Soupe à l'oignon

Decided to have a dinner tonight - but I did things backwards.

I served some Crescent Rolls (thanks Pillsbury - these are the best!).


Then I made some blinis. I never knew what a blini was until I ate at the wonderful Southern French Restaurant - Côté Sud. It's like a pancake but thicker and more dense. At Côté Sud, they served blinis stuffed with smoke salmon. Was very good. I decided to make my blinis stuffed with a bit of Gruyère cheese. I topped them with some pesto. The pesto was a bit overpowering, so next time I will make a cream sauce. I initially wanted to do that but I didn't have enough time.



And then I served LEFTOVERS! hehehe. I sliced whatever I had left of the flank steak on top of some mashed potatoes. I ran out of mushroom sauce so we ate it with Dijon mustard (my bf had it with A1 - haha)


Then came the main dish: Soupe à l'oignon. Like I said, this meal was backwards. =)


And finally, to hit two birds with one stone, served Affogato to satiate the dessert and espresso cravings after a savory meal. I bought this vanilla gelato from Trader Joe's. Personally, I prefer vanilla bean ice-cream versus this gelato which was too sweet and not "vanilla-beaned" enough for me. But regardless, with a shot of fresh espresso, the sweetness balanced it out.

Here's L'Erhan having Affogato for the first time.


Made one for Carlo too.

What to do with leftover ingredients

I had leftover flank steak, portabella mushrooms, and potatoes in my fridge that I needed to get rid of. I decided to marinate the flank steak with garlic, S&P, make a mushroom cream sauce, and mashed potatoes. Unfortunately, my propane tank was out so I had to broil the flank steak at the last minute. All went well though - the mashed potatoes and the mushroom sauce turned out great. I simply used olive oil, butter, vermouth, mushrooms, onions, milk, and a bit of cornstarch to thicken it up. Yummy.

Sorry about the presentation - had some help from my lovely boyfriend. ;)

I love coffee

A tribute to just a sip of good coffee. It always completes a good meal. This small shot in particular is Costa Rican - we bought a couple bags while we were there a year back.

Cheesecake

I made cheesecake yesterday but didn't put enough gelatin in it. It turned out to be a bit too soft so it didn't set all the way, but nonetheless, still tasty. Next time I'm going to cut back on the amount of butter in the crust.

Vanilla wafer crust


A stick of butter


Poor Gingy doesn't get to eat cheesecake

Red wine (Syrah) Flank Steak stuffed with Fontina Cheese and Basil

Was watching Boy Meets Grill and decided to try this dish by Bobby Flay. I bought some flank steak while I was at Costco yesterday so I figured Sunday night would be a good night to experiment. Luigi whom I haven't seen for awhile came by, plus Raf, and L'Erhan.

Flank steak in Syrah wine ($4 - Trader Joe's, wine actually tastes very good) + shallots + black pepper.


Marinate for 3-4 hours. Ummm, purple steak.


Fill with Fontina cheese:


Fresh basil (I used Thai basil)


Fold over and throw it on the grill


While that was grilling - I prepared and served some baked cheeses.

Pre-baked cheeses


My grill sucks - doesn't get hot enough so I ended up grilling it for about 10-15 minutes to get it medium rare to medium. (Btw - I think I finally converted L'Erhan to eat medium rare. Yay! I remember my days of eating well-done. Blasphemous!) After, I let it sit for about 10 minutes to let the juices settle. Then I sliced it.

Voila !


I made a red wine sauce per Bobby Flay with shallots, red wine, and black peppers (and reduced it). It was a little too wine-y for me so I added chicken stock and a little butter. I didn't totally like it by itself, but when I poured it on my meat, it actually tasted quite good.

Want a closer look? The flavors of the meat was something that I never really had before. It was a pleasant and different surprise.


Afterwards, I served some more cheese (I know too much food, need to work on that but I had already prepped this)


The Raclette and Comte cheese were raw. The Raclette really did smell like sweaty jock straps and socks. Pretty gross. Didn't taste as funky as the smell. First cheese I didn't like. Actually, L'Erhan was the only one that loved the cheese. Well, he is French. =) I made him take it home. hah!

I made a cheesecake but it hadn't settled yet. Last minute, we decided to do some semi-sweet chocolate fondue. All I had were some strawberries.

Mid-melting point.


L'Erhan and Luigi KurumaZ.


Raf fighting over the fondue.


Later on I busted out the marshmellows and vanilla wafers. We made cute little smore sammiches.


Smoosh it and eat


The end.

Seared Ahi Tuna with Shiitake Mushroom cream sauce

Decided last minute to prepare lunch for road bikers - Raf, Timo, L'Erhan, and Dave. Timo felt like Ahi tuna. I've never made it before so I figured it would be a good time to experiment. I went to Trader Joe's (LOVE that place) but surprisingly they didn't have any fresh ahi tuna in stock. Plus the one package they had was disgustingly old... AND expensive! I had all my ingredients already except for the ahi tuna. What was I going to do?!?!

COSTCO, baby! hahaha. The Costco in Mountain View is less crowded and has a wide selection of fish, meat, and cheese. It's really cool! So off to Costco I went.

Big-ass tuna steaks. Just with s&p.


The rest of the ingredients for the sauce. Garlic, green onion, shiitake mushrooms, lime, ginger, soy sauce, cream, milk.


Voila !


Tu as faim ?


I served it with a salad with mandarin oranges and a citrus vinaigrette. I didn't have time to make my own vinaigrette so I bought this from Trader Joe's. I didn't like the dressing too much. Such a big difference between fresh salad dressing and packaged.

I also made Crescent Rolls by Pillsbury. I made two packages - that is 16 rolls. Those are so fucking good!!!



The thing I messed up on was the presentation and temperature of the fish. I was afraid of cooking the fish too long - overcooked fish sucks. Also, I wish that I had sliced the ahi tuna. It still bugs me to this day that I didn't slice it. It will probably bug me forever until I make this dish again and slice it. hah! Also, the portions I served were way too big. I figured fish would be lighter, but with the sauce, I think serving half the portions would have been enough.

Overall, my timing is getting better, but I really need to work on temperature, portions, and presentation. Oh ~ the sauce was fabulous. I think we all enjoyed it! I always drench my food with sauce - I kept spooning more and more onto the fish. Yummy.

Oh yes ~ I also made lemon cake... and after eating our big plates, some cheese and wine, the lemon cake was gobbled up in one day! That stuff is addicting. =)

I fucked up Grandma's COOKIES!!!

Tonight I decided to do two things:

1) Try the recipe my "American" Grandma gave me.

Background:

I lived in SJ until the age of 5 and right next door lived whom I call my American Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma would always have a shitload of cookies in her house, in her freezers in her garage, in her fridge. I would always knock on the door and ask for cookies. My absolute favorite cookies were these chocolate cookies she made - it had marshmellows in the middle and was covered with chocolate frosting.

2) Try to cook with any food that is left in the fridge so it doesn't rot for Raf's dinner tomorrow. My lovely friend, Tran is cooking a Vietnamese dinner for the girls tomorrow (SHAKING BEEF - YAH!!!) so Raf would be assed out for dinner. The boy needs to eat - without me cooking, he will bring his ass to Subway, or eat a bowl of cereal! HEHEHEHE

So let's start with how I fucked up Grandma's cookies.

The experiment actually started out pretty well. I creamed and mixed the ingredients, threw them in the oven, and they came out nicely.

Cutting the marshmellows - this was fun




I did notice that the cookies came out a little undercooked. I figured they would be okay since I had to throw them back in the oven with the marshmellows on top. Typically, my Grandma makes them about a 1.5 inch diameter. Well - I guess I got a little excited and made them bigger without really thinking that I should have cooked them longer.

Cooling down - they look okay right?


Sure they looked okay, but when they cooled down and I began icing them, the middle was almost like cookie dough and way too soft. I hadn't frosted all of them yet, so I threw them back in the oven. Big mistake - I am such an idiot. Everything ended up a big, gloppy mess. But the thing was - the cookies tasted GOOD. I was not going to throw this away! There had to be a way to salvage this!



So I let them cool off in the fridge/freezer, and cut them into bars.


Although not pretty, they look better than glop and taste delicious! Next time I know better - don't be too adventurous and stick to Grandma's recipe!

And you thought I'd give it away! Noooooo, NEVER!


If I get my ass up early like I used to, maybe I will roll the bars into little balls and cover with powdered sugar. =) Oh~ this was also the first time I have used shortening (lol - hey, I am an amateur). The differences of using shortening versus butter is pretty neat in terms of texture and taste. Pretty cool! And on another note - MARGARINE SUCKS! Don't ever cook with that crap. It tastes so bad!

Now onto Trying to cook with any food that is left in the fridge so it doesn't rot for Raf's dinner tomorrow.

I always have a bag of yellow onions, red potatoes, and 36 eggs in my fridge. Voila la Tortilla (Spanish omelette, not a Mexican flour tortilla)


I also made an empanada with leftover Pâté Sucree dough. I sauteed some mushrooms and onions for the filling, and topped the empanada with slices of asiago cheese. Not sure how it tastes. Will find out from Raf tomorrow. I didn't take a picture of it because it's pretty ugly.

He needs to eat some veggies so I sliced a tomato, added minced garlic, parmesan cheese, and slices of Asiago on top. Then he can throw it in the toaster oven for a few minutes before eating.



I hope he enjoys his hodge podge of a dinner. =)

Jerk chicken... and pizza

Made Jerk chicken today - was originally going to grill it for Superbowl but since so many people didn't end up going, I decided to save it. It was already marinating for three days with cinnamon, onion, jalapeno, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon, cloves, and olive oil.

Threw it on the grill for about 20 minutes.

Voici le poulet de jerk. I love grilled/burnt skin! Seriously! hehehe


Had to make some mango/avocado salad. Needed something refreshing with the chicken.


Overall we both liked the chicken. The only time I had jerk chicken was at Mango Cafe in Palo Alto. It was way too spicy for me to truly taste and distinguish the spices they used. It's hard to say how close the recipe I tried is to the real deal. Anyone know any good Jamaican places around here?

Anyway, Raf also wanted to make a pizza. He made this dough from scratch all by himself! I just gave him the list of ingredients with no direction at all. He didn't add warm water to the yeast and let it sit/bubble but the dough was still okay. It was more airy than mine because he let it rise twice as well as let it sit overnight.

He actually made a Pizza Margherita yesterday, but still had leftover dough so he decided to make a pepperoni pizza. It was good - I'm so proud of him! I just hope he doesn't it make it a habit since I'm pretty territorial over my kitchen. *wink wink* just kidding!



This week is "try to cook with any food that is left in the fridge so it doesn't rot week." Which makes sense - you will notice through the next few days, there will be a mish mash (or mismatch) of food. =)

My version of Ropa Vieja (Cuban style)

Day 1

Season meat and let it marinate - cumin, s & p, oregano


Slice it


Braise it - onions, carrots, celery, garlic, cumin, etc.


After 1 hour


After 2 hours


After 3 hours


Then you "sift, mash, drain, and reduce."

Day 2

Throw in the veggies and saute


Shred and pile on the meat, tomatoes, garlic, etc.


Simmer for another 30 minutes


Day 3

Simmer for 20 minutes and serve with black beans, rice, and maduros!





Voila !


Then serve to some hungry boys


Oops - forgot to mention my mango/avocado salad appetizer


Homemade tiramisu - also let it sit for 2 days to get the rum flowing.




Happy Superbowl meal!

I didn't even watch the game.