Ma... Make Me Something To Eat

A thirteen year old boy can never get enough to eat. My son is in the fridge all the time now. When he asked me to make him a lunch for school today, I threw together the sandwich of ham, provolone on a baguette and some homemade horseradish mayo. Thankfully the kid likes a little spice, and will actually be the envy of his schoolmates today.

Since I was cleaning out the fridge I threw together a salad for the husband for his lunch, using the extra credit spring mix Chef Emi gave us. Thankfully last night I made some extra limey tomatilla vinaigrette  to give him to go along the spring greens and carrot. He likes simple and has to keep his girly figure under control with the diabetes.

SIMPLE HUEVOS

There is something to say about the simple egg. It is not as simple as it seems. Despite all the practice I did on Sunday for my egg dish preparation for last night, I think I still flubbed.
My co-worker John suggested Tortilla Espanola. The dish is pretty simple in it's ingredients, (onion, potato eggs) it's the technique to get it to the tortilla form that takes practice. Sunday I only hit the floor once, not bad for beginner. Last night was a different story. Flame was to low, then too high, and then the pan was not ready. Flipping was a nightmare... AARRGGHH!
And then finally the angels sang and we had a tortilla. I had to keep swapping the flies of hands away from stealing my plantain slices before I could plate up.  Sunday I served it at room temperature like the Spanish eat with a slice of baguette. I put my own spin on it and served it with some tomatillo salsa, a few shavings of dry aged Queso cheese. Thanks to John for a great suggestion. I love new experiences with food for me but something that is a daily occurrence in Spain, or around the world. It's one of the reasons I am looking forward to Regional and International cooking, next fall.

Our second dish was an omelet. I make omelets all the time at home. Again pan issues, but got it on the first time around. Sun-dried tomatoes, basil, garlic, some olive oil, salt and pepper. It was a nice flavorful omelet. Just not pretty to look at.
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

Try It You'll Like It Method

That old saying from mom's around the world "try it you'll like it" was a familiar saying in my house as well growing up. I throw it out there every once in a while to my kids.
I had two mother's growing up telling me to try something new; and I thank God for them everyday. My Mom was thrown into the mix of things when my Dad came home with bushels and bushels of beach plums when we lived out on Ft. Hancock, NJ on that little tip of Sandy Hook. She called my Godmother up and asked her what to do with them. Marie was the Editor of Family Circle, Great Ideas at the time, and a wonderful cook still to this day. She made beach plum preserves by the way. Dad didn't stop there with his findings, Black fish one day, tomatoes from the garden, live baby chicks in a box to raise. Yes it was an interesting time growing up with the food, my Dad, Mom and Marie.

So when I pulled out of Chef Emi's hat Artichokes and Tomatoes, I was excited. One I know tomatoes, heck I am from Jersey home of the best tomatoes in the world. Artichokes were a different story. I knew how to pull them out of a jar, but have never cooked them from their natural scratch format.

Well I did a lot of research of my new found vegetable, and chose to go a little Mediterranean, a little Mid East combo. Not gonna show a picture of the final product, but if your around in "Kitchen Stadium" at TCC on Wednesday come check it out. Bring your own fork! I can tell you the kids planned to throw their noses in the air on this one taste test, but I pulled the old Mom rule and "told them to try it you'll like it."

Second Time Around

It is always better the second time around. You are not so rushed, you can do a little more tweaking and creating. I decided I really needed to get a handle on all this fuss of Shrimp and Grits. So I started slow, got the grits going took my time making them nice and creamy. Worked on the sauce, more spice less citrus and tomato. A brilliant thought add some white wine in the sauce let it reduce. Toss those shrimp in  the sauce and the results? Well you tell me?

FLAVOR, FLAVOR, FLAVOR!

"Don't forget the salt."  

Well we thought we had enough salt; but it just seemed to disappear as we were 
going along today.I was glad to have my partner back for this Saturday's 90 
minute practice challenge. Not that I didn't have fun with Stephen last week, 
I had a great learning experience last week with Stephen, which is an opportunity to not pass up, since Stephen is the "Sauce Man" in our class.

I just missed the-on-the-same-mind-set Annette and I have developed 
over the past few months.

We got it together to finally make a shrimp and grits for an appetizer today. It was a challenge for both of us YANKEE girls. But I think we definitely made a mark in the world of shrimp and grits. We kept it simple, but really wowed ourselves in the flavor. 

I am sooo making some for dinner tonight.    

Next was our entree, a little chipolti, garlic, and onion marinade for the steak, I made my famous potato croquette's and then we grilled the asparagus.  Need to work on the presentation and some more salt!

 

Dessert was a fresh berry crepe with Annette's super duper cinnamon whipped cream. YUMM!! Can't understand why the apposing team couldn't find any flavor in any of our dishes. Maybe they just don't have any taste buds or wait a minute even tried the dishes?

Fun With Chocolate

Had some time off last night. What a nice surprise, since I don't get a weeknight off very often. So silly me decided I needed to get into the kitchen and have some fun with chocolate. Strawberries are hitting the stores with some great deals, and folks it’s a good deal at Farm Fresh buy one get one free, and of course the commissary always has a deal on a flat of them for me, when I want to whip out some preserves.

Fruit and chocolate you can’t go wrong, so a nice chocolaty sponge cake with some gorgeous dark chocolate melted into a lovely syrup, threw in some toasted hazelnuts coarsely chopped, ladled some over the cake, added the strawberries, practiced a Quenelle of vanilla whipped cream and some more sauce.

I felt a little guilty about serving the kids dessert for dinner, so some fluffy omelets (Stay tuned for “JerzyPeach on Eggs episode”) were put together with slices of the leftover potato bread toasted up I made on Monday. I guess they will live. After all they are teenagers who are hungry every five minutes.

 

The troubles of sandwiches and salads

 “It takes four men to dress a salad: a wise man for the salt, madman for the pepper, a miser for the vinegar, and spendthrift for the oil.” Anonymous

So it was salad and sandwich night in Culinary 107.
How hard is it to make a sandwich? Honestly it’s just a sandwich! Bread, cheese, some protein, maybe some veggies and some flavor with a spread or marinade. See? Sandwich! But when you are told make a sandwich and present it with the homemade mayo you have to hand whip; my mind went blank. Really MJ, stop taking those drugs for the sinus infection and get to work!

So I am feeling light, airy, springy. Let’s do a smoked chicken, bacon, and avocado wrap with some bean sprouts, julienned carrot and a green goddess mayo. Yummy! Well it never happened. Ingredients were a little sparse to make a healthy sandwich like that. So I wound up making my green goddess dressing, rolling it up with some of the ham instead of the original plan of chicken. There was no bacon, no avocado, and no sprouts. I found some carrot, the spring mix and tomato. How frustrating, it had to be the worst sandwich ever presented. At least the green goddess dressing worked.

Salad!! I love salad. I grew up in the garden state I should know how to make the perfect salad! My father had the best garden, oh how I miss that garden.

When I first moved to the Hampton Roads area as a young almost sexy Navy wife, we were taken out to dinner to the Fisherman’s Wharf (no longer in business). I was thrilled to see the salad bar. Not the greatest salad bar, but I was craving some lettuce I guess that day since I was little bit pregnant at the time. When I sat down with my “ginourmous” salad, everyone looked at me and asked why I am on a diet? Geez salad is not a diet thing people. Salad is wonderful crisp vegetables. You can make a salad out of almost anything; just a little imagination is all you need.

Well my imagination seriously fell apart and dissolved along with that sinus medication. What I needed was a whole lot of pixie dust and a light bulb to light up for me. We have spring mix, cool. Have to do a vinaigrette requirement. I can do that. So let’s get moving.

And seriously folks nothing is jiving in this brain.  Found some sun dried tomatoes, let’s make vinaigrette out of that! Lots of garlic, some herbs, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and pixie dust. There is no fresh basil to be found, bummer. A mock bread salad was forming in the old brain. Toasted up some white bread with olive oil, s&p and garlic, found some provolone; cubed that up, tossed everything into the vinaigrette and plated it up. Well at least it looked like spring.

Guess I didn’t have enough pixie dust last night.

No Soup for you!

If you are a fan of Seinfeld, you would understand the heading. So last night was soup night for us folks in Culinary Arts 107. I sometime feel that I am in a Seinfeld episode when in the kitchen.

Consommé was for Annette and I. Our teacher Chef Emi, said in the beginning of class it was one of the hardest soups to make for clarity. Wikipedia says “consommé has maintained its place as one of the most highly regarded and appreciated soups in the world.” I felt like that last night. Ours tasted pretty darn good with all the mirepoix, that Annette through into the stock. We included carrot, celery, shallots and a little garlic for the heck of it, ground chicken, and then let it simmer for like hours, strained it a few times and voila, consommé!

I spent forever fighting with the pasta dough maker. The dough was perfect! One of the nicest dough’s I have made for pasta, the pasta maker destroyed it. But in the end 10 lovely shrimp, mushroom, prosciutto stuffed dough were ready for the pot, a nice creamy parmesan and wine sauce and some lovely steamed asparagus topped the dish off. Very Spring entrée. Making this dish last night makes me want to try it again on a slower pace, and get the dough right. I think the kids just might like it.

Dessert was a mess. The mousse kept weeping. Seriously, tasted good, but it kept melting. Next time a little gelatin will be added for firmness. Some fancy orange liqueur whipped cream for a topping. Need to work on the design, was in a hurry to get it plated for presentation.

Ninety minutes is not a lot of time, to get all you planned done, but we did it again. Thank God, for finding Annette to be my partner; and of course a lot of hoping and praying along the way helps.

Well at least it was tasty.

Spent my morning in another practice session for the ACF Culinary Student Showdown.
My culinary partner Annette was not going to be practicing as she was on a trip to NY. Lucky girl!

So the day began of me having a few ideas of going alone and what to make in 90 minutes on an appetizer, entree and dessert.

I figured things would gel together once I saw what was in stock and what the mystery protein was going to be.

Chef Emi suggested I work with Stephan whose partner didn't show either. We had 15 minutes to plan and 15 minutes to hunt.

We decided on a a carrot and sweet potato pureed soup with a drizzle of cream and some toasted pumpkin skills. Pictured to the right. It was darn tasty, need to work on the drizzle part.

Entree which was the complete disaster dish, was flank steak grilled, linguine tossed in a fresh brochette sauce. (Not doing that again).

But dessert was a creme' brulee literary thrown together from memory. Of course the ramekin's were not cooperating and so wound up scooping the custard out and doing a topping of cinnamon whipped cream. Tasted like heaven, but looked like hell.

Going Irish

I love celebrating holidays with food. I have tried to educate myself on the importance of food and traditions mixed in with culture and history of the holiday with my family. Maybe it's a little over the top for some, but for me it's good eating fun.

For the month of March I challenged myself to bake or cook something once a week celebrating Ireland. The first week was Irish soda bread, I made a few loaves and shared them with the guys in IT at WHRO and a loaf to my 106 class at TCC. My kids felt left out so over that weekend 12 loaves were made for kids to share with their friends and then I shared a few to some housebound neighbors. Of course that recipe was memorized and altered many times from the original one I discovered back in high school.

The second week was Irish potato oat bread. Brand new recipe. These babies were seriously one of the best bread recipe's I ever made. Mashed potatoes, oat, yeast, a little sugar and "WALLAH" pretty bread in the picture. (tasted good too with a little butter)

This week it's Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots with a secret special mustard sauce that only my very Irish godmother has shared the recipe with me. Of course this dinner is a staple dinner in my house at least once a month. Not much of a challenge there.

Next week, I am gonna make another attempt at the failed Bailey's Irish Cream Chocolate Cheesecake. Might need some tester's on that. Can't rely on those kids of mine to give me a biased opinion.