So this was the dinner I made for five of us tonight:
1)Ttray-baked tomatoes in a casserole full of garlic, basil, and balsamic vineger. I cut crosses into each of the tomatoes (roma and vine-ripened from japan) plunged a fresh bay leaf into each cross, and sprinkled w/ olive oil, salt, pepper. Baked for an hour. Amazingly the balsamic vinegar and tomato combine so that nothing tastes sour.
2) Pancetta-wrapped scallops (skewered with rosemary stalks) covered in olive oil and thyme, pan fried on a bed of mashed celeraic (celery root). Holy fucking hell -- epiphany -- mashed celeraic, olive oil, salt and pepper tastes an order of magnitude better than mashed potatos. It has a totally marvelous flavor that isn't a function of just adding tons of milk and butter like normal mashed potatos. In any circumstance now I am going to favor celeraic over mashed potatos. Only problem is that a bulb of celeraic makes 5 small servings and costs ten dollars as opposed to a 10$ bag of potatos that would make 25 servings. It's worth it, though, try it.
3) Finely-sliced maguro (top loin of a blue fin tuna (less fatty)) cured in grapefruit juice (sort of like ceviche) served on a bed of fried glass noodles and covered in a chilli padi, grapefruit juice, spring onion, coriander, and mint.
4) Homemade foccacia of cherry tomato and sliced green olive with a pesto emphasizing the lemon vector. This was definitely the most beautiful dish -- the foccacia baked up looking like something from a cookbook.
5) Homemade "paneer" (indian cheese) blended with carrots, chilli padi, and coriander, pan fried and served with coriander and freshly shredded carrot. Paneer is made by bringing a gallon+ milk to boil, turning off the heat, and adding a glass of white vingar. It curdles and separates, leaving you with slightly sour white indian cheese.
All this taken with an ok bottle of non-oaked chardonnay. The warmer the chardonnay got, the nicer it tasted.
Waiting downstairs is 25$ worth of rasberries and blueberries with I am going to turn into smoothies once I get some room in my stomach. I have this monster Magi-Mix food processor that allows me to make all sorts of wonderful things these days. (I hand-kneaded the foccacia dough, for the record, but only because I forgot the kitchen-aid mixer has a dough hook)
(I must confess, every one of the recipes except the Paneer was from "Jamie Oliver's Kitchen" which Ling gave me recently. Another marvelous book. The paneer recipe was from an episode of Jamie Oliver's Twists tv show.)
Posted by Nils Blutig at December 18, 2005 09:21 PM | TrackBack