There’s a seafood store nearby that has some pretty good local seafood, but also flies in lobster from Maine. They have a sale from time to time, and for this part of Florida, $7.95/lb is almost half the going rate. I picked up a couple lobster and decided to make fresh lobster rolls.

Now, the New England lobster roll is pretty basic — fresh lobster, mayo, a lettuce leaf, a roll or bun, and maybe some seasoning. I don’t think lobster rolls spawn the same sort of debates that cheesesteaks do in Philly, or pizza does between New York and Chicago, but when I’m in Boston I don’t see a lot of debate over the ingredients.

On the other hand, I’ve found that substituting homemade aioli for mayo will almost always give an interesting spin on a meal. This is still a pretty simple meal, but Christey and I were sadly eying the crumbs on our plates when we were done, wishing for more.

lobstah

Christmas Eve dinner is a special event for me. Every year, I cook a four-course themed dinner for my family. One year the theme was “wrapped” foods, one year the theme was red and green, that sort of thing. Since I only go to this extreme once a year, I like to go all out and push what I’ve learned about cooking. Over the years, I’ve seen some good improvement in my cooking techniques, but also in my meal planning as these dinners have been for as many as eighteen guests.

This year was a first in a few ways. My brother, who is an excellent dessert guy, developed the dessert course in harmony with the earlier courses, and he also gave me a lot of help as my “sous” this year. Previously, I’ve done the entire meal on my own, which can be limiting. Also, this was the first year in which I asked my guests to pick a theme ingredient, Iron Chef style. In years past, I would surprise my guests with the theme — this year the surprise would be on me. I did ask for a week notice, but I also had to come up with the courses, shop, prep, pre-cook, and cook for fourteen adult guests.

After Thanksgiving, the guests emailed back and forth and compiled a possible list of ingredients on which to vote:
Agar gum, liquid nitrogen, miso, the whole goat, goat dairy, filo dough, bacon, rosemary, chili pepper, green chilis, orange, pomegranate, cocoa, rum, bourbon, avocado, sugar, cheese kids like, tomato, cilantro, hazelnuts, pistachio, nuts in general, coffee, beer, deep-fried everything, bread, rice

The semifinals simmered down to coffee and avocado, with a tie-breaking vote creating another tie. So, a coin was flipped, and coffee won the spot of honor.

I created an amuse bouche and three courses of dishes using coffee, and my brother came up with a final dessert (I don’t know what he would have done with avocado).

I asked Christey if she wouldn’t mind printing a tasting menu, just a 1/2 sheet with some different fonts. Of course, she came back with a two-piece vellum and card-stock menu, tied with a coffee-colored bow. It blew me away as well as our guests.
ho ho ho

This wasn’t exactly a normal dish for us. First of all, I took inspiration from Olive Garden’s Braised Beef & Tortelloni dinner. I don’t normally get inspired by chain restaurants, but this dish is actually pretty interesting. Secondly, unlike Olive Garden’s pre-prepared supply chain, I took pretty much an afternoon and early evening making this. I like doing this from time to time, though. Even though six hours of prep and cooking can be devoured in 15 minutes, it’s fun to build flavors and layer ingredients, basically practicing and expanding techniques. I usually have to do this on a weekend, though, and this was last Sunday’s dinner.

So, I made braised lamb shanks with root vegetables in veal stock and red wine, took a shank and minced it with Parmesan Reggiano, roasted garlic, and fresh oregano, stuffed it in tortelloni, and served it with sliced braised lamb shank meat and crimini mushrooms in a gravy made from the braising liquid.

You know this was good…

Foodbuzz has a Tastemaker Program, which occassionally offers ingredients or products to featured publishers, to sample and enjoy. Recently, Foodbuzz offered us the chance to try a sampling of Cowgirl Chocolates, and Christey and I couldn’t exactly turn down samples of handmade chocolate.

Gourmet Chocolate? With chili peppers?

I got my December Saveur magazine in the mail the other day, and the cover trumpeted both filet mignon, and “The Secrets of French Sauces”. Sauces are my favorite culinary field. I thought to myself: “Self: check out the sauces article. Maybe it’ll add some info to that book by Peterson you keep reading.” Lo and behold, the article was written by James Peterson himself.

I urge everyone interested in sauces to check out this issue. He’s a modest fellow — he refers to his highly acclaimed book (and one of my top-3 cooking must-have books) Sauces as “A book I wrote in 1991″. That “book” is an amazing history, from the salty/fish garum sauces of Rome, to the basic mother sauces of French cuisine, to instructions to develop an almost infinite variety of flavor based on those mother sauces, and beyond. In short, Peterson is one of my culinary idols, and I was pleased to see Saveur conned him into writing the centerpiece of the December issue, without once referring to the holiday season.

The thick, rich, very red sauce on the cover is a bordelaise, so named for the Bordeaux region of France, which is probably the most well known red wine producing region in the world. Peterson provides a classic recipe for bordelaise, over filet mignon. I had to make it, of course. Peterson has always been a tinkerer, however, and I’ve jazzed up his recipe by using flat iron instead of fillet, for some extra beefy flavor, with a few bordelaise substitutions as well. I served the steak and sauce over a braised root vegetable foundation, as a nod to the season.

Winter sizzle

Wow! We have been crazy busy and out of town. But we are now back for at least a good two weeks

In lieu of a real post, I am going to post pictures of our Thanksgiving feast, mainly because it was amazing. Our Thanksgiving consisted of 4 families who all contributed to the feast. Peter was in charge of the seafood dish. He decided to make his wonderful lobster bisque, which is very much like his crab bisque, with the obvious difference of lobster instead of crab.

Duck and Turkey and Green Beans, Oh MY!

The cooler months are upon us, and one of the most colorful and healthiest ingredients for this time of year is the pomegranate. Fall and winter seasonal foods might sometimes seem a little bland — parsnips, cabbage, potatoes, squash. Pomegranates, in season from roughly September to January, offer a striking contrast with their brightness in flavor and color.

The folks at POM Wonderful were kind enough to send us a case of POM Wonderful 100% pomegranate juice, and an invite to enter their blogger recipe contest if we were so inspired. They didn’t have to ask twice.

In keeping with the seasonal theme, I created a seared duck breast, with a flavorful reduced pomegranate juice sauce. The duck was served over a “nest” of duck fat fried matchstick potatoes, and the plate was garnished with a scattering of fresh pomegranate arils.

What’s an aril? Come inside!

It is once again time for the Royal Foodie Joust, hosted by Jenn, The Leftover Queen!

Last month, Eating Club Vancouver got the win (though FotoCuisine came in 2nd!) Since the Vancouver sisters won, they got to choose the ingredients for this month, in a competition which is becoming known as the Iron Chef of the foodie blogosphere! It’s really fun and friendly, with no pressure other than to do one’s best. So check it out!

This month’s ingredients are:
*Coffee
*Black Pepper
*Honey

I changed my mind about three times on this, from pork ribs, to barbecue, but when my local seafood place had diver scallops for a good price, I decided on a honey-espresso glazed diver scallop meal. For a kick, I added some flash-fried prosciutto parma, because nothing goes better with scallops than some fried pork.

Under the sea….

When I was a kid living in Ft Lauderdale and Miami, we had graceful, sweeping coconut palms on the beach. They were the palms of South Pacific and Gilligan’s Island — exotic, beautiful, and always ready to brain someone walking underneath.

Unfortunately, the coconut palms in South Florida and the Keys got hit with a blight in the 70s, and they all died out. These days, another variety of coconut palm grows in Florida, blight-resistant and just as bountiful, but they are short, squat trees that grow straight up with no arc or sweeping curve.

The last couple years I lived in Atlanta, I knew I’d move back to Florida some day, and there were two things I wanted: a fishing boat, and a coconut palm.

I got the fishing boat fairly quickly, but the first place I lived had no coconut palm. A coconut did wash up under my dock after a storm, so I planted it for fun (it may take a year for one to sprout), but it never grew. These days, we live in a house with two coconut palms in our yard, (the boat is another story — my first got swamped and destroyed by Hurricane Jeanne, and I’m currently rebuilding a project boat for fun).

We live at the northern limit for coconut palm growth. They won’t take a freeze, or even a frost, and our trees probably wouldn’t survive inland a couple miles. It takes a palm just about a year to mature a coconut, which seems like a long time, except that the palm will flower and grow another cluster about once a month, so there’s always a rotating bounty of nuts. When we first moved a little over a year ago, there were no nuts on the tree, someone had cleared them off. So now, we are harvesting our first ripe coconuts since we’ve moved in.

The coconut milk found in cans, commonly used in curries, comes from a process of extracting the liquid fat from the coconut meat found inside. I’ve always wanted to try to do this, and with a bunch of harvested nuts, I figured I’d give it a try.

I made a green curry chicken with sprouts, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, garlic, and scallions, and served it over pad thai noodles.

Sing along!

I like to keep my jalapenos on the bush until they turn red. There’s much more of a complex flavor, sweet, rich, earthy, compared to the more bitter and grassy green peppers. It’s similar to red and green bell peppers, as is the cost of the final product — the red peppers take longer to ripen, and perish more quickly, so if they’re offered in the store at all, they’re three times the price. Which doesn’t factor into things when I’m growing them in my own yard.

That said, I have to come up with recipes to use red jalapenos, or fry up a bunch as poppers.

When I was a teenager in metro Washington DC, the Washington Post had a cooking section in the weekend paper. I had some disastrous results from the more adventurous recipes (I made a stuffed squid dish, when I had no concept about seafood freshness, nor temperature control, and I’m sure that house still has a residual odor). However, one of the recipes was a chicken breast, oven baked, with a sour cream topping mixed with diced jalapenos. That one turned out pretty tasty, but I haven’t actually made it since then…and that was maybe 25 years ago.

Still, with a couple red jalapenos sitting on my counter, the sour cream and jalapeno chicken recipe from my teenage years jumped into my mind, and I tried to recreate it — from memory and a little more culinary experience.

Spicy….