Succulent Sustenance - Dinner Party!

This is a couple weeks late. I have excuses: allergies, end of summer, packing to go back to school, leading a summer day camp for kids (ages 6-12, and just precocious enough to make me want to remove my uterus), Renaissance festival. But those are just that, excuses. So rather than blathering on and on, or making lists of the things I have been doing instead of blogging let's get right on to the good stuff.

So two Thursdays ago I had an End of Summer dinner party for several of my friends in the area. I had an entire menu planned out but since all the recipes were new I only wound up making one of them. That was probably a good thing since it took so much longer to get everything finished than I had planned. Of course the best laid plans get disrupted and all the careful list-making did nothing to prevent everything falling apart and me driving all over town trying to gather ingredients.

Since dinner was a little later than I planned I did a little appetizer. Sliced French bread toasted with goat cheese and sliced fresh basil. Unfortunately they never got pretty plating and thus no pictures.

For the main course I got a recipe from a weekly email called Tasting Table They send out two recipes a week. Any foodie who appreciates experimenting with new stuff should sign up for it. One of the recipes that showed up in my email was Grilled Lamb Skewers. Since this came at a time I was craving red meat, I was eager to try the recipe and foist it upon others. I made a few changes to the recipe. I doubled the recipe (11 dinner guests) and I cut the ground lamb with ground chuck. Since lamb is so flavorful the mutton overpowered the beef  and the fat in the chuck made the skewers extra juicy. I also made additional wine reduction and added about a tablespoon of honey and melted 2/3rds of a stick of unsalted butter in the reduction to make a sauce. For side dishes I made wilted spinach and sauteed red bell pepper salad and saffron flavored rice.

Prep work

The Skewers pre-grill

Ravishingly Red Bell Peppers

A dinner plate for one lucky guest

My sister played co-host for the evening and her major contribution was dessert. I don't have links to the recipe she used but as soon as I do I will post them. She made individual Raspberry Creme Brulees for each one of my guests.

It may look like a basic creme brulee but at the bottom of the ramekin was a layer of raspberry preserves and fresh raspberries.

The dinner was a hit! Even my friend who is a notorious picky eater cleared most of her plate (and all of her dessert). I love entertaining like this when everything gets to come together even though things were delayed.

PS. The Picky Eater is the reason the photos in this post look so amazing. She brought her giant camera and took all the pictures for the evening. Unfortunately most of the pictures of me are before I was able to shower so I am not posting any featuring me. I love her to death for making my food look amazing and plan to invite her and her camera every time I make a good meal.

Succulent Sustenance - Deep Fried

With the extra time to sleep in and/or work out the weekend is the best time to have awesome food. So here is Succulent Sustenance where I recount the best meal of the week (which usually occurs during the weekend) and indulge my illicit love of alliteration.

This weekend after a straight week of cravings this dish, my mother and I made her world famous Southern Fried Feast.  It seems to be a tradition below the Mason-Dixon Line that the Sunday dinner is the big one. As a reward for going to church that morning (and no offense to any Southern Baptists but I feel like I need some kind of payment for attending your services) the average Southern family starts their week by  indulging in the sin of gluttony. This saves the other six deadly sins for the remainder of the week.

While mom peeled and butterflied the shrimp I prepared the French fries. Though we have this dish about once a year this is the first time I remember using red potatoes for the fries.

Start with a potatoe:

Slice:

Chop into strips:

And they are ready for the oil!

For the rest of the meal we prepped chicken, shrimp and oysters in an seasoned egg-wash. It's no Colonel Sander's eleven herbs and spices but I find it delicious. (Could have used a pinch more cayenne in my opinion)

From Left to Right: Oysters, Shrimp, Chicken Tenders

The best part was when we finally had all the food cooking.

Left to Right: Fries, Chicken, Shrimp

Lured by the scent of the oysters and shrimp we had an extra helper. 

By "Helper" I mean: Tripping Hazard (aka Ollie)

Finally dinner was served:

Hot Sauce for the shrimp. Ketchup for the fries. Honey for the chicken.

Several servings later...

Nothing but the shrimp tails.

Slice of Life: Flavors of the Weekend

I love food. That will quickly become apparent provided I keep working on this blog. But the whole sensual experience of shopping, preparing, and eating can be more satisfying than a relationship. (Sorry Boyfriend). Even if a dish eventually turns on you and results in some quality time with the porcelain god it was totally worth it about 95% of the time. 


This past weekend cemented my love for being home for the summer because I have eaten oh so well.


Friday: Mom had to run a 5k race Saturday morning so she wanted to eat something nice and light. I was fighting a monthly battle against the red army so I was more than happy to eat light. At the call for dinner I crawled up the stairs and my weary spirits were perked by the subtle scents that assailed my nostrils. Mom had made sautéed tilapia fillets with a lime/herb/red onion butter. It wasn't fancy or mind blowing but it was good clean food. The kind of food you could bring home to mother, wears argyle socks, has a stock portfolio, and comes from a good family. 

Saturday: Post race for mom, post tae kwon do for me. I was working on a couple sewing projects all afternoon since my sister was visiting a friend's lake house for the weekend granting me unrestricted access to her machine. I learned at about 4pm that my grandfather would be joining us for an early dinner at 6. (6 is early for my family since dinner is usually on the table about 8:00pm -ish) For this occasion my mother made grilled salmon with a lemon-butter sauce. Unfortunately the salmon from the local meat market that day was rather wimpy and mushy, however the flavor was good and fishy. Our cat gave his portion rave reviews. To go along with the salmon I made a salad with tomato, avocado, red leaf lettuce, and corn. Fairly simple stuff but given a distinct pizazz by the home-made lime vinaigrette. (Lime is the new black, at least for food). So while the salmon was good, the salad turned out divine.


Sunday: Sunday afternoons are for NAPS! Instead of a nap I went shopping with my mom which is an expedition to find the thing that is "just right." These trek takes us to every store that could possibly carry "The Thing." So by Sunday night everyone who would cook was exhausted, and no one wanted to run to the store to replenish our sorely bare cupboards. Luckily there was some venison in the freezer gifted to us by one of our hunter friends this past winter. After some searching on the internet for a good dish my mother and I wound up modifying  this http://www.yummly.com/recipe/6EEE2908-E35C-4EE0-01E854C2987E7D9D?print=true and creating this:

We didn't do any pretty plating. But believe me it tasted way better than it looks.


Even though Monday does not count as part of the weekend it gets an honorable mention because my  sister made the most delicious toffee sauce for ice cream. The recipe is soooo simple and it can be found below. But the best part about this sauce is the nuttiness of the flavor and the sticky sweetness that haunts your taste-buds. Even now the ghost of that sauce is whispering "there's left overs in the fridge, come eeeaatt meeeeee!"


Frankly, food is one of my prime passions and this weekend has reawakened my lust for quality kitchen time. Look forward to something I created myself by the end of the week!


Sticky Toffee Sauce:

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon soft dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons dark corn syrup
• 3/4 stick unsalted butter
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• Serving suggestion: Vanilla ice cream

Directions

Put the sugar, syrup and butter in a pan and slowly bring to the boil, allowing the butter to melt and the sugar to dissolve. Let the mixture bubble for a couple of minutes before carefully adding the cream. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes or until the sauce is thick, sticky and glossy.

Serve with a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream and sliced bananas

A Week in 20 minutes.

Since it has been a week since I last posted I am going to try to recount the events of this past week in twenty short minutes. Starting.... Now!

Tuesday: TKD at noon, arguments with the BoyFriend during the afternoon and into the evening, dancing in Lansing with the gorgeous Melissa in a bar with no AC but really good music. 

Wednesday: Driving home from Lansing at 6:30am, more arguments with the Boyfriend, nap, TKD at noon, random crap around the house, working on my next sew project, and reading my book The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Thursday: Sick all day, allergies drained every bit of interesting from my brain. Arguments with the Boyfriend, arguments with mother (she made me go to the store to buy her some DVD-R's Verbatim 96166 4.7 GB 16X LightScribe DVD-R, 50-Disc Spindle, then argued with me when I told her she didn't own a lightscribe DVD burner and thus it would be cheaper to get just regular DVD's but dammit all she wanted lightscribe) * On the plus side I bought a really cute note book (I love notebooks especially the ones with leather binding. But then I feel so unworthy and rarely use them because I can't think of any writing that is of leather notebook quality). I managed visited the Boyfriend for about 1/2 an hour because he had nodded off while driving and had gotten into an accident.

Friday: Still feeling cruddy but I got a lot of work done for a project and become addicted to a browser game,  Echo Bazaar. I catch up with my little Brother who has recently returned from a week in Kentucky, we have yummy yummy salmon for dinner Yummies! and I get to talk to Zeh Demon for almost an hour!  

Saturday: TKD in the morning we practice flying side kick which brings on a feeling of nostalgia. Do random house stuff that doesn't involve cleaning my room, visit the Boyfriend for more arguments (these ones resolve in a more positive manner), then head to a party at my aunt's house, followed by a dance party at the house of some family friends.

Sunday: Church, clean the house, mini date with the Boyfriend (I got a coffee and Pie!), and running with my mom and my TKD instructor. 

Bam! A whole week recounted in exactly 20 minutes. I started at 11:15am EST and finished at 11:35am. I feel as though there should be some meaningless award for this....

*Apparently I tend to use run-on sentences when exasperated. 

Hi World! Let's start with dinner...

I am interested in pretty much anything. I love having at least basic knowledge of a variety of subjects.

One subject I find particularly fascinating is food. Eating, smelling, tasting, shopping, every part of the culinary experience is akin to the sensation of finding a 5 dollar bill in your pants pocket. (With the exception of prep work, which can be really tedious, though some good music and sharp knives help)

Tonight I made dinner for my family. Since we are on a tight budget the trick is to use ingredients that are in the fridge already or come cheap. So even though I was really really craving red meat (a trick for curing that post-time of the month yuckkies) I found the chicken breast we had in the fridge and made an old stand-by, Chicken and veggie stirfry.

The vegetables this time were a red bell pepper and a pound and a half of fresh green beans. It was a good thing I had that extra half pound of beans since my little brother (Little only in age, size-wise he has a good 6 inches and 30 pounds on me) had invited a couple friends over. The food turned out delicious and juicy.

This last bit was a bit tricky. I am a little paranoid about my food, especially pork and chicken. When over cooked chicken becomes dry and not unlike eating a cotton sock. When under-cooked the slimy texture puts even the most slippery eel to shame, plus the risk of disease exponentially increases the "ick" factor. So the trick with cooking chicken on the stove top is to cook it at a high enough temperature that you get a nice caramel brown color on the outside, but not too high so it doesn't burn when you try to cook it all the way through. Using the singed chicken bits left at the bottom of the pan as a base for any sauces enhances the chicken flavor (Yes chicken does taste like chicken if you do it right).

The end result was this:

While the presentation was rather basic it tasted better than it looked.

I was also craving pie. Apple Pie. So this happened:

It was also yummy. Unfortunately I have yet to perfect my pie baking technique so the filling was a little watery. Still good but the slice kind of disintegrated once it was separated from the rest of the pie.

Currently I am finishing alterations to a skirt while watching the original karate kid. I'm kind of hoping to dream with "You're the best, around. Nothing's gonna ever keep you down." as my soundtrack.