Anniversary dinner at L'Atelier

August 17th equaled 4 years. Although JP likes to say it's been only 3 years since I was in Paris all of 2010. No, it's been 4 years. So I grilled some skirt steak*. Made some corn and bacon. And an heirloom tomato salad with basil, balsamic and Arbequina olive oil. We finally opened up our Clos du Val cabernet that we got when we were in Napa a few years ago.

For dessert I had picked up some Italian plums (prunes?) at the Rockefeller farmer's market during lunch and turned them into a crumble.

It was a good dinner. But our "going-out" dinner was Saturday at L'Atelier de Joel Robouchon. 

Verdict? It was fun but the food was MEH for the most part. JP ranked it dead-last out of the four anniversary dinner's we've had. I ranked it second-to last only because I don't remember how much I liked Perry Street (the other two are Daniel at #1 and Alex at the Wynn in Vegas at #2).

We didn't get the tasting menu (I'm deathly allergic to sturgeon and have an aversion to foie gras) so we went a la carte.  A couple small plates - sauteed amadai in yuzu broth with lotus root, sauteed squid with chorizio and violet artichokes in tomato water, asparagus macaroni gratin and seared scallop with ginger and chive crust (yes, singular scallop for $28) followed by our mains. I had the hanger steak with roasted shallots and shishito peppers which failed in comparison to the hanger steak I had at craftsteak two years ago. JP had seared sea bass with a lemongrass foam and stewed baby leeks where the overwhelming flavor was lemongrass and I was reminded about those spicy cashews I have in my pantry that I need to return to TJs because I don't find them palatable.

Granted, the presentation of everything was top notch. Not all dishes fell flat. I quite liked the squid with chorizo and the crispy crust on the amadai, as well at the shallots on top of my steak. My strawberry-rhubarb-gin cocktail was stupendous and my dessert was pretty good - cheesecake mousse with Tahitian vanilla and seasonal berries.

JP's sauteed peaches with peach sorbet and meringue came on dry ice which was pretty cool.

But there was something off about the service (didn't help that obnoxious girl that sat next to me started elbowing me sometime during our dessert course). Maybe it was because I had chosen counter seating but it didn't feel like it was worth it. There, maybe that's what I mean. The food is good but overall the price just isn't worth it. I proposed that we stick to Daniel from now on since nothing else has quite measured up. We can be one of those couples that goes back every year once a year on their anniversary.

*Note: Whole Foods Chelsea - please carry non-grass fed beef. I like it better. And its not $14/lb. I think I'll be going to Whole Foods Union Square for meat from now on.

La Vaissellerie

I decided to start outfitting my future kitchen early. There's a dishware store around the corner from me called La Vaissellerie (I think it literally means "the dishware store") that has a ton of white dinnerware and serving bowls and platters in a variety of shapes and sizes. Behold, my bounty:

4 bowls for soup / pasta, a serving bowl for pasta / couscous / whatever, 4 long platters (asparagus? skewers? caprese salad? MINI TACOS?!), 2 regular bowls (fruit? I dunno...), 2 square-ish bowls (salad?), a rectangular small serving dish, one of those 3-mini-dish sauce things and 2 oven-safe cocotte-looking dishes. I decided to actually utilize some with all the market produce I bought today:

And look at the girolles I got today for €5!

What better way could they have met their delicious fate than sauteed in lots of butter with shallots and sage, and finished with dill and chives? I also added a bit of 0% fromage frais mixed with dill and chives on the sides. French dairy is one of the handful of things I'll miss about France - its not that easy to find fromage blanc or fromage frais in the U.S. and if you do, its usually expensive. Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery sells it (along with other yummy dairy products) but that's the only one I know of and the price (and size) is nothing like the giant 1kg Danone Taillefine tubs I get (49 calories per 100g!).

Anyhow, below is how the girolles (super similar to chanterelles) came to be in my tummy.

Sauteed girolles with herbs

1 pound of chopped girolles/chanterelles (mixed wild mushrooms would probably work well too but note that mushrooms will loose about one-third to half their volume once cooked)
1 finely diced shallot
2 tbsp julienned sage leaves (approx. 5 - 6)
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp chopped dill
1 tbsp chopped chives
Olive oil
Salt

For the fromage blanc:
1/4 cup fromage blanc
3 tbsp chopped dill
1 tbsp chopped chives

Salt

Add a tablespoon of olive oil to a pan and saute shallots over medium-low heat. Once they start getting a little color, add the mushrooms and turn the heat up to medium. When they release a lot of water, add the sage (I'm warning you, LOTS of liquid...)

Stir occasionally until the water evaporates. Add some salt at some point.

Meanwhile, mix all the ingredients for the fromage blanc. There you have your sauce.

Once the water had evaporated, taste and add more salt if needed, along with the butter. Continue sauteing until the mushrooms start browning and shriveling up a little (I like my mushrooms dry so I guess its a personal preference).

Once plated, top with the dill and chives and serve with the fromage blanc on the side.

In a cooking frenzy - Part 1

I went on a cooking frenzy after going to the market. Cherries and apricots are both in season so I got a bunch, among other things.

I can't resist when sweet, juicy apricots are €2 per kilo! Of course, most bruised and I was forced to make them into jam!

It was my first foray into jam making. Pretty tasty so far but a little too sweet. I was also afraid I wouldn't boil it long enough and it would come out soupy but no. Its quite the opposite...but the taste is there. I swear!

Recently I had a panna cotta-like fromage frais 0% fat dessert somewhere so in my attempt to recreate it, I got some fromage blanc (I couldn't find fromage frais) and mixed it with some gelatin and now its sitting in the fridge. We'll see how it turns out. And I think I'm just going to stick with this as my yogurt from now on. So sad hasn't been in my life for the past 5 months!

I also got some broccoli. I used to really dislike it (its a texture thing) but its recently grown on me and it makes a very satisfying and filling dish (especially when making it with garlic and red pepper flakes and pairing it with some parm, bacon (!), toasted almonds). I burnt the garlic, as always. I ate it as a main but you can make it as a side or toss it with some pasta.

Spicy broccoli with other stuff

Broccoli cut into florets
1/2 cup of lardons, or diced bacon
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes (I like mine spicy!)
Small handful of toasted almonds
Parmesan or other hard cheese

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the broccoli and remove to an ice bath after 3-4 minutes. While the broccoli is blanching, you can mince the garlic.

Fry up the diced bacon (the key is doing it on low-medium heat otherwise it smokes because bacon fat has a fairly low smoking point). Remove and let drain on a paper towel.

Add some olive oil to the same pan used for the bacon, and on low heat, saute the red pepper flakes with the garlic until fragrant, about 30 second to 1 minute. Add the broccoli (which, I hope, you remembered to drain...I didn't so I kinda added it wet and things splattered because hot oil and water aren't friends). Saute for a few more minutes but don't burn the garlic like I did.

Put it on a plate, add the bacon, add the toasted almonds, and top with some freshly grated Parmesan. Alternately you can chop the broccoli and mix it with some pasta along with the bacon, almonds and cheese (add some reserved pasta water to bring it all together).

Spicy crispy crunchy snacks

I've made roasted chickpeas so many times before, always throwing whatever spices I had on hand into the mix. Today I decided to be more focused and go Indian - garam masala. And of course some cayenne pepper. And some smoked Maldon sea salt for good measure. It's a perfect crunchy snack - high in fiber, low in fat, easy to eat out of hand and quite filling. They turned out pretty darn tasty, even though my oven isn't an oven. Its really a microwave with a built-in convection oven feature. I started eating them and before I knew it, the whole pan was empty (that might not have been as healthy). Next time, I'll either go sweet (cinnamon, cloves, lemon) or Mexican (chile peppers, lime, cilantro). You can probably guess which one I'm leaning towards.

Roasted chickpeas

1 can chickpeas, drained rinsed and dried

1 tbsp olive oil

Spices (I like some curry powder / garam masala, with cayenne pepper...but you can do whatever including garlic powder, paprika, fennel, oregano, marjoram, thyme...)

Salt

Pre-heat oven to 450F

In a bowl, combine chickpeas with the olive oil, a few shakes of whatever spices you want, and salt. Toss until everything is uniformly coated. Taste and adjust spices as needed.

Spread out in a single layer on a foil-lined cookie sheet (or whatever metallic oven-proof vessel you have...I used a tart pan). Roast in oven for 15 minutes, shake the pan, and roast for 5 - 10 minutes more, depending of whether you want them on the chewier or crunchier side.

If you're adding fresh herbs or lime / lemon juice, add them after you take the chickenpeas out of the oven. Try not to eat all of them at once, like I did...

Bulgur wheat

Some of my new years resolutions (or things to try in the new year) were to learn to cook legumes (lentils, beans), squash (I really want to get some delicata squash) and to incorporate more grains in my diet. I tried my hand at polenta for the first time last week (yes, polenta is not one of the three things above). It was alright when soupy but it hardened into something really delicious. I was going to make baked polenta fries with the leftovers but there was no polenta left since I couldn't keep myself from eating it cold.

When I was in Sao Paulo, I had the best tasting brown rice ever. It was completely unadorned and really nutty flavored. I'm usually not a huge fan of brown rice, it just tastes bland. But this was amazing. I googled it later and I think it was short-grain japanese brown rice, which I'm going to have to go hunt for. Shouldn't be too hard, I live in the middle of Japan town it seems, with ramen (or as they write, "lamen", which I find hilarious because I don't know whether Japanese people find that offensive or not since they can't really pronounce their R's...but I digress). But craving something rice-like but not white rice, and, in a seemingly serendipitous (didn't think I'd ever use that word, did you now?) moment, NYTimes decided to have a whole section devoted to bulgur wheat.

I don't know if I've had it before but I'd read about it and it kinda looked like that best-ever-Sao-Paulo-brown-rice so I got some. And I must say, it's deliciously chewy. I'm going to eat more of this (plus, its healthy and full of fiber!)

Bulgur salad with veggies and feta  (I took the contents of my fridge, but the base salad credit goes to a certain cook who made us the best coq au vin a few weeks ago, you know who you are!)

1 medium sized tomato

1 small cucumber (or 1/4 of those huge cucumbers)

1/4 of a red onion

1 1/2 cups of lettuce, chopped up (probably 4 - 5 leaves)

1/4 cup of feta, crumbled

1/2 cup of par-boiled bulgur wheat

olive oil

salt

Cook the bulgur wheat according to the instructions on the box (probably put in salted boiling water for 10 - 12 minutes). Meanwhile, dice up the tomato, cucumber and red onion (finely dice that one), as well as the lettuce if you haven't done so already. Put everything into a medium bowl. Add the crumbled feta, about 1/2 a tbsp of olive oil and salt, to taste. Mix it up. 

When the bulgur is done cooking, drain and rinse under cold water (I think this probably strips some nutrients, and I guess you can put it in the fridge if you make it ahead, but you just need it to be cooled). 

Add to the salad, mix, adjust salt to taste, take a big spoon (no forks for this!) and eat!

Steak(ums) and veggies

First thing I cook for JP after coming back for vacation - steak. It was a fluke. We were at Whole Foods picking up groceries for my New Years Eve spread; I was searching for ground dark chicken meat (ended up with ground dark turkey meat), and he found a package of 3 marinated rib-eye steaks with the wrong sticker price on it. $17.99 per lb. It said the package was a little over half a pound. Completely mislabeled when packages of the same meat, that seemed to weigh the same, were going for $30 for the entire package. We grabbed it. Dinner ended up being grilled marinated rib-eye with roasted fingerling potatoes and green beans. Yum.

I am awful at writing recipes because I eyeball most things. The veggies were pretty much the following:
1. Pre-heat oven to 400F. Line baking sheet or pan with foil 
2. Par-cook a handful (or however many you want) fingerling potatoes in boiling water for 6 minute
3. Remove from water and cut in half. Place in lined baking sheet and toss with olive oil, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and whatever other spices you like (I put chile powder, oregano and garlic powder). I like to make sure the potatoes are cut side up. Roast in oven for 15 minutes
4. Remove from oven, add green beans and a little more olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss. Roast for 5 - 7 more minutes.

Inaugurating a Kitchen

I cooked for the first time in mama's new kitchen, and for the first time in over two weeks since I didn't have a kitchen while in Brazil.

It was five of us so I needed to make something easy but something big enough so that there'd be enough for everyone. And so, I decided to make brick chicken with apricot couscous. I've had my eye on this recipe for a while and I hadn't had a chance to make it. And now I have. And I butterflied my first chicken cause mama was too lazy to ask the butcher to do it (she claims there were a lot of people at the store).

I'd forgotten how much I like couscous cause I don't make it too often, but I really should. It's a perfect accompaniment and doesn't take more than 10 minutes to make (thats considering you add things to it that are sauteed, plain couscous takes 5 minutes). But the thing that made this dish was the mint cilantro sauce. It was super refreshing on top of the spicy chicken and mixed in with the couscous (we only put in half the amount of honey but I'd completely omit it).

Also, as happens every winter holiday season, I overdose on clementines. Clementines consumed today? Oh too many to count, but I'd probably say somewhere in the vinicinity of 10. I am expecting to wake up with a rash since I'm actually allergic to citrus. Fantastic. We'll see how that goes.