Apparently I'm in a bit of a rut, but no one is complaining!
Tonight's dinner was essentially the same as last night in time required for prep and general methods, but was more of an Asian twist. (I'd call last night's more French with a dash of pacific fusion.)
My wife picked up about two pounds of sashimi grade ahi from Race Street Fish. Given that as a starting point, I opted for another round of simple grilling. I dusted the fish with a bit of salt and pepper and some toasted sesame seeds (add some seeds to a hot dry pan for a minute or two), and started a nice hot fire. While the fire was getting going, I put together a quick spicy greens salad with arugula and cilantro, dressed with a splash of olive oil and soy sauce. I boiled water to cook a pile of somen noodles, and sliced up some baby bok choy. Once the fire was ready, I grilled the bok choy and finished up the noodles. I then quickly seared the tuna on both sides, which produces a nice char layer but leaves the center essentially raw.
To assemble plates, add a pile of somen noodles, slice the fish and place on top of the noodles, and add a pile of salad (garnished with more sesame seeds) and a bok choy half. Serve with wasabi on the side and soy sauce on the table, and call it dinner.
We opted for sake with this meal, which was refreshing and clean with the flavors of the salad and the fish. The whole thing took perhaps 30 minutes to throw together.
I hope that inspires someone to grill some fresh fish. There's little as fast, easy, and wonderfully flavorful as that!
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Beef - it's what's for dinner.
It's been a while since I've discussed food, so let's give that a whirl.
Dinner last night was quite tasty. I grilled some filets mignon to just barely medium-rare (indeed, some people might call them rare), and then let them rest for ten minutes while I dealt with the rest of dinner. Before that, though, I grilled some crookneck squash and some slices of polenta with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper brushed over each.
While the steaks finished, I heated some garlic (about five cloves, finely minced) in about a tsp. of olive oil until nicely browned. (Stick with a very low flame for this or the garlic will start to fry too much.) I added 4 Tbsp of butter, and let that melt into the garlic. Finally, I added 2 Tbsp of sake and another tablespoon of mirin. Let it all heat together, season with salt and pepper, and you've got a yummy sauce.
Plate assembly is easy: place a pile of arugula on a plate, slice the steaks into thick slabs, lay a steak on the arugula, and top with the sauce. Add a squash and a polenta disk, and you've got a nice looking and yummy meal. Serve with a nice crusty bread and a heavy red wine...yum! Outside of a bit too much fat, this is a meal that's also pretty good for you, too, as long as the steaks aren't too big. (The ones I used were around six ounces each.)
The wine we chose was a bottle of the 2000 St. Supéry Élu meritage. We've got a few more bottles of this specific vintage, and I think we'll hold onto them for a while. This bottle was perfect with the meal, with nice toasty oak flavors and bursting with ripe fruit. There's a bit of tannin to it still, and this will definitely age for several more years without any trouble. I think we have about seven more bottles of it, so we're looking forward to several more notable meals.
Bon appétit!
Dinner last night was quite tasty. I grilled some filets mignon to just barely medium-rare (indeed, some people might call them rare), and then let them rest for ten minutes while I dealt with the rest of dinner. Before that, though, I grilled some crookneck squash and some slices of polenta with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper brushed over each.
While the steaks finished, I heated some garlic (about five cloves, finely minced) in about a tsp. of olive oil until nicely browned. (Stick with a very low flame for this or the garlic will start to fry too much.) I added 4 Tbsp of butter, and let that melt into the garlic. Finally, I added 2 Tbsp of sake and another tablespoon of mirin. Let it all heat together, season with salt and pepper, and you've got a yummy sauce.
Plate assembly is easy: place a pile of arugula on a plate, slice the steaks into thick slabs, lay a steak on the arugula, and top with the sauce. Add a squash and a polenta disk, and you've got a nice looking and yummy meal. Serve with a nice crusty bread and a heavy red wine...yum! Outside of a bit too much fat, this is a meal that's also pretty good for you, too, as long as the steaks aren't too big. (The ones I used were around six ounces each.)
The wine we chose was a bottle of the 2000 St. Supéry Élu meritage. We've got a few more bottles of this specific vintage, and I think we'll hold onto them for a while. This bottle was perfect with the meal, with nice toasty oak flavors and bursting with ripe fruit. There's a bit of tannin to it still, and this will definitely age for several more years without any trouble. I think we have about seven more bottles of it, so we're looking forward to several more notable meals.
Bon appétit!
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Long time, no blog
Okay okay okay...so it's been a while!
There's been a zillion things I've been meaning to write about, ranging from planting and harvesting the backyard tomatoes, to dealing with my wife's illness, to fun with my granddaughter, and on to fun things like food and cooking. I've simply not been getting to writing about any of this. Among other things, work has been a complete nightmare in terms of the workload. I think I have pretty good life/work balance, in general, but there have definitely been a few times in the last two months where there has been significant strain on that ratio.
For tonight, I'll just mention a tidbit about food - dessert tonight was yummy. We had a delicious cherry pudding, from a recipe in a recent Food & Wine "Best of the Best" cookbook. The ingredients are nice and brief:
Butter a deep ovenproof dish liberally and scatter the cherries over the base, making sure they are evenly distributed. Sift the flour with the sugar and salt into a mixing bowl. Melt the butter and remove any scum. Make a well in the center of the flour and whisk in the beaten eggs, then, very slowly, the melted butter, followed by the milk, which should still be warm. Whisk thoroughly so that you have a smooth batter and pour over the cherries.
Bake until the batter rises and the top browns, 40-45 minutes. Leave the over door slightly open for the last 5 minutes of cooking, so that the batter doesn't sink the minute you take it out of the heat. Serve straight away, sprinkled with confectioner's sugar if you'd like."
It's worth noting that this recipe is originally from "The Food of France" by Sarah Woodward. It's $29.95 from Kyle Books, and probably worth picking up, since this is just one of the recipes in this book that look to be really yummy.
Enjoy!
There's been a zillion things I've been meaning to write about, ranging from planting and harvesting the backyard tomatoes, to dealing with my wife's illness, to fun with my granddaughter, and on to fun things like food and cooking. I've simply not been getting to writing about any of this. Among other things, work has been a complete nightmare in terms of the workload. I think I have pretty good life/work balance, in general, but there have definitely been a few times in the last two months where there has been significant strain on that ratio.
For tonight, I'll just mention a tidbit about food - dessert tonight was yummy. We had a delicious cherry pudding, from a recipe in a recent Food & Wine "Best of the Best" cookbook. The ingredients are nice and brief:
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1.5 lbs cherries
- 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
- 0.5 cup superfine sugar
- A pinch of salt
- 4 tbsps unsalted butter
- 4 large eggs, beaten well
Butter a deep ovenproof dish liberally and scatter the cherries over the base, making sure they are evenly distributed. Sift the flour with the sugar and salt into a mixing bowl. Melt the butter and remove any scum. Make a well in the center of the flour and whisk in the beaten eggs, then, very slowly, the melted butter, followed by the milk, which should still be warm. Whisk thoroughly so that you have a smooth batter and pour over the cherries.
Bake until the batter rises and the top browns, 40-45 minutes. Leave the over door slightly open for the last 5 minutes of cooking, so that the batter doesn't sink the minute you take it out of the heat. Serve straight away, sprinkled with confectioner's sugar if you'd like."
It's worth noting that this recipe is originally from "The Food of France" by Sarah Woodward. It's $29.95 from Kyle Books, and probably worth picking up, since this is just one of the recipes in this book that look to be really yummy.
Enjoy!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Yum yum!
(I neglected to post this previously, but it's from a while ago. Pictures to follow, eventually, perhaps.)
Is there anything so good as a nice slab of fish?
Dinner tonight was miso-glazed salmon over soba noodles. (We seem to be on a soba kick of late.) I made a marinade of 4 tbsp white miso, 3 tbsp sake, 2 tbsp canola oil, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp ginger, and 1tbsp garlic. The salmon was simply pan-fried on some olive oil in a hot skillet (I used 8 oz filets), and I brushed the marinade on the fish as it cooked. I added the leftover marinade to the chilled soba noodles, along with some scallion.
Instead of wine, we had a nice bottle of sake. This one was a bit sweet, but was very tasty with the miso. The bottle is certainly pretty. The translation of the label is quite humorous, though!
Dessert was some simple mochi balls. These are trivial to make - a bit of rice flour and water formed into balls and dropped into boiling water. Once they float up, they're ready to roll in some brown sugar. Quite tasty, although my wife and stepdaughter claimed they tasted like oatmeal. (I thought they were tasty, anyway.)
After that, we decided we needed a bit more of something to eat while we played a bit of Scrabble. (Yeah, exciting night at our house.) We opened a bottle of 2004 Storybrook estate Zinfandel from their Napa vineyard. (This was actuallythe "eastern exposure" vineyard.) While still a bit young, this was a delightful Zin packed with fruit with a hint of oak. We drank the wine with a few Lindor truffles and some marzipan treats. Very tasty!
Is there anything so good as a nice slab of fish?
Dinner tonight was miso-glazed salmon over soba noodles. (We seem to be on a soba kick of late.) I made a marinade of 4 tbsp white miso, 3 tbsp sake, 2 tbsp canola oil, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp ginger, and 1tbsp garlic. The salmon was simply pan-fried on some olive oil in a hot skillet (I used 8 oz filets), and I brushed the marinade on the fish as it cooked. I added the leftover marinade to the chilled soba noodles, along with some scallion.
Instead of wine, we had a nice bottle of sake. This one was a bit sweet, but was very tasty with the miso. The bottle is certainly pretty. The translation of the label is quite humorous, though!
Dessert was some simple mochi balls. These are trivial to make - a bit of rice flour and water formed into balls and dropped into boiling water. Once they float up, they're ready to roll in some brown sugar. Quite tasty, although my wife and stepdaughter claimed they tasted like oatmeal. (I thought they were tasty, anyway.)
After that, we decided we needed a bit more of something to eat while we played a bit of Scrabble. (Yeah, exciting night at our house.) We opened a bottle of 2004 Storybrook estate Zinfandel from their Napa vineyard. (This was actuallythe "eastern exposure" vineyard.) While still a bit young, this was a delightful Zin packed with fruit with a hint of oak. We drank the wine with a few Lindor truffles and some marzipan treats. Very tasty!
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Sunday feasting!
My wife had a request today - she really wanted some tuna for dinner. So, what to do?
I opted for grilled ahi with soba noodles and arugula. For the tuna, I simply brushed a pair of large steaks with oil, and added a generous amount of salt and pepper, and then seered the outside of both steaks over a very hot grill. (I also grilled some baby bok choy to go with the rest of the dish.) I then plated a pile of freshly cooked soba noodles and some washed arugula, and added the tuna after thinly slicing it. Over the whole thing I added a scallion and ginger dressing. That dressing was also a quick and easy preparation: I heated some canola oil until very hot, and added a generous portion of minced scallion and fresh ginger root. Once the scallion had softened, I took it off the heat, and added soy sauce and rice vinegar. Once that was all cool, it went over the rest of the dish. The results are below!
I could have paired a crisp white wine with this, but I opted for something a bit more appropriate, given the general flavorings. I just happened to have a nice junmai sake available and chilled, so we had that with dinner. It was clean and delicious! The bottle is pictured to the right.
Finally, there's dessert. That was very much not a Pacific Rim dish, but was a nice hearty New England style Indian Maple Pudding. it's a recipe from Food&Wine magazine, but I can't find an online link to it, so I've provided it below.
I opted for grilled ahi with soba noodles and arugula. For the tuna, I simply brushed a pair of large steaks with oil, and added a generous amount of salt and pepper, and then seered the outside of both steaks over a very hot grill. (I also grilled some baby bok choy to go with the rest of the dish.) I then plated a pile of freshly cooked soba noodles and some washed arugula, and added the tuna after thinly slicing it. Over the whole thing I added a scallion and ginger dressing. That dressing was also a quick and easy preparation: I heated some canola oil until very hot, and added a generous portion of minced scallion and fresh ginger root. Once the scallion had softened, I took it off the heat, and added soy sauce and rice vinegar. Once that was all cool, it went over the rest of the dish. The results are below!
I could have paired a crisp white wine with this, but I opted for something a bit more appropriate, given the general flavorings. I just happened to have a nice junmai sake available and chilled, so we had that with dinner. It was clean and delicious! The bottle is pictured to the right.Finally, there's dessert. That was very much not a Pacific Rim dish, but was a nice hearty New England style Indian Maple Pudding. it's a recipe from Food&Wine magazine, but I can't find an online link to it, so I've provided it below.
This is an incredibly yummy dessert. It's very rich...this recipe makes at least 8 servings.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
- 1 quart whole milk
- 1/2 cup maple sugar granules or light-brown sugar
- 1 cup heavy cream, not ultrapasteurized, if you can find it
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup (don't skimp..it's worth the price)
- 1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1) Heat the oven to 275 degrees. Lightly butter a 1-1/2 quart souffle dish. In a heavy bottomed medium saucepan, whisk the cornmeal into the milk over moderately high heat until thickened slightly, about 5 minutes.
2) Remove from the heat and stir in the maple sugar granules. Stir in the cream, syrup, and nutmeg. Pour into the prepared dish. Bake in the middle of the oven until bubbling and brown on top, about 4 hours. Let rest 30 minutes before serving.
(Source: Food & Wine magazine's Favorite Desserts)
Plan ahead for this one, but it's well worth it. My wife insists it's even better the next day!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Salmon and lentils...yum!
One of my favorite topics is food. There will be a lot of posts about food in this blog!
Today's discovery is that our friends at Google have a recipe search function. My wife wanted something involving salmon, which led to Salmon Fillet Wrapped in Prosciutto with Herby Lentils, Spinach and Yogurt. The kids even liked this one. Total prep time is about one hour, so it's a decent recipe for a busy night. (This was one of those - I was babysitting my granddaughter while I was cooking.) Most of the time is required for cooking the lentils.
Unusually for a meal like this, we didn't have any wine. In the future, I'll comment on the wine selection, too. (We have a small but reasonably stocked cellar.) We also often take pictures of our food, but this one didn't get that far...perhaps a future post will include a few snapshots of our dinners!
Dessert was individual chocolate soufflés. It's a recipe I use often, so I'll save it for another day.
Bon appétit!
Today's discovery is that our friends at Google have a recipe search function. My wife wanted something involving salmon, which led to Salmon Fillet Wrapped in Prosciutto with Herby Lentils, Spinach and Yogurt. The kids even liked this one. Total prep time is about one hour, so it's a decent recipe for a busy night. (This was one of those - I was babysitting my granddaughter while I was cooking.) Most of the time is required for cooking the lentils.
Unusually for a meal like this, we didn't have any wine. In the future, I'll comment on the wine selection, too. (We have a small but reasonably stocked cellar.) We also often take pictures of our food, but this one didn't get that far...perhaps a future post will include a few snapshots of our dinners!
Dessert was individual chocolate soufflés. It's a recipe I use often, so I'll save it for another day.
Bon appétit!
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