Food Stories – Page 3 – Rosemary and the Goat

New American Feast — Tasting Menu

New American Feast — Tasting Menu and a Michie tradition.

Every Thanksgiving for the past eight years or so we have had our “Michie” feast on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s a good thing that our Thanksgiving menu is pretty traditional because so much work goes into our meal on the Friday following Tday. Here’s our menu for the night with a few picture teasers. We will be posting some of the recipes over the next few days.

mushroom mosaic terrine

paired with gloria ferrer sonoma brut

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lemon basil sorbet palate cleanser

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parsnip bisque with crispy pork belly

pared with robledo sauvignon blanc 2006, california

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crab, avocado, mango tower

paired with pierre boniface apremont 2008, france

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seared yellowfin tuna tostone stack with mexican coke reduction

pineapple, mango, sesame vinaigrette

paired with st. clement, bale lane, 2007 sauvignon blanc, napa valley

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fig and port sorbet palate cleanser

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chicken fried deer heart, latke, black pepper cream

paired with mo zin, spann vineyard, 2006

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duck confit ravioli with port wine and sun-dried cherry sauce

paired with calvet-thunevin cuvee constance, 2005, cotes catalanese

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smoked espresso powdered venison tenderloin with chili, chocolate

fresh gulf crab cake and beer blanc sauce

paired with nero d’avola/merlot evoe aziende agricole aollara

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madeira-braised veal cheeks with chive cheese grits

paired with bear boat pino noir 2006, russian river valley

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gorgonzola dolce latte with asian pear, Tete De Moine, triple cream brie

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pumpkin bread and chocolate bread pudding, frozen honey cinnamon custard with cajeta

paired with assorted liquer

(Sherry) We decide on a theme in advance. It all started with frying the turkey for the first time eight years ago. We had all this oil left over and thought we should do something with it so the next day we had a fish and frog leg fry. The next year we decided to do all oysters. I think we did them seven different ways. In the following years we have done, sushi, Mexican, Italian, French Country, Spanish Tapas and this year we decided on a tasting menu, New American style.

(Alexis) This year we had 10 courses, 10 people, 10 bottles of wine. Everyone comes up with their own recipes for the event in advance. Paul oversees the entire menu and if you’re lucky he will cook your course for you too. Just kidding. But it is a life saver when he looks at your recipe and clues you in to the fact that you really need to start parts of your recipe 24-48 hours in advance. Thanks to him I had some awesome duck confit already prepared for me when I went to make my ravioli on Friday.

(Sherry) We have so much fun cooking and laughing and consuming a lot of wine together. Everyone really gets into their dish, preparing and plating for presentation. We decided this year that everyone should present their dish when serving their course and explain how they prepared it and what wine they were serving with it. That was a lot of fun.

(Alexis) I think I had an advantage of being towards the end of the meal, when I was a little loosened up by the wine and more than ready for some “public speaking.”

(Sherry) We had 2 oz. pours on all our wines and by the end of the night I think we calculated that everyone drank a bottle of wine a piece. This is not including what my daughter-in-law coined “intermission” wines in case someone wanted more wine while waiting for the next course.

My dish was the only one that flopped. It was tasty but the terrine, even with 24 sheets of gelatin, did not set up like it was suppose to. The veal cheeks came from Chicago and other ingredients came from Austin and Houston. I made two trips to an Asian market to get the pork belly. We have already been talking about the next feast when we are all together and we’ve decided it will be a “locavore” theme. We will have to cook only seasonal ingredients within 50-100 miles of where we live. So that will be Chicago, Austin, and Houston. This will be a challenge.

(Alexis) I’d like to add to the local part that the ingredients should also be organic, natural, grass-fed, free range, etc..

Stay tuned for more recipes and photos of some of the highlights from the tasting menu!

December 3, 2009 By Alexis

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Food Stories

Sushi Challenge

Doesn’t that look like a real dragon?

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

Sushi (寿司 or 鮨 or 鮓) is much appreciated for its delicate taste and exquisite appearance. Sushi actually means vinegar-ed rice, which is the essential ingredient in every sushi recipe. Sushi is simple and cheap to make at home, needs no special equipment and is an excellent way to use left overs.

Although sushi in various forms has been around for fourteen centuries, the modern version was invented in Japan in the 1800’s where a ‘hand-formed’ sliced fresh fish and vinegar-ed rice ball was eaten as a snack food. Nowadays, sushi is made with various seafood, meats and vegetables, raw and cooked.

I belong to www.thedaringkitchen.com site and each month there is a cooking challenge and baking challenge. November’s cook’s challenge was to make sushi.

I have a confession to make. Last week our Friday night friends were out of town so I told my husband about a new sushi place we have in town. He asked me if I had been there before and I said “yes, for lunch this week”. What I didn’t tell him was that this would be my third time to eat there that week. I wanted to sit at the bar and watch them make the sushi this time so I could get ready for this challenge. That really helped. Now, if I can just get the rice right.

I won’t be posting a recipe here because if you really want to make sushi I would just google how to make the sushi rice and watch several sushi making YouTube videos. That’s what I did. By the time I had watched about 6 videos I thought I would be able to do it — and I (we) did.

For this challenges we were suppose to make a dragon roll, spiral roll and nigri sushi. I was looking in the produce section for all our ingredients and saw a star fruit and had the idea to use this for his fins, scales or whatever it is a dragon is suppose to have on his back.

Here are a few pictures of what we made last night.

This was a spicy tuna crunch roll. We put chopped up tuna, sriracha hot chilli sauce, some of the crunchies I fished out of the pan from doing tempura shrimp.

This was my least favorite. I didn’t care for the fake crab legs. I think next time I would do shrimp and tuna.

I prepped all of our fillings earlier that day. I cut up cucumber, scallions, red bell pepper, avocado, tempura shrimp, spicy tuna mixture, spicy mayo, made some sweet soy and did some green beans in tempura for an appetizer.

A plate of our night’s work. This ginger was some I bought. I did try making pickled ginger this week and didn’t like the results. I think you really need “young” ginger to make the recipe because mine was tough and string.

This is my dragon roll. I used a star fruit sliced very thin and inserted it between pieces of sushi to look like fins. Of course, I’ve never seen a “real” dragon so I don’t know if they have fins or scales but I think he turned out pretty cute. I used my aspic cutters and cut shapes from a fresh beet to use as a plate garnish.

I will be watching some sushi rice making videos the next time I do sushi.

どうぞめしあがれ (enjoy your meal)

Hope you are up to this challenge one day soon.

November 14, 2009 By Sherry

Food Stories

It’s Not Always About The Food

Ya know, it isn’t always just about the food.

Yesterday I had to work until 6:00. I don’t do that often, and when I left the house I told my husband that I wouldn’t be cooking dinner. This August we celebrated our 40th anniversary. Add to that the 6 years we dated (steady in high school, lavaliered, pinned (Sig Ep), and engaged in college), we have known each other practically our whole lives.

My husband has been retired for two years and plays golf practically every day. He is absolutely the best at bar-b-quing, smoking and grilling anything but really has never been an “inside” cook. Over the last few years he has gotten involved in our Friday after Thanksgiving “family feast” and has come up with his own unique dishes the last few years. (I want him to post his smoked fish with fruit he did last year, beautiful presentation.)

So, when I came home last night and found him up to his elbows cooking in the kitchen I was amazed. This may look like an ordinary plate of food but it was fantastic.

He met me at the door with a glass of wine. He was preparing some venison cube steak he had gotten from a neighbor friend. He had breaded and fried it and was making gravy. He had potatoes in a pot that he was ready to mash and he had these delicious apples cooking away in one of the iron skillets we just brought back from my dad’s. (My husband spent two days, grinding and cleaning all the old iron pieces, from bean pots, to griddle, to get them back in condition to start seasoning them.

Don’t these apples look beautiful.

So we had Fried venison cutlets, milk gravy, mashed potatoes, and fried apples. May not sound like a gourmet meal to some, but believe me, at the moment it was the best thing I have ever tasted. Now, I’m wondering what more surprises he could have up his sleeve.

October 20, 2009 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Food Stories

It’s not always just about the food….(Missouri Trip)

It’s about getting together, having fun, food, and enjoying each other’s company.

A few weeks ago we took a road trip back to our hometown in Missouri. My husband and I both were raised there, met in high school, and we will be celebrating our 40th anniversary this summer. This trip was so my grandmother could meet her new great-great grandson and my husband’s mother could meet three of her new great grandchildren. One is our grandson from Texas, another baby is from California and one who lives locally. My mother-in-law wanted to be able to see them all together and everyone had a great time passing the babies around.

This was truly a celebration. My mother-in-law has 8 great grandchildren and 7 grandchildren. My grandmother has 3 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren and 3 great-great grandchildren. So there were plenty of hugs and kisses going around.

My sister-in-law put up some tents in her backyard and had games for the kids to play. We did fajitas that night. One of my sons cooked and I helped with the stuffed grilled jalapenos, the guacamole, Mexican rice and the beans. So this may look like an ordinary styrofoam plate of Mexican fajitas but it was much much more. Everyone really enjoyed the food that night, being together, and meeting all the new babies.

This is no ordinary plate of Mexican food!

The next night we cooked at my twin sister’s house where we did bar-b-q ribs (while watching out for the tornadoes) and another night we got to feast on her homemade tamales and shrimp enchiladas. We have been sharing recipes for years and can never agree though on whose recipes are the best, but we have a good time trying different recipes. One night we tried this recipe for Grilled Provoleta.

Grilled Provoleta

I do this a little different than most recipes. My recipe goes like this. Have some provolone cheese cut at 1″-1 1/4″ thick. Let the cheese stand at room temperature about an hour before cooking so it will dry out a little and develop a crust. This will keep it from melting so fast. I like doing the cheese over a charcoal or wood fire rather than a gas fire because the flavor is better. Before cooking coat the cheese with olive oil and press in dried and/or fresh oregano.

Now this is the tricky part, I have a small 8″ round cast iron skillet hot on the grill. Spray the pan with cooking spray and also spray the grill. Put the round(s) of cheese on the grill for less than a minute. You don’t want to lose all your cheese melting through the grill. Just as soon as it has grill marks, I flip it over into the iron skillet and continue until it starts to melt and gets kind of crusty. Now you can serve this with a crusty bread but I like grilled naan the best. Hope you will try this. — Sherry

July 4, 2009 By Sherry

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