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.
If you have lentils and rice ready, this preparation will take you less than 30 mins, and if you have all the veggies cut as well - less than 10. For salad, cut red bell pepper, tomato, onion, banana, chop parsley and oregano, combine in a bowl, add lentils. Mix. Add sherry and balsamic vinegars, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix. It is done.
Heat olive oil on a pan, add chopped onions and minced garlic, stir. When they begin to brown, add lentils, rice and aji panca paste, season to taste. Mix and fry for several minutes, then spread the mixture in an even layer and leave on a pan for couple more minutes to let it get a bit crispy. In a separate pan I also lightly fried the baby bananas. This is it. Simple, right?
To serve, place rice and lentil mixture on the plate, add vegetable salad on top, as well as fried bananas.
We found that this dish tastes very good with one of the beers we brought back from Tommyknocker Brewery - Cocoa Porter. It is available for sale outside of brewery in liquor stores. Denver area has it for sure, elsewhere - ask your local store. This porter is very smooth with pleasant chocolate notes, and the sweetness of bananas in the dish interacts well with that.
Modernist Cuisine
Today I have read a section on baking. Many interesting facts in there. First of all, historically baking was for making bricks, not food. And baking is essentially drying, nothing more. Also very interestingly, the temperature you set your oven to is not your true baking temperature. You would have to read the book to exactly understand why - this is the most important point of this section and it is most important to understand why there is this discrepancy between the set temperature (dry-bulb temperature), the actual temperature in the oven (wet-bulb temperature, due to humidity from water evaporating from food - remember, baking is all about drying!) and the actual temperature that the food is cooking at (and even that is a bit complicated as there are various zones in the food itself as the heat travels into the food). Oh, and when you think you are roasting turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner, you are actually baking it!
Terrine de foie gras
Also today, I started making that foie gras pate. This is a 4 day process. I will not go in detail of each step on the day I do it, but rather do a whole write up when it is done.
Another brewery dinner tomorrow. Can't wait! And with this news, I wish you good night
No comments:
Post a Comment