Fotocuisine

This post is mostly pictures, as the last day of the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival consisted of a brunch and then we were left to explore the beautiful city on our own.
San Francisco inside…

(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…

Things have been so crazy around here, that we haven’t had time to do our last two posts of the San Francisco trip, but they will be coming soon!

Until then, the holiday spirit suddenly whisked me away this morning, and I decided to make a run to the overcrowded grocery store to make my favorite cookies.

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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

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…

Oysters at the Blue Mermaid Chowder House.

I feel like I am so far behind, everyone is posting their great updates on the past weekend with the 1st Annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival (like Oldways Table ,High/Low Food/Drink, A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa and a gazillion more… ), and I have only made it through Friday, and not even to the actual event, only the things Peter and I did before it. So I figured I would start there.

This for me was a weekend where i would again open up myself to the food world. Before I met Peter, I was a basic meat and potatoes girl with a few other exceptions. After Peter, I started trying things instantly. I would have him order my meals when we went out, surprising me with so many new and wonderful foods. Now that I have broaden my food horizon considerably, I have fallen back into the routine of not trying anything because ‘I don’t like it’ when really, I hadn’t tried it since my tastes have changed. So I decided that this blogger fest I would be open to try anything and everything (within reason, insects and organ meats would have to wait). Even simple things like raw tomatoes, which I have never liked. I apparently do now. Go figure.

This post and the few after it will have an enormous amount of photographs as I have a hard time limiting myself when it comes to new places, foods, and people.

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Our close friend, Krissy, has (finally ) started her own blog, The Sugar Pixie, and you should definitely go check it out! She is the genius behind some of our sweet dessert posts lately, like the awesome strawberry cupcakes and the amazing key lime pie.

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Christey and I were excited to go to the 1st Annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival in San Francisco next month. We were even more excited to hear that Bertolli Sauces was sponsoring 10 foodie bloggers, providing airfare and hotel to the festival in exchange for developing an appetizer or main course menu item using Bertolli sauces.

For our entry, Christey and I were batting around main course ideas. I was leaning toward using the Bertolli vodka sauce, and Christey suggested stuffed shells. I thought the two would match well, especially with a filling rich in roasted garlic, crimini mushrooms, and asiago cheese.

Well, our menu item worked out nicely in two ways. It was a really tasty combination (I had it for leftovers the next two days), and it won free airfare and hotel for one of us!

For the next few days, Foodbuzz will ask members to vote on their favorite menu items. The three winners will serve their food to guests at the Festival! So, starting later today, head over to the Bertolli Sauces page at Foodbuzz and vote for FotoCuisine to see Peter dish out some Bertolli Sauce shells!
Click on this link: http://www.foodbuzz.com/blogs/us/florida/1519710-bertolli-sauce-menu-item-asiago-roasted-garlic-and-mushroom-stuffed-shells and click on the “buzz it” icon (with green check mark by it) to cast your vote

Most of what I like to cook is savory. I do have a couple favorite desserts, however. One is mousse, and last February, I made a POM pomegranate and white chocolate mousse for Valentine’s Day. For this month’s POM Guest Blogger entry, I decided to try incorporating pomegranate into one of my other favorite classic desserts, crème brûlée.

Crème brûlée is commonly served with berries, and the tart richness of pomegrante made me think they would go well together. I wanted to layer pomegranate jelly on the bottom, then form the custard over the top, followed by the crunchy sugar crust.

The pomegranate layer had to be denser than custard, or it would float to the top during the cooking process. While pomegranate-infused cream would be tasty, I wanted to try the layer idea, so I started with a pomegranate-gelatin mixture. The custard crème itself would be added warm, and I was worried the heat would almost certainly melt the gelatin, so I tried to be careful to reduce splashing when adding the custard. Browning the sugar was actually perfect for this experiment, because it masked the sides of the dish, where any seeping juice would be hidden. My grandmother, a lifetime baker, always says: “Frosting hides a multitude of sins”, and, happily, that applies to caramelized sugar as well!

In the end, it worked really well, and was a very tasty dessert. The layers and taste were elegant and provided a wonderful, silky richness.

Step-by-step inside