The Meal that Inspired the Blog

For those who have read CW's "Getting Started" post, this may be a little redundant. Over the past couple of years I have gotten really into eating and cooking.... and taking pictures of many of the dishes I have either made or ordered. All along, my wife - the lovely and talented CW - would ask why!? Why the pics? Who will ever see them? I replied that I would create my own food blog. Only, I never did. Time went by, meals were eaten and photographed, and no one knew about any of it. If it weren't for the wonder of digital photography, I would have a stack of dusty, faded, food images in a closet somewhere. How sad would that be? All those recipes. All that time spent cropping photos.... for what? Well I guess our dinner party with good friends this past Thursday was the tipping point. CW decided that it was now or never, and took the initiative of starting the blog herself (for which I am incredibly grateful since my computer/internet skills are primitive compared with hers). My first entry here will recount the dinner and describe the courses served. When possible, I will include recipes, and let you know where I found them.

The couple we had over are quite the foodies. They have an active interest in gardening and get very excited about big food projects and fresh ingredients. I knew that we'd have to step up our game and pull off a meal to remember. This get together had been in the works for a couple of months, with several delays secondary to scheduling issues. With each new delay they would joke that I would have to add another course to the menu... I think we were up to a five course meal. Being a weeknight, that was a little unrealistic for me, so I settled on making two courses: a salad and a main with sides. Being the sweet closer that she is, my wife CW would provide the dessert and all would be (hopefully) tasty.

I had been poring over my Bon Appetit and Food & Wine magazines for ideas. Wanting a fresh seasonal introduction to our dinner, I picked a salad from the August, 2011 Food & Wine: The Endive and Snap Pea Salad with Parmesan Dressing. This recipe seemed simple to prepare, but looked strikingly elegant in the pictures. Plus, how could endive, fresh herbs, snap peas and a dressing containing pureed Parmesan cheese NOT taste great? Before I get to the picture I must give CW yet another shout-out. While I was stuck working a long shift, she went to 3 different stores to find all of the ingredients. Apparently fresh chervil is not a staple everywhere. Also, endive and radicchio (which was subbed in for red endive) are kind of pricey. Luckily we didn't need too much of either and were able to make 4 good sized salads with one head of each. One other change I made was substituting Canola Oil for the Sunflower Oil, because my wife is kind of allergic to sunflower seeds. Here is a pic.... wish me luck as this is my first posting and therefore my first photo insertion!


Phew... the photo looks good. Moving on to the main dish, I opted to revisit a chicken dish from Ted Allen's cookbook The Food You Want to Eat. I love this book. The recipes are simple to follow and targeted towards the beginner chef. Further, everything I have made from it has worked and been tasty. For this meal, I made the Tandoori(ish) Chicken, so named for its spice profile but lack of being prepared in an actual clay Tandoor. I chose this because the marinade is really easy to prepare and it can be done well ahead of time, so all that is left to do when guests arrive is throw it on the grill. And it's yummy. Sadly, I didn't photograph this, but it was delicious. The trickiest part of skinless chicken breasts is having the nerve to pull it off the heat before it gets dry. I would gladly risk a little intestinal distress to avoid dry chicken, as would any decent self respectin' food lover!

The Tandoori (ish) chicken was accompanied by sides of grilled baby broccoli and chopped red potatoes. For the broccoli, I did a very simple marinade of olive oil with kosher salt and pepper. When you grill broccolini over direct heat, the florets caramelize and create a great smokey flavor, so you don't really need anything else. The potatoes were tossed with olive oil, salt pepper, and the leftover herbs from the salad, then cooked in a grill pan until browned and fork tender.

So that was my meal... almost. Having finished my prep work, I found myself with a couple of hours and decided to do an amuse bouche. We get great corn here in the summertime so I knew that would be part of the dish. I also love shrimp, and think it is a nice succulent way to whet the palate. My initial idea was for a play on shrimp cocktail, serving a sauteed shrimp in a martini glass with a corn and red pepper hash. The red pepper was incorporated because I knew that I wanted to flavor the shrimp with paprika.

I cooked some fresh corn cut off the cob (one cob) along with diced red pepper (1/2 medium size pepper, fine dice), paprika and some lime juice (from about 1/2 lime). That was set aside to cool. I wanted the shrimp to keep a nice shape so that I could put them on the side of the martini glass. Alas, I cooked them without shells and they totally curled up. It was time to improvise, so I chopped up all the shrimp and stirred it into the corn mixture to make more of a corn and shrimp hash. When I put it into the martini glasses, there wasn't enough and the servings looked paltry. So I opted to stuff the hash into small cordial glasses and garnish with parsley.

This concludes my contribution to the dinner party.

Corn & Shrimp Amuse-bouche
Endive and Snap Pea Salad
Tandoori (ish) Chicken with grilled baby broccoli and herb red potatoes

All that remained was CW's excellent dessert, which she had made just that morning. In her profile, CW says that she is sweet and I am savory, and that was the case here. She loves baking and prides herself in trying new recipes and making everything from scratch. For our party, CW made delicious lemon cheesecake squares with fresh berries. The cake was a nice blend of tangy, sour and sweet, which complemented the rich graham cracker crust perfectly. Her only modifications were to use low-fat cream cheese and sour cream. While concerned that it would affect the consistency, this was not the case. It was a great ending to a big tasty meal.



Before I sign off, let me just mention a couple of more things. First, our friends brought an amazing homemade heirloom tomato bruschetta that they served with garlic bread crisps. It was like a gazpacho salsa - so fresh and satisfying (I drank the leftovers). Secondly, it would be an oversight not to mention the cocktail with which we started the night. It is a home-made creation:

2 oz. Gin
3/4 oz. Elderflower Liquor
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
2 dashes orange bitters

Place in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake... serve over ice

No name for it yet, but it was tasty!

With dinner, we drank a bottle of red from one of our favorite vineyards, the 2009 Beckmen Cuvee Le Bec. It is a Syrah-Grenache blend that is fruit forward and delicious.

This finally concludes my inaugural posting. I believe future entries will be shorter for the most part. Many thanks to my wife CW for putting this site together.