TAG Brewery Dinner #3

Tonight was the third installment of brewery dinners at TAG featuring Great Divide brewery and M.T.H. Natural Lamb Farm. What a wonderful evening it was! We knew the menu prior to dinner, and it was supposed to be quite a dinner. Of course, there is always a risk of disappointment when expectations are high, but not this time. We expected it to be amazing, and amazing it was.

Pork Belly - Braising and Further Preparations

Ah, pork belly... how can you go wrong with it?! There are so many ways to cook with it, and all - so delicious! Hardly a healthy choice, we can however indulge in it today as we had a 4 mile run outside thanks to the summer weather we are having all this week. It helps to have a strong alcohol with pork belly to help break down the fats. Today I will braise a whole lot of it, then use some for dinner while saving the rest for later uses.

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.

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.

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.

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.