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Monthly Archives: December 2016
Tonight I paired my dinner with the Friday night cocktail, French 75, I made. So I opted to make a simple dish – prawns with asparagus in a sherry cream sauce served over capellini. Simple, rich, and delicately spiced, I figured this meal would accompany my Friday night cocktail superbly. And I was spot on, it did. So if you want a versatile prawn pasta dish, I suggest you give this one a try. With a few adjustments, you can change the flavor profile. Some adjustments that come to mind are adding lemon and/or capers, substituting spinach for the asparagus or chicken/scallops for the prawns, whisking in parmesan cheese for a quick alfredo style sauce, etc. Adjustments and tweaks like those are the things that keep…
Just in time for New Year’s Eve comes a fantastic cocktail that incorporates bubbly, gin, lemon and a hint of sweetness. Tonight I bring you the French 75 – a classic cocktail that is often overlooked or forgotten, but shouldn’t be. In researching this cocktail, I read a story that said it was named after the 75mm artillery piece. This artillery piece devastated German attacks in World War 1, so I suspect the French 75 probably wreaked havoc on soldiers who drank too many of them. But don’t let this cocktail’s reputation scare you. I bet after you try this simple recipe, you will happily enjoy and not overlook or forget the French 75 in 2017 and beyond. Save Print…
Today I felt like waffles and bacon, but not just simple waffles. I wanted more to fill my waffle desire. Since I recently used half a container of ricotta in the Simple Stollen recipe, I decided to use up the leftovers by making ricotta waffles based on my Ricotta Pancake recipe. Seeing that I also had dried blueberries in the pantry from the Simple Stollen recipe and a lemon handy, why not make Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Waffles? If you liked the Ricotta Pancakes, I think you will really like this recipe too! Save Print Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Waffles Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: 5 mins Total time: 10 mins Serves: 1 Ingredients 5 tbsp all purpose flour 3 tsp granulated sugar 1…
Leftovers… they are going to occur sometime, especially around the holidays or other large group meals. Well, I had mashed potatoes left from the duchess potatoes I made for Christmas dinner, so I was challenged with what to make with them. In contemplating what dish to cook that would use up these delicious mashed potatoes, one thing came to mind… shepherd’s pie. Easy to make and oh so delicious, now I am eager for dinner. Using frozen vegetables like petite corn and a pea and carrot mix just enhances the simplicity of this dish. Of course I had some of my ground beef, pork, and lamb mix in the freezer as well, so all that was left was to put it together. Shall we…
I enjoyed Christmas dinner with my brother Roger, a wizard in the kitchen himself. We decided on rib eye steak, duchess potatoes, and asparagus with Gruyere wrapped in prosciutto as our menu. I opted to cook the steaks and potatoes sous vide style, a method he had not used before. To say he was converted would be an understatement. The steaks were cooked at 122.5 degrees for 90 minutes then seared in a screaming hot cast iron skillet and finished with a pat of butter. The potatoes were cooked sous vide at 195 degrees for 90 minutes, hand mashed and mixed with sour cream and shredded Gruyere cheese, then baked in buttered ramekins. The asparagus was easy with a quick blanch in the 195 degree water bath…
For many years on Christmas morning I have enjoyed eggs benedict for breakfast. Of course, I enjoy drinking a mimosa or two with said breakfast. There is something so satisfying to this dish – crunchy toasted English muffins, salty slightly sweet Canadian bacon, and silky poached eggs draped in a velvety lemony hollandaise sauce spiked with a light dusting of paprika. This time I tried a new technique for poaching the eggs (i.e. I used my Anova immersion circulator to cook the eggs sous-vide) and to be honest, I need a bit more practice with this technique to cook the eggs exactly the way I like them. But I will share with you the pictures of the results. I think you will find them appetizing and…
Today’s cocktail recipe is perfect for an old fashioned Christmas party… like a party attended by the Founding Fathers! I received this recipe from Cook’s Science and of course I tweaked the recipe by substituting hard to find ingredients to easier sourced ones while twisting the flavor profile slightly. I am sure the title has you intensely curious (as well as slightly grossed out at the thought of a ‘milk punch’ cocktail), but trust me please. The use of milk in this ‘punch’ is to clarify the cocktail to an incredibly clear light pink hue. The flavor of this cocktail is sublime – just sweet enough, slightly spiced with a hint of citrus from the tea, ‘punch’…
Today I am posting pictures only to show you some of the meals I make that do not become posts. Most of these meals are variants of recipes I have already posted. Like this Sweet and Sour Pork based on the Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe… or 2 styles of knackwurst with caraway sauerkraut and roasted red potatoes similar to Knackwurst, rosemary garlic potato slices, and braised bacon caraway cabbage… or a simple chili recipe that is not like the Chuckwagon Chili at all! This is a recipe I have planned for a future post – maybe before the year ends. And here are two bonus pictures of tonight’s dinner experiment – sous vide carne asada using flank steak! Save Save Save Save…
Here is the lowdown on how I finished the sous vide chicken cordon bleu I prepared recently. Using sous vide makes this dish so simple and nearly foolproof. I paired it with mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts, both cooked sous vide. So… set up your water bath and let’s finish this dinner! Save Print Chicken Cordon Bleu Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: 80 mins Total time: 1 hour 25 mins Serves: 1 Ingredients 1 prepared chicken cordon bleu breast 2 tbsp butter 1 tbsp olive oil pinch of salt few grinds of black pepper Extra cheese slices from the preparation step (optional) Extra ham slices from the preparation step (optional) Instructions Set up your sous vide water bath to…
Today, I want to show you how I prepare chicken cordon bleu for cooking sous vide style. If you have ever made chicken cordon bleu before, you know that cheese usually begins spilling out before the chicken is done, making a mess and impacting the final results you hoped for. So rather than use a combination of complicated folds and toothpicks/skewers to avoid this situation, I use the vacuum sealed bag to keep everything tight and in place while it cooks in the water bath. Once the chicken is cooked thoroughly, simply open the vacuum bag and finish preparing the rolled chicken breast by breading and frying or just pan searing it. Another bonus is that you can prepare several chicken breasts at once and conveniently freeze…