I seasoned the ground beef with a seasoning mix I picked up at work and formed it into patties. I grilled the patties for about three or four minutes on the first side, then flipped them over and cooked them for another minute or two.


I decided to make square burgers today. It made it easier to shape uniform patties, and I thought it would be kind of fun. Plus, since Michael and I generally eat our burgers without buns (kind of like little personal meatloaves), this made them a little easier to eat.

You know how sometimes when you cook hamburgers they puff up in the middle and get sort of a dome shape? It makes them difficult to cook uniformly and also difficult to eat. A good tip for avoiding this is to form the patties so that they are about a third thinner on the inside than in the middle. This way, when the meat cook and the burger contracts, it will come out to a uniform thickness. Making square burgers helps with this process, too. I pretended like I was making meat pizza crust. Mmmmmmmm...meat pizza crust. Have to remember that one.

To go along with the burgers, I made my ciabatta bruschetta garlic bread. It's a pretty simple and traditional method, but man is it good! Cut ciabatta on a deep bias to create lots of surface area. Brush both sides with olive oil and grill for two or three minutes on the first side, then flip them and cook one or two minutes more, until evenly browned. As soon as they come off the grill, rub a peeled piece of raw garlic on the toasted bread, making sure to really get some good flavor on there. Yum!


I made my favorite simple green salad, open a bottle of one of my favorite California Cabernet Sauvignons and called it a meal!


The wine that I served was the Toad Hollow "Concinnity" Cabernet Sauvignon. This is a wine that you don't see everywhere, and not a lot of people gravitate to it for some reason. Maybe it is because Toad Hollow isn't really "known" for their Cab's, and the fact that the wine bears the simple designation of California (as opposed to Napa, Sonoma or some other more prestigious and specific region). Despite this fact, it is a really great wine for the price (circa fifteen dollars). It has a balanced richness with some nice acidity, and the spicy, brambly, wild flavor that I love in California Cab.

All in all the food was good. The seasoning mix that I used for the burgers was a little light on the salt and heavy on some of the other flavors, but they were still enjoyable. In the future I'll make sure to add some salt to the ground meat and use less seasoning. I love taking a piece of bread and topping it with some greens and a little meat, this meal was no exception and that's how I ate most of it.


Oops, I did it again.

For dessert, I made chocolate-covered strawberries.



If you buy these things already made, they are so expensive, and a lot of times the strawberries aren't even that ripe. When you make them yourself, they are a reasonably priced and healthy dessert option, and you can make sure you use only sweet ripe strawberries.

I think we're going to go out for dinner tonight...take-out at least. Look forward to my first eating out blog!

Dinner (June 20th, 2009) - Leftovers

So, I desperately wanted to make dinner on this evening, but we had quite a few leftovers in the fridge that we needed to go through, not to mention the fact that I'm a bit strapped for cash right now, so I decided to just settle for leftovers.

The one thing that I cooked was a lone piece of tuna that we had in the freezer. I thawed the tuna, coated it in a mixture of blond and black sesame seeds and then quickly seared it on both sides. I served it with a soy/sesame dipping sauce.

• Soy Sauce
• Toasted Sesame Seed Oil
• Sambal Olek
• Rice Vinegar
• Agave Nectar

Here's what was served (note the stunning plate created by Michael, circa 1988).


Clockwise from top, we have: tofu, seared tuna, corn salad, roasted brocolli, Brussels sprouts, greens salad and chicken breast.

Usually I am big fan of leftovers - I frequently make extra food so I'll have some for later. This meal, however, did little to excite me. The tuna was of sub par quality; it was fibrous and lacking in flavor. The corn salad was good, but there wasn't much of it, and I think the roasted brocolli and tofu were a day or two past their primes. The leftovers from the previous night (the Brussels sprouts and the chicken were good), but all in all this meal was more about utility than enjoyment. Lame.

Dinner (Friday, July 19th, 2009)

So, I had the day off from work today, and, per usual, that means I cooked dinner. Lately I've been really into the idea of basing dinner around two items: a bread and a simply dressed salad of greens. I haven't made boneless skinless chicken breast (a perennial favorite) in a while, so I thought that would be a good choice. For a main veg, I decided to go with Brussels sprouts...not necessarily the most summery vegetable, but one that I particularly enjoy. Lately, I've been making bruschetta garlic bread from ciabatta loaf for the bread, but I didn't have any ciabatta handy today, so I decided to make my own grilled focaccia.

The first thing I did was make the dough for the focaccia bread.

• Water
• Yeast
• Olive Oil
• Flour
• Salt

I blended the ingredients, then let the dough sit for about two hours to rise.


While the dough was rising, I made the Brussels sprouts.

• Brussels Sprouts
• Red Onion
• Salt
  
• Olive Oil
• Red Pepper Flake
• Garlic

First, I boiled the trimmed and halved Brussels sprouts.


Then, I tossed the boiled and cooled Brussels sprouts with onions sauteed in garlic and red pepper flake.


The Brussels sprouts were finished, so I turned my attention back to the bread. This is what the focaccia dough looked like after about an hour.


I punched it down, kneaded it a bit, then let it rise for another hour or so. While that was happening, I went to work getting the chicken breasts ready.

• Chicken Breasts
• Lime Juice
• Vinegar
  
• Salt
• Pimenton
• Coriander
• Cumin (not pictured)
• Garlic (not pictured)
• Onions (not pictured)
• Goya Cilantro & Tomato Seasoning (not pictured)
• Tequila Lime Seasoning (not pictured)
  
• Olive Oil
• Agave Nectar

Here's what the chicken breasts looked like once they were in the marinade.


Once the chicken breasts were in the marinade, I punched down the focaccia dough again and divided it into two equal pieces. Then I rolled those two pieces into balls and let them hang out while I got the grill ready.



Right around this time Michael got home from school and he had some good news - he had been named Student of the Class for the class he had just finished that day. That makes nine SOC's for him since starting at this school about a year ago! That calls for a drink!

• DeChanceny Cremant de Loire
• Mathilde Cassis

I got this bottle of Cremant de Loire as a sample from work and had been meaning to drink it. I also have a big bottle of Cassis sitting around and thought that Kir Royales would be the perfect aperitif. I did try a little bit of the wine before adding the Cassis and I thought it was quite nice - it had good richness and ample fruit.

After a drink or two, the coals had gotten good and hot, so I dumped them into the grill. Then I flattened out the focaccia dough, gave it a little olive oil and salt and got it onto the grill




The grill was a little bit hotter than I anticipated (and the bread was perhaps a bit too thick), so the outside of the bread started to burn a little bit before the inside was fully cooked. No big deal, I just used a knife to scrape off most of the black on the outside of the bread and put it into a low oven to finish cooking while I made the rest of the meal.

I pulled the chicken out of the marinade and threw it on the grill.


When the chicken was done cooking, I took the bread out of the oven and topped it with some very thinly sliced onion and a little more olive oil and salt.


It would have been nice to do a bit more of an elaborate topping for the focaccia, but frankly I just didn't have the ingredients or the energy. The onion slices were very thin, so they wilted a little and flavored the bread - not perfect or fancy, but it worked in a pinch.

The last thing I had to do was make the simple salad of greens.

• Spring Mix
• Iceberg
• Lemon Juice
• Vinegar
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil

Dinner was served!


We paired the meal with the Bodegas Naia "Naia" Verdejo, a Spanish white wine made from the verdejo grape. I like to think of this wine as Spain's answer to White Burgundy - it has the textural richness and savory flavors of Chardonnay, but it is a little bit lighter on its feet and has slightly different aromatic qualities. It was a wonderful complement to the meal.


Here are my impressions on the food (going clockwise around the plate). The bread was good, but not great. It had that dense under seasoned thing going on that homemade yeast-leavened bread can have sometime, and as I already mentioned, the topping was a little lackluster. It was a passable addition to the meal, but I hope that my next effort is more successful. The Brussels sprouts were very good, if not somewhat undercooked. I sliced the onion a little bit thicker than I normally do and didn't cook them quite so long, and I thought those changes were very successful, but I do wish I had boiled the sprouts themselves for an additional minute or two. The salad was good, but I'm still trying to fine-tune the amount of dressing that goes on it - I feel like I have the tendency to slightly over dress it. The chicken breast, however, was practically perfect in every way. Seasoned and cooked just right, it is hard to beat the fresh, light, clean flavor of boneless skinless chicken breast in my book.


A piece of bread topped with some greens, a piece of chicken and maybe even a few of the onions from the Brussels sprouts made a perfect of bite of food. Wash it down with some Naia and you're in heaven!


Oops! Did I eat all that?!?!? Yeah, I did...and between you and me, I even went back for seconds of some! My membership in the Clean Plate Club remains untarnished!

Introduction

Food has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. I've always loved eating, and when I was a child I loved learning about and trying new foods. Growing up, I enjoyed making pancakes or brownies with my mom and biscuits or cookies with my grandmother. I became an avid viewer of the Food Network and loved to learn about different cuisines and food items. As I got older, my tastes broadened to include a wide range of foods and styles, including but not limited to Italian (my mother is 100% Italian), Mediterranean, barbeque, Mexican (I grew up in Texas), Indian, Thai, Japanese and others.

After I graduated from high school, I enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin, but I realized pretty quickly that I was not happy there. One day in the summertime I was sitting in my room watching Rachel Ray and I had something of an epiphany. UT wasn't working out for me because it didn't make me happy - I wasn't passionate about what I was learning. Food made me happy. I was passionate about good food - not just eating it, but making it and learning about it. I decided to make my passion my profession, and told my parents that I wanted to enroll in culinary school. My parents were initially resistant to the idea because they wanted me to get a traditional four year Bachelor's degree, but when they learned that the Culinary Institute of America had a fully accredited Bachelor's program, they agreed and sent me off to Hyde Park, New York.

The three years I spent at CIA were awesome. I made some great friends and learned a ton about food and cooking. I didn't really have a clear career path envisioned when I enrolled, and as I went through my courses I went back and forth on whether or not I wanted to work in a "real" restaurant kitchen. For a while I thought it would be good experience, but it's no secret that working in restaurants can often mean long hours, high-stress environments, difficult co-workers and compensation packages that leave a lot to be desired. I kept my career options open and just tried to focus on learning as I made my way through the program.

Part of the program at CIA includes an internship, and I did mine at a private school in East Hampton, New York that was well-known for the high quality of its kitchen. The Executive Chef was a big proponent of natural eating, and the cuisine was centered around regional, organic, seasonal and sustainable foods. I loved the high-quality ingredients that I got to use, the amazing chefs that I had the opportunity to work with, and the focus on foods that were not only delicious, but were also wholesome, natural and prepared with respect for the Earth. While I was living in East Hampton, I also had the opportunity to do quite a bit of catering work, primarily with the chefs that I worked with at the school. I left my internship with an energized approach to food and a genuine desire to excel in my career.

One of the classes that I took after returning from my internship was the Exploring Wine course - an intensive three week long survey course in world-wide wine production. Although I had just begun to develop a budding interest in wine in the months before entering the class, learning about all the different wine regions of the world, their respective wine laws and the myriad and varied wines they produced ignited a spark in me. I don't know what exactly it is about wine that is so fascinating to me, but I think it is a combination of its relation to food (including connections to science and culture), its esoteric nature and the sense of categorization that makes it really intriguing to me.

After finishing the wine course, I was seriously considering a job in the wine industry, but still had not completely given up on the idea of working in the foodservice industry. I had enjoyed the catering and private chef work that I did in the Hamptons and thought that might be a good avenue for me to explore. During my last summer break at CIA, I worked for a family that lived north of Manhattan, cooking business lunches for the father and an occasional family dinner. In the end, however, my passion for wine won out and I decided to go all the way for a career in wine. I quit smoking, got a certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers and worked as a tutor for the CIA's wine course, all to prepare myself for my new career path.

I have worked in the wine industry, on both the retail side and the business side, since graduating from CIA. I currently work as the in-store wine buyer for a grocery store that is part of a high-end national chain. I am also taking classes at a local community college with the intention of enrolling in the viticulture and enology (winemaking) program at the University of California at Davis. While I've never actually worked as a professional chef, I love cooking, and I'm not that bad at it, if I do say so myself. I plan on posting pictures and descriptions of meals I make or eat, as well as entries about different food and wine related topics. Enjoy!