Food&Wine Wine Club Dinner and Some Wine Basics

Tonight we did another wine club dinner - next of the wines was a full-bodied red from Mendocino County, CA, and suggested pairing is pasta with meat sauce. Specific recipe provided is orecchiette with sausage and cherry tomatoes (click here for recipe on F&W website) - a super easy and fast dinner dish (less than 20 mins!). Because this particular dish is so simple, even though I will go over it later, I would like to first share with you our tools and methods to enjoy wine.

Wine is a complicated drink, and proper ways to consume and enjoy it are a matter of taste. However, there are certain guidelines coming from sommeliers that are supposed to enhance the experience. Of course, most of us do not have the skill of a sommelier and won't be able to tell terroir of a wine down to a mile, just as an example, or recognize that a certain wine is better when drank one degree warmer or colder. But in general, we do know some guidelines and we do accept and follow them, for example most of us drink white wine chilled and red wine at room temperature, and we let the wine "breathe" a bit before consuming it. Over time we have acquired some wine accessoires that are helpful in getting our wines to the right state for consumption.

Quick and Delicious Dinner - Fennel Risotto and Arak Scallops

Before I cooked my first risotto, I always thought of it as a very complicated and time-consuming dish - for no particular reason there seemed to be some magic in turning simple grains of rice into creamy delicious goodness. I've had many different risottos in various restaurants - truffle, seafood, veggie, etc, and all were absolutely delightful. Of course, as is usually the case with me, my admiration for risotto and my excessive curiosity (you know, the one that made me make sushi with raw fish at home one day, and foie gras pate - the next) eventually pushed me to investigate the magic behind it. Ends up, it is actually very easy! It is certainly an involved process as you have to be at the stove all the time while cooking it, but in no way is cooking a risotto complicated. Today I decided to make fennel risotto, and to go with it I decide to cook scallops, and as a finishing touch and to extend the anise flavor of fennel, scallops will be flambeed with Arak. Let's begin!

Terrine de Foie Gras

Foie gras (fattened liver, usually of a goose or a duck) is not an unfamiliar food to me. Both Shyam and I enjoyed foie gras pate before (store-bought) as well as nice seared melt-in-your-mouth slices of foie gras in restaurants. But that was awhile ago, and somehow foie gras fell off my radar for quite some time. Until now. My current affair with foie gras started after we attended a cooking class at TAG. It was a Saturday right before Valentine's day, and theme of the class was cooking with chocolate and appropriate wine pairings (click here for flyer). One of the dishes was Vichyssoise served warm with seared foie gras and bitter-sweet chocolate shavings. Needless to say, I was excited to recreate the dish at home. Vichyssoise doesn't require any exotic ingredients: leeks, onions, potatoes, cream, and you're all set. Foie gras, on the other hand, is a much more difficult proposition. After unsuccessfully trying to obtain this magic ingredient, Shyam called the restaurant and asked the chef where we could get it (and at a reasonable price), after mentioning all the places we have already tried. Chef Sam was nice enough to offer us to add what we needed to restaurant's order and we'd pick up the item when it arrives, two days later. The day before I was set to cook up a feast for Valentine's dinner (that's right, some women do enjoy spending that day in the kitchen!) I was in possession of a 2 lb fattened duck liver. Yay! I only needed a bit of it for Vichyssoise dish, but I couldn't pass an opportunity to be able to cook some more later with such a wonderful ingredient. After the soup, I used foie gras to make an exciting take on Peruvian dish tacu tacu (read about it here). But time was running out - unfortunately foie gras won't stay fresh long. One option was to freeze it, but that supposedly destroys some of the flavors. So I decided to preserve the remaining liver by making a foie gras pate.

First Time Ever - Sushi!

Both Shyam and I love sushi, and it's been a long wish of mine to try to make my own. Finally, I've assembled enough needed ingredients and equipment to make my first attempt. Earlier today we bought some fresh sashimi-grade seafood. I started our evening meal with a Japanese-Peruvian fusion dish out of Art of Peruvian cuisine book with octopus (cooked), and then it is on to actual raw stuff - some nigiri rolls, maki rolls, and, it so happened, sashimi. Let's get started!

Some of My Favorite Kitchen Items

That's right, no fancy recipes today, just some pasta for dinner. Instead I want to share some of my biggest helpers in the kitchen. These items will help you with organization, storage, and efficiency when cooking. Some people will say that a lot of women in the world cook without any fancy gadgets, with very limited equipment. I know that and I respect that - ability to do a lot with very little is certainly admirable. But that is not my point here. None of the items below are so essential that you can't survive without them (we do go overnight camping into wilderness -  no cars, no electric outlets, just what we bring on our back! we do know minimalism!). What I am about to share here are nice-to-have extras in your kitchen for when you can afford to spend a few extra dollars and you can also afford some space to keep them, although some are meant to save you money in long run and others are meant to optimize your space usage - planning ahead and considering all scenarios does help. Despite their non-essential nature, once you have these items, you'll appreciate them and will wonder how rest of the world functions without them.

Food&Wine Wine Club Dinner

Wine Clubs

Are wine clubs a great deal? Great - no, but I would say they are a fair deal. We used to have Williams-Sonoma wine club subscription when we lived in New Jersey. It was very nice. Unfortunately they won't ship to Colorado, so I had to cancel. Food&Wine wine club does ship to Colorado, and that is what we have now. I would recommend both of these clubs to anyone who is interested in this sort of thing. The very first thing you should check is that you can receive wines from the wine club you are considering in your state before you get too excited with all the details to avoid disappointment if they can't ship to you.

TAG Brewery Dinner #2

Tonight was second brewery dinner at TAG, featuring Left Hand Brewery and Ralston Valley Beef. We have tried Left Hand beers before and we did enjoy them. Menu for the dinner was advertised prior to the event, so we knew what we were in for and we were excited.

Quick And Delicious Vegetarian Dinner

Dressing down Foie Gras con Tacu Tacu de Lentejas

Last night's dinner was delicious...Just looking back at the photo of that plate makes my mouth water. Tonight's dinner will be a simpler version of that, as I still have all the ingredients ready, why not use them. Stripping foie gras out of the dish makes it vegetarian too.

Haute Peruvian Cuisine

And this Sunday's dinner I went for something new and special: a recipe from a restaurant in Peru - Foie Gras con Tacu Tacu de Lentejas. Description from the book reads:

"This is one of Coque's wonderful 'nouvelle cuisine peruvienne' dishes served at 'Le Bistrot de mes Fils'. The pairing of lentils with foie gras and fruit works particularly well. The result is a spectacularly innovative way to serve traditional Peruvian tacu tacu."

Exciting, isn't it?

Sunday Morning - Ebelskivers

This morning was one of those easy mornings when alarm is off, we don't have to get up early and rush to get ready for something, be it skiing, hiking or going to office... just a take it easy morning that can last until lunch. And that means I can do some more for breakfast beyond a bowl or cereal or scrambled eggs. And this particular morning my heart was set on ebelskivers - light and fluffy Danish filled pancakes.

Our Usual Apres-ski - Local Brewery Visit

Tommyknocker Brewery

Sunny weather, barely a cloud in the sky, reasonable temperatures, fresh snow on the slopes - you guessed it, it's a ski day! And with a number of times we went for beer and food to some local brewery on the way back home after skiing it is almost time to declare it a tradition.

My Take on Chiles Rellenos

Happy Friday, everyone!

It has been a long week and I really want to take it easy on Friday night, so nothing fancy tonight, simple chiles rellenos and that's it. I have used most of the foods that I had already prepared for tonight's dinner. The only thing I had to invest my time in is getting ancho/poblano chiles ready. That involves scorching the skins under broiler until they blister and after few more manipulations with steam and ice bath, removing the outer skin and then cleaning out the seeds and pith. This step can be done some time ahead. I prepped the chiles right after I got home from work and then went off to gym.

General Thoughts and Quick Dinner Tonight - Chicken Liver

Efficiency in the kitchen

Sometimes I love spending hours and hours in the kitchen, but often, especially on weeknights after coming home from work, I want to be done with dinner fast. After being in a restaurant kitchen and watching chefs cook, it gave me a new perspective on my own kitchen. It isn't really a secret. But growing up, cooking was just that, and not much thought was given to why things are done a certain way, but rather it was simply doing things the way previous generations of women (my mom, my grandmothers and other female relatives) had done. With new gadgets, better technologies, simply more space in my kitchen (compared to my grandmother's that measures 2 by 2 meters/about 6 by 6 ft!) and just having the financial means to acquire more and better tools, the new name of the game is efficiency.

Testing testing...

Hello all,

My first blog post ever. :) Testing 1 2 3

Finally I've decided to start a blog about all our kitchen adventures, not just a few pictures I or Shyam usually post on facebook every now and then, but the whole story and for everyone to see, not just my friends. I hope I can keep up, I hope I won't get lazy and abandon this blog, and most of all I hope that my posts will be interesting, informative and helpful to everyone out there.

Cheers!