Reviving this blog...

Dear all,

It is quite sad for me to see how this blog flat-lined after few months of inactivity, and the fault is entirely mine. Much has happened since the last post in our lives, and I should have kept up with it on this blog. Well, at least with the writing on the food-related happenings, and there were plenty of those - few more brewery dinners, Denver Burger Battle, Great American Beer Festival just to mention the big ones. I will try to have a few post about those and they will be back-dated.

For those who are curious about the overall happenings in our life and the cause of the inactivity on this blog, here it goes. Summer season came, and with it we just go outdoors and while kitchen is still gets actively used (we do need to eat!), I just couldn't find any time to actually write about it. Shyam's cricket season went well, although unlike last year, this year CCB did not win. We also started running much more and participated in several races - we both completed our first half-marathon (Slacker Half), did couple of 5K (Colfax in Denver, Keystone trail race) races, I also did some trail races - 10K (copper Mountain trail race) and a half (Glenwood Springs trail race), while Shyam was cheering for me at the finish line. While getting this active, we learned quite a bit more on nutrition specifically for runners, and it is definitely worth a post on this blog about what we discovered. We also went hiking and camping and added a few more 14ers to our list of accomplishments (Pikes Peak, Mt. Shavano, and Mount of the Holy Cross).

But days are getting shorter, weather - colder, cricket season - over, so hang on tight, for this blog is coming back to life, and better than ever! Stay tuned for few posts on events this summer and much more of the happenings out of our new kitchen.

Cheers!

TAG Brewery Dinner #4

Tonight was the fourth brewery dinner at TAG, featuring Avery Brewing Company and game birds presented by Strasburg Game Birds. Unlike previous dinners, it took awhile to release menu to the public, and we were guessing until close to the dinner about what was expecting us this time. Menu didn't disappoint, and moreover it included a twist - instead of a single beer with each course, we were presented with "a daring invitation to challenge your palate" with two beers with each course. For the first time, brewery dinner was sold out.

Back to blogging...

Hi All,

Sorry for a long gap (almost a month) in my writings here, but I think I am getting back into the right groove and right schedule to fit blogging back in my busy life. So stay tuned - TAG brewery dinner #4 coming up very soon.

Cheers!

Pasta With Meat Sauce

Braising is such an amazing technique - not only you get most delicious and tender meat, but leftovers - that liquid with vegetables and herbs and drippings of fat and flavor from the meat - are amazing too! After braising chicken for tacos (read here), it is now turn to deal with that wonderful sauce. What I had left in the pan was white wine, chicken drippings and onions.

Simple Dinner - Chicken Tacos

Nothing fancy tonight - just tacos. Can't say that it is fast though. I am braising chicken and that takes time. But it certainly is simple. I have half a whole chicken breast (bones in). I slice half an onion and line a bottom of a small braising pan with it. Place seasoned (salt and pepper) chicken on top, and add white wine - just enough to cover the onions, but not the chicken.

Tuna Tartare and Lobster Tail

And to finish the weekend off, two seafood plates - one is from a cookbook from Melisse restaurant, In Pursuit Of Excellence - ahi tuna tartare (although I'm not sure the tuna I have is ahi tuna), and then a very simple lobster tail, just because we happened to pick it up in the grocery store today.

First up, an "official" recipe from the book.

Peppers Stuffed With Cod On Roasted Tomatoes

My best friend went back to school to get her MBA and then went off for a semester abroad to Barcelona, Spain. I am quite jealous of all the wonderful food she gets to experience there, and her common photo postings on facebook only feed my jealousy more. But is is also quite inspirational. And although some ingredients, such as jamon (prohibited in US) and caught-this-morning-fresh seafood, are out of my reach, others I can get my hands on and can recreate a similar dish. Today I will use her photo as an inspiration and cook something similar - I have only a photo and a brief description (peppers stuffed with cod) to work of - no exact list of ingredients or a recipe here.

TAG U - Roasting

Today was a cooking class at TAG, subject - roasting. 3 delicious dishes to watch chefs make, 3 recipes provided to take home, mixology lesson at the bar with cocktails to sip, and a delicious lunch - that's TAG University.

Celebrating Ugadi

Today is actually a New Year. Yes, New Year. Celebrated in Karnataka as Ugadi, and also in Andhra and Maharashtra, today is a beginning of a new year for many Indians. As any other festive day, it must be a vegetarian day (see my previous post), but it is also a day to eat sweets. I am going back to the wonderful 1000 Indian recipes book for a new dessert recipe - Pistachio Burfee.

Shyam's Special Vegetable Pulao

I did write about how 1000 Indian Recipes book helped my Indian cooking a lot. It is a great book. Even Shyam consults it every now and then. But more as a guideline rather than following a recipe to a T. This post is about Shyam's own original recipe which was inspired by a vegetable pulao out of that book. But he changed the kind of vegetables, the spices, changed yogurt to coconut milk - it is entirely Shyam's specialty now. And while he is the one to usually cook this, since cricket season began and he is off to practice with his team, the honors of cooking it fall to me. Let's begin!

Parsnip Risotto

In search of an easy (relatively) meal idea, I browsed a few cookbooks, and something caught my eye in Mourad New Moroccan - Parsnip Risotto. What he suggests is absolutely brilliant - extract juice from parsnips and cook the rice in that juice. This way rice will absorbed the parsnip flavor but there will be no visible clues to any parsnip in the risotto. If only I had a juicer!

Great Espresso and Cappuccino At Home

I have been eyeing a good espresso machine to buy for home use for a long time. Breville is my favorite appliance brand and I must have had Breville Barista Express BES860XL machine with grinder in my Amazon shopping cart's "saved for later" for a year (click here for listing). Finally price decreased last week to $539 - still pricey, but lower than before (at the time of writing this post, price is $599) and would still be well worth it. Both I and Shyam had a discussion about this purchase (it is a lot of money) and finally agreed to go for it. To our surprise, there was an additional $108 discount (ends up, Amazon is running this discount: "Through April 9, 2012, you can save 20% on select Kitchen & Dining products when you use your Amazon.com Store Card" - pretty darn neat!), and we got this baby for only $430, which is a great bargain for this machine. Few days later we had it delivered and today we finally had our first home-made espresso and cappuccino.

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.

Shyam's Wonderful Saag Paneer

Saag paneer (creamy spinach cheese curry) is not an unusual Indian dish. I have tasted it enough times in various restaurants, and I can definitely say that Shyam cooks the best saag paneer by far!

Next Sushi Attempt

And to finish this weekend off - sushi! After the first attempt going rather well (read here), there is no reason not to try it again. Why do I call my sushi "cooking" attempts? Well, I am pretty sure that if a sushi chef, a true sushi chef, either reading this and previous posts or overseeing me in the kitchen will most certainly be outraged. What sushi chef does is like painting Mona Lisa, by comparison what I do is like drawing stick figures. But one only gets better with experience. So here we go.

To start easy, I prepared the same octopus dish as last time.

More Pork Belly - Another Delicious Yet Quick Dish

Recall the pork belly I braised earlier this week? Click here for my post. For a quick lunch today, I will be using a few pieces of that braised goodness. For this dish, jasmine rice is needed, so it helps to cook it ahead or time your rice-cooker to make some for lunch. I am also using a bit of preserve I cooked earlier for a dish from Jean-Georges VonGerichten's book - Asian Flavors of Jean-George. Preserve is made of ginger, shallots and garlic in honey. Something with a similar flavor profile can be used instead.

Sunday Morning - Rolled Omelet

Another lazy Sunday morning, another Sunday breakfast trick - rolled omelet pan.

This is a cute little pan by Nordic Ware, sold by Williams-Sonoma (click here for listing). Like other Nordic Ware pans I have (ebelskivers and waffle), this is an aluminum pan with non-stick coating and it has a specific shape for its task - there are two sections with a ridge in a middle that make rolling an omelet very easy.

Indian Sweets

Even though I have been cooking Indian savory dishes for several years now, it is only few months ago, for Diwali, that I tried to make my first-ever Indian dessert. We asked Shyam's mom for a recipe, and I prepared carrot halva. For no particular reason, I felt like making it again.

Homemade Meatballs

Meatballs! We used to buy them, but after I started making our own at home, store-bought ones just don't do it for us anymore. And meatballs are probably the simplest of the make-ahead foods you can do at home - very little effort, resources and ingredients compared to, for example, ravioli. I usually make enough to eat in the evening I make them, and then a few servings for later use. Frozen, they can store in the fridge for a long time.

Shyam Cooks French

This is an unexpected twist on our usual cooking arrangements. Shyam mostly cooks only Indian and quite often vegetarian. Not tonight! A new Food & Wine annual cookbook arrived yesterday, and he picked a French recipe to cook for dinner tonight, much to my surprise, a very pleasant surprise. For dinner tonight - chicken Dijon - click here for recipe.