Fotocuisine

A few posts back, I documented the three day epic of demi glace. The technique I used was adapted from one of my culinary idols, James Peterson, writing in Saveur magazine. In the same article he provided a handful of sauce recipes using demi glace, including a derivation of the classic pork Sauce Robert, called Sauce Charcutière.

I wanted to try this with some mustard and herb crusted roast pork tenderloin, and man was it a good match. Read to the end for our next giveaway!
Pork and Demi Glace inside…

Congratulations to Jess at Hungry For Seconds for winning our last giveaway! Your San Francisco goodie package will be on its way as soon as I hit the post office! Also, read to the end for another giveaway and a sponsor announcement!

Last week, Central Florida had four hard freezes in six days. Normally, the rest of the county will have a frost and we stay slightly above since we’re close to the water. Not last week — mid-20s even where we were, and there was a skim of slushy ice on our canal.

We’re not used to weather like that, but more than our comfort, I was actually worried about my coconut trees. They usually can’t take a hard freeze, and even though it warmed above freezing in the middle of the day, four freezes a week made it a pretty tough week for them.

We’ve been getting a good harvest of coconuts this last month, even before the freeze. I thought I’d take advantage of them to make a red curry sauce. Christey wanted some skewered shrimp cooked on the grill, and they paired up nicely.

No lime in this coconut…(read more)

(Don’t forget to check out our giveaway at the bottom of our Christmas Dinner post!)

Sauces are my favorite part of cooking, from ketchup to béarnaise. Since I love (and aspire to) French techniques, a good chunk of the sauces out there are based on some form of stock — vegetable stock, chicken, fish, beef, veal, lobster, lamb, duck, and so forth.

Making stock is usually a pretty simple thing to do, but there’s a technique used to take a certain type of stock to the next level of culinary refinement — demi glace.
The journey begins…

(Read to the end for a FotoCuisine Giveaway!)

Every year, I do a four-course Christmas dinner for family. The number of guests range from 10 to 20 depending on the year, and to which cities family members are traveling over the holidays.

Each year, I do a theme. One year it was “wrapped” foods, one year was green and red. One year we had four hurricanes in Florida, so I picked courses based on the names of the hurricanes (Charley, Francis, Ivan, and Jeanne). Last year, I did an Iron Chef theme where guests picked the ingredient a week in advance.

This year, I struggled with a theme. Work and life pressure has been intense this year, like a good chunk of America. Both of my brothers and their families would be away this year, visiting in-laws, so the guest list was smaller than usual. My mother half suggested Christmas-on-a-budget, and it immediately resonated with me.

I wanted to still do a four course meal, but I wanted to keep it refined, yet inexpensive. We would have six adults this year, so I planned a meal under $100. Cooking staples already present in my parents’ house (flour, mustard, olive oil, sugar, etc…) wouldn’t count in the ingredient cost. I surprised myself when I planned the meal, went shopping, and ended up with a bill of $79.

Menu inside…

I guess that’s the problem with heading to San Francisco right before the holiday season. There’s no time to update with family and holidays and all the food!

Hopefully, things will go back to a regular updating schedule soon. We’re going to catch up with the Saturday events at the Foodbuzz First Annual Blogger Festival.

Saturday begins…

I tend more toward the savory than the sweet when I cook, but you can’t beat these two words: POM cheesecake.

I wanted to do little mini-bites, and I also wanted to experiment to see if I could incorporate POM pomegranate juice into the cheesecakes themselves instead of just in the sauce. One of the best things about experimenting when cooking is tasting the results!

These would make great appetizers or desserts for a mingling crowd. Since we’re right between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s the time for winter school and office parties, and these little minis would go over pretty nicely.
More pics and recipe inside

December will be the last entry for us as the 2009 POM Blogger winner. Jenn, from The Leftover Queen and hostess of The Foodie Blogroll interviewed me about my experiences coming up with POM recipes over the last year.

Check it out here: http://www.foodieblogroll.com/contests/new-contest-pom-wonderful-comment-to-win-giveaway-and-recipe-contest and leave a comment, because Jenn and POM Wonderful will be giving away a box of their product each week for the next four weeks!

Thanks Jenn, and thanks POM Wonderful!

For November’s POM Wonderful Blog Post, I made shrimp tempura with a POM pomegranate juice wasabi sauce. I wanted to fuse a little Japanese techniques with Floridian and even a little French and see how everything turned out. I knew the pomegrante base for the sauce would work well with ginger and garlic and lemon zest; pomegranate juice is bold enough to take on the flavors without overwhelming or being overwhelmed. Wasabi also goes well in sauces with sweet notes, especially Japanese plum and citrus sauces.

Even though it’s almost winter, and heavy meat braises with roots are coming into their time, it’s still warm here in Florida, so I wanted something a little lighter. I shelled some local Florida shrimp and made a tempura batter, lightly frying them in vegetable oil.

This could either be an appetizer or a main course, depending on how many shrimp are made. Christey and I couldn’t imagine moving on to anything else after this, so between us we devoured over a pound of shrimp.
Recipe and technique inside…

Flights from Florida to San Francisco made it tricky to make it into the city in time, especially as we had a meeting with Bertolli before the event as a kickoff, so Christey and I actually flew in late Thursday evening. Bertolli was kind enough to sponsor my hotel and airfare as part of their Bertolli Sauces Menu Contest, so once we got in town and tried to sleep off the jetlag, Christey and I were wide awake Friday morning and we hit the town like tourists (as seen in Christey’s previous post.)

Several hours and four sore feet later, we stumbled rain-soaked back to the hotel and hit the bar early to see if any Foodbuzzers were having some pre-cocktail cocktails. Of course there were!
Much more inside…

Tomorrow, Christey and I are off to San Francisco to the 1st Annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival.

We hope to see a lot of fellow foodie bloggers, but for those watching from home, you can follow us on our Twitter Page, as well as here — we hope to make a couple posts, but timing might be tricky with all the events going on.

Fun times, and our Florida tropical selves might be a little chilly in San Francisco, but we’re looking forward to a lot of fun foodie networking!