Today's Theme Ingredient: Fun

I was going to make a really boring stir fry for dinner tonight. Mostly because I have most of a giant head of nappa cabbage in the fridge and that's just what you do with some leftover nappa cabbage. However, we live in Westchester, land of the 90's style Asian-fusion restaurant. And it's my birthday. And I just didn't feel like making a stir fry.

So for that reason I opened the fridge, took a good look, and decided I was going to just make some other stuff that would be delicious and would be something I'd want to eat.



I'm not claiming to be as great a chef as Hiroyuki Sukai. In fact I'm not even claiming to be great at all. Or even a chef. However, Jen and I have been watching a ton of Iron Chef recently. The original Japanese version, not that terrible abomination that is Iron Chef America. Watching this has made me wish to serve more than just one course for dinner. The only downside is there's generally not one theme ingredient. If there was a theme ingredient it would be something like frugality, or leftovers, or laziness. There weren't enough abstract themes on Iron Chef.

I started with this "salad" made from a halved comice pear and filled with a very simple blue cheese mousse which I made with some leftover blue cheese, cream cheese, and cream. I served it atop a bed of kale with lemon vinaigrette.



For a second course I threw together some ingredients to make a smoked salmon omelette. I added some smoked salmon, cream cheese, onion, caper, and served with some cornichons, and peppadew.



For a main course I threw together a makeshift coq au vin. I went to culinary school and that particular school placed a large importance on French cooking. In fact I'd say that 98% of what we learned was classical French. So much importance was placed on French cooking that in the two years I was there we took three days to study the cuisines of Asia. You know, the continent. The one with hundreds, maybe thousands, of individual and distinct cuisines which go back millenia.

I'd be graded somewhere in the neighborhood of F for the authenticity of this version of coq au vin. However, I'd be graded an A+ for use of ingredients I had lying around the house kitchen having to do any additional grocery shopping. It also helps that I'm the one giving out the latter grade.

There are a number of things I'd be graded poorly on for this version of coq au vin. One would be the lack of noodles to serve it on. Another would be the thinness of the sauce. Another would be an absence of mushrooms.

However, I would grade the chefs at my esteemed cooking school an A+ in going to hell!

I simply broke apart a chicken into 8 parts, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and dredged them in flour before browning them in a pan. I put them aside in my makeshift Dutch oven, then browned up some salt port, onion, carrot, celery, and chopped potato. I also tossed in the remainder of the roasted garlic I had in the fridge. Then I deglazed the pan with some red wine (the rest of a bottle I didn't really care for) and some of the turkey stock I made over the weekend. After that I put it in the oven at for a little over an hour.

So this was vaguely traditional but, honestly, I probably preferred this over the classic recipe. Though I did miss the mushrooms. With the potatoes I didn't miss the noodles at all.



Jen brought home a selection of cupcakes from Crumbs which served as my birthday cake. The best part is that after splitting one tonight there are still three left!



Jen worked very late this evening but returned late to shower me with presents. One of which was Chore Boy. Chore Boy is the greatest item in the entire world for helping clean pots and pans. I haven't been able to find it for over a year and research recently revealed that it's because apparently some people use it to make crystal meth. I may be the only person in the world who would actually be happy to receive this as a gift. Except maybe someone who wanted to get start up the world's smallest meth lab.



Our pizza stone broke a couple of months ago after several years of service. So I also received a new pizza stone and a pizza peel which I intend to put into use as soon as possible.



I also got this handsome flannel shirt which prompted me to launch into an extended Eddie Vedder impression. Here I am singing the song "Hunger Strike."

At this point I think Jen had wished she'd worked even later this evening than she had.

Smoked Salmon Pizza

A late night at the office tonight left me little time to make what I wanted to make for dinner. Instead I had just enough time to put on some water to make some raviolis and concoct a quick dish out of the leftovers in the fridge.



I had a small amount of smoked salmon left over from the weekend so I toasted up some naan from the freezer and smeared it with cream cheese. Over the top I sprinkled some chopped kale, smoked salmon, sliced onion, and cornichons.

I also tried out my new close up lens a little more. My last lens was barely within my ability to use properly. This new lens requires way more expertise than I have. And for that reason the pictures that you are about to see in the coming weeks will probably be quite shabby.

I apologize in advance.

Pasta alla What's in the Fridge

This week I happened upon some assorted heirloom eggplant varieties at the local farmer's market. They were from two separate farms in New York and Connecticut. After having some unfortunate eggplant experiences in my early days of cooking I was leery of tiny eggplant, however, recent eggplant that I have sampled has been fantastic, most recently with these fairy tale eggplant from a local farmer's market.



Another thing that happened this weekend is that my parents got me a new lens for my camera (for my birthday). So tonight was my inaugural run with the new close up lens. Someone with my photography skills in no way deserves a second lens. But I have one, so there you have it.





Last night Jen carved a pumpkin while we watched the Back to the Future Trilogy. It may have been one of the best Halloweens ever for that very reason.



I also spent the entire day making turkey stock out of the bones leftover from Canadian Thanksgiving.



One of Jen's favorite pasta dishes of all time is Pasta alla Norma, her favorite being from Plum Pomidor in our old neighborhood. Seeing that it is her favorite I decided to use these eggplant to make a bastardized version of Pasta alla Norma.

What I did was roast them in the oven with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, until they were tender. Then I added some tomato sauce and stewed them down. I finished it all off over penne with a dollop of ricotta cheese.

I cooked the penne then tossed it with olive oil, pepper, and some roasted garlic.



For wine I opened an extremely cheap bottle of French red to discover it was corked. This happens fairly frequently. After that I moved onto some Big Woop! from Australia. This was a screw top bottle and was very tasty.

I think I may just stop buying wine with corks in it. Even for cheap bottles it's a gamble and when you purchase anything over the $20 mark (which is unusual for us) you are playing with fire. Screw tops may not give you wine cred but I've also never had a screw top go bad on me.

That's a trade off I'm happy to make.

Thanksgiving Leftovers (Round 1)

There is something galvanizing about the intense rush to utilize leftovers. It's a race against time and the consequences are life or death. It's like that movie where Jason Statham has to keep using up Thanksgiving leftovers or else his heart with explode and then he fights some guys in an oil slick while wearing bike pedals on his feet.

What can I say? I've always been an adrenaline junkie.



Sunday afternoon I used up some of Jen's popular rolls and made these turkey sliders. The rolls were the biggest hit of Thanksgiving this year. I had a great idea to hook up my ipod in the bathroom and play Thelonious Monk albums on shuffle so people could mellow out to some his 50's and 60's jazz stylings. Surprisingly, that was the second biggest hit of this year's Canadian Thanksgiving. Go figure.

I filled the rolls with turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a slices of Manchego. They were divine.



By Monday night we were ready for something a little lighter so we made Jen's turkey chinois salad. This consists of nappa cabbage, shredded carrot, scallion, chopped almonds, and julienned mini bell peppers that Jen picked up last week at the farmer's market with the express purpose of putting in a horn of plenty then forgot.

Jen loves few things in this world more than a horn of plenty.





On Tuesday we made a triumphant return to unhealthy foods with hot turkey sandwiches. Jen and I have an annual open-faced/closed sandwich duel. The winner? Everyone!



By Wednesday we were fortunate enough to be able to convince some friends to come over and give us a hand. I think this is the first time we were ever able to do this successfully. I made turkey pot pie with the leftover turkey, gravy, and roasted vegetables (shallots, rutabaga, turnip, carrot, butternut, and sweet potato).



Wednesday I thickened up the creamy polenta leftover and cooled them so that on Thursday I could grill it. I tossed some kale in lemon and olive oil and served this over the top. With the remaining brussel sprouts I made a mustard and apple cider vinaigrette with the remaining bacon, onion, and apple and tossed it all together.

I topped the polenta with cherry habanero jelly that Jen had brought home with her form Cherry Country on her recent trip to Portland.

By Thursday I had frozen everything that I could in hopes for some future use. This usually means waiting for several months then throwing it all away. Hopefully I'll be more diligent this year.



Last night I came home to Jen who was in full Halloween attire as a 40's military woman and ready to go to the Halloween party we were to attend. She'd been ready for some time as I was three hours late returning to work after 95 was shut down to capture some really bad carjackers. This is my second favorite shutting-down-95 story trailing after the time this summer when I was two hours late to work because a man claiming to be Jesus Christ was running naked across all lanes.

Ah, the adventures of route 95 in Connecticut.

The result was, sadly, not going to the party. It was also me being famished after not eating for 8 hours.



As we wound down on our leftovers all I could really put together was this salad with kale, Danish blue cheese, toasted pumpkin seeds, sliced red pears, cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.



After a commute like that and an unfortunate cancellation of plans the only remedy is to drink some wine. And what better wine to have than this petite sirah from Vinum Cellars? This is definitely my favorite wine that features a photograph of a dog on the label.

Since we missed out on the Halloween party we made up for it by wrapping up the last couple of episodes of True Blood that we hadn't seen.

Oh, and then we did the Monster Mash.

The End . . . Or is it?

Belated Thanksgiving, Canadian Style

During this year's Canadian Thanksgiving we were soaking up the sun in Jamaica. Therefore, we were forced to celebrate this year. Since most of the other Canadians we know (well, one of the other Canadians we know) were also in Jamaica at the time this worked out perfectly.

I won't bore you too much with the details but I will bore you with the menu. That's kind of what I do.



For starters we had:

A Trio of pates including duck liver and cognac, Mousse Imperial, and Rustique. Also we had a cheese slate with the names hastily written in chalk: Grafton cheddar, cranberry cheddar, Metropolitan brie, Danish blue, Port Salut, and Manchego.

Also there was a giant bowl of green, red, and black grapes (not pictured).

The sleeper hit of this year's thanksgiving were the rolls that Jen made. Had I known how big a hit they were going to be I wouldn't have bothered making as much other food as I did. Instead I would have simply put a bunch of butter in ramekins to serve alongside them.



For the main course we enjoyed two types of cranberry sauce, one made in a mold with gelatin, the other made from the skins with a little orange and ginger; roasted shallot, rutabaga, turnip, sweet potato, carrot, and butternut squash; traditional stuffing, sausage and sage cornbread stuffed roast pumpkin based on the recipe that I created last year; a vegetarian version of the same recipe with no sausage; roasted brussel sprouts with bacon, apples, and caramelized onions; creamy polenta with ricotta and Parmigiano-Reggiano; mashed potatoes; and a gigantic 30 pound roast turkey which I brined overnight.



For dessert we had all the favorites including Jen's Canadian-themed pumpkin pie, Jennie's famous apple pie with cheddar cheese, a delicious pecan chocolate pie, a strawberry rhubarb pie (which friends from Rhode Island brought with them from The Big Apple in Wrentham, MA), and a number of macaroons, and cookies of various makes and models.

This year may possibly be the most obscene showing of excess we've pulled off to date. Now, like most years, we just need to find friends brave enough and try to help us eat a path to our fridge so that we can carry on about our normal routine.

Coincidentally our normal routine is also one of excess and obscenity. I'm okay with that. I have embraced it.