fact: Lisa from Top Chef is Little Pete from the Adventures of Pete and Pete
Top Chef is over and thank GOD Stephanie Izard won. First, her last name is the same as my favorite comedian. Second, her food always sounded delicious. And third, Lisa is a gross-to-look-at, arrogant, nauseating person and there would have been outrage in the fan community if she had won the competition.
I’m really writing this blog for two reasons. One, I needed to put out to the interwebs just how much I think Lisa is the twin of Little Pete from Pete and Pete. And also, I wanted to talk about the fun I am having with my eating challenge for the month of June. I am not go grocery shopping until we make a significant dent in the food we have been ignoring in our cupboards for the past year or so. The reward has been not only piece of mind and a cleaner cupboard, but some very delicious new recipes to add to the books.
Monday:
Spinach, walnut, and apple salad with goat cheese dressing
Wasabi cashew encrusted swordfish over carrots and edamame with a tasty soy glaze
Tuesday:
Black bean and sausage soup with goat cheese sour cream
Wednesday:
Spinach, walnut, and apple salad with goat cheese dressing
Wild boar and steak ragu
Thursday:
Chicken tikka masala (or something similar in nature, equally delicious)
Discoveries:
article: America’s Food Waste
Americans waste 27% of the food available to them for consumption.
That is a pound of food every day for every America.
Those are some astonishing numbers. Numbers that hit you in the gut. Still, the New York Times article goes on to state that a lot of those statistics come from grocery stores throwing away defect or expired food, food programs throwing away uncooked or unused food, and various other efforts that serve larger amounts of people. This is not purely a statistics based on individual table scraps.
Still… As someone who is very passionate about food, it has inspired me to look around my own kitchen. Leftovers and table scraps are not just a method of recycle but a interesting ingredient. Like one of my favorite Top Chef challenges over the years, that featured the creative use of leftovers, I’ve challenged myself to try and create the next week (or two) of dishes using items in the kitchen that would have otherwise expired or gone unnoticed yet again for another month or two.
Tonight’s meal:
Grilled Mahi-Mahi covered in some pink sea salt I received from my mother. The sauce was built from some leftover homemade salsa from the weekend, which I then converted into a more Indian flavored sauce with the help of some spices, canned ginger, and a jar of roasted red pepper sauce that has been long floating in my fridge. The green grapes were looking pretty sad, so I fried them up and chopped them into the rice to make a little more exotic tasting dish. I still have some left-over Indian sauce and some grilled steak from fajitas, so we’ll see what that produces tomorrow. Honestly it is both relieving and inspiring to cook via recycling of materials.
food: colonial goose, a New Zealand dish
wine: 2004 Amisfield Pinot Noir
movie: Black Sheep
After months of delay, I am finally back to cooking my husband the themed dinners that I had promised him as part of his birthday present last summer. If I am lucky, I will conclude the 6th dinner before his birthday this year, but I’ll have to step up the pace to make that happen.
THIS MONTH: New Zealand
The main dish I made was Colonial Goose, which is not goose at all, but lamb. Early pioneers to New Zealand had a steady supply of sheep, but poultry was something of a luxury, even up until recently. To make them feel less homesick, they would stuff and roast a leg of lamb (bone removed) in a fashion similar to the way you would cook a goose. The lamb I made was roasted for several hours and stuffed with dried apricots, honey, and breadcrumbs. Delicious, and the earthiness of the food went perfect with the New Zealand Pinot Noir…
2004 Amisfield Pinot Noir
Smells like a dusty cellar, moldy, and a bit like chemicals. Faint aroma of cherries and unripe strawberries, tastes and smells very bright and clean. Almost carbonated, fresh sizzling cherry. Sooo good. mild oak. Very Pinot, both delicate and powerful. ($27)
While many know New Zealand only for their superb Sauvignon Blanc, they actually have some high altitude, cooler climate regions that are perfect terroir for Pinot Noir. The Central Otago wine region, where the Amisfield winery is located, is the most southern wine region in the entire world. The vineyards, residing at 400 meters above sea level, cling precariously to steep slopes and river gorges. It seems like Pinot is always better the more painful the growing conditions.
Finally, we had a chocolate mousse with kiwi sauce while watching our horror flick for the evening, Black Sheep. The choice was between that or The Piano, and I think we made the right choice. While kinda forgettable, the movie felt very reminiscent of early Peter Jackson horror films. It was heavy in the gore, completely over-the-top, good mindless fun. The special effects were even done by the Weta Workshop, how much more New Zealand can you get? If only we had finished off the night by snacking on some Marmite sandwiches and watching Flight of the Conchords.
food: coq au vin with juniper, meatloaf with star anise
One of the reasons I love Top Chef so much is that aspect of “a twist”. So common the challenge is to do something like traditional family favorites, comfort food, but with “a twist”. Maybe it needs to be modernized, maybe it has to incorporate the chef’s signature style, maybe it needs to be low calorie, but there is always an interesting element that makes it something beyond the literal interpretation of the dish.
There is something special in that combination of tradition and mystery. Gordon Ramsay knows it. His whole philosophy has always been about doing away with pretentious dishes, fancy for fancy sake, and finding the heart of traditional cuisine. His recommendations on Kitchen Nightmares always boils down to returning to simpler food, but not simple as in boring, there always has to be something that makes it unique.
So I had fun this week creating various comfort foods with “a twist” based on some particularly delicious looking recipes from Food & Wine magazine. Coincidentally, I visited Town Tavern in Royal Oak this week, which is supposedly known for their comfort food, specifically a lobster mac and cheese. In the end, I was a lot more pleased with my own creations than the Town Tavern mac and cheese. Maybe I just had some really good successes, or maybe I just don’t think a dish can be called mac and cheese unless you can actually taste some major cheese. Whether it be cheddar or swiss or gruyere or parmesan, that doesn’t matter, but I just don’t buy little tubes in a cream sauce as “mac and cheese”.
Coq Au Vin with Juniper
Coq au vin is good French comfort food. Tom and I experienced a lot of rustic cuisine on our trip to France, delicious meats with full flavored sauces. I became especially interested in doing an updated version when I found an article in Food & Wine that listed 4 different takes on the traditional meal, each uniquely delicious. One was made with a Sauvignon Blanc and capers, another with Chardonnay and artichokes, and yet another Cotes du Rhone and carrots. The one I chose was the most unique… a sauce made from figs, juniper berries, cipollini onions, and Riesling.
Juniper berries are a strange substance in and of themselves, something I’ve be interested in playing with. It is the ingredient that gives the distinguising pine flavor to gin, and to see it being used in a coq au vin dish was certainly that “twist” I was looking for. The chicken came out perfectly cooked and juicy, and the sauce ingredients combine to create a rich, flavorful and sweet gravy that really felt like home-cooking. The juniper was not pungent, but was just enough to give you this holiday-esque feeling. Roast chicken, sweet figs, and pine trees… definitely a dish I’ll be trying again in the Christmas season.
Smoky Meatloaf with Star Anise
Second attempt at some comfort food was the very American meatloaf and ketchup. My mom had gotten me some star anise pods for Christmas, and here I found a recipe that not only used them in the meatloaf itself but in the accompanying prune ketchup. Alone the meatloaf turned out good, not great… I’m always afraid to pump up the spices beyond the recipe and there wasn’t really any way for me to taste it before cooking. Going to France did not make me comfortable with raw ground beef consumption. Anyway, the meatloaf was good and I appreciated the strong smoky flavor that came from using bacon and some smoked salt I had picked up in Paris. But even better than the meatloaf alone was the way it tasted with the prune ketchup, a fantastic blend of sticky sweetness and tangy with that lovely liquorice bite.
Two great recipes I shall be making again. To anyone listening out there, feel free to post some of your favorite comfort foods with a twist. I’d love to get some more ideas.
food: butternut squash soup from Les Papilles in Paris
The French know how to do winter soup. Lots of cream and lots of butter. At Les Papilles in Paris, they took the fun of eating a hearty soup even further, and thus created one of the most memorable singular dishes of our whole Europe trip. They filled the bottom of a large bowl with roasted chestnuts, cheese, fresh chives, and a large wad of freshly whipped butter. The soup came family style in a big tureen for your to pour over the butter and tasty treasures. Mix together and magic happens.
Since it is nearing the end of winter, I thought this would be the perfect time for me to test out recreating the memorable dish. And I have to say that for the most part, it was a real success. The soup was a bit thicker, like a puree, and next time I will go for some high quality whipped butter. But all in all I found it a delicious and fun way to serve a soup with endless possibilities for alterations. This time I tried roasted apples, toasted chestnuts, and smoked cheddar, but next time maybe it can be poured over yogurt and Indian spices.
RECENT WINES
