Fotocuisine

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)

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…

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

We haven’t been posting as often as we’d like. Summer and a new job has kept us busy in the real world. We’ve been enjoying food when we can, especially with the summer Kids’ Iron Chef battles, and it looks like work stress may be easing off soon. Who ever said a recession was the best time to do a startup? I’m working twice as much for half the pay right now. But, employment is always desirable, and we gotta do what keeps us in shallots.

—–

It’s still violently summer here in Central Florida. Daily rain, hot temperatures, higher humidity. Not necessarily when the thoughts turn to braising. But, it’s been a while, and that mouth-watering tender meat sounds so good. So, what to do when it’s hot and sticky, but you get the braising bug? Well, you can’t go wrong with Cuban cuisine. One of our local restaurants does a braised pork mojo, and all that citrus just screams out tropical. And pig is always seasonal, 12 months a year.

I took a pork shoulder “picnic” cut and braised it for hours in an orange juice mojo. Rather than slicing it and serving, I took Southeastern summer tradition and pulled the pork, serving it on buns with the reduced braising sauce. Pulled Pork Mojo!

Oink oink

Between work and a bit of traveling, we haven’t posted in a while. We have a few posts lined up though, including a couple give-aways, so check in throughout the next few days!

We have a pretty beat-up gas grill on our porch. The grate in it had been looking pretty bad, and I couldn’t find a replacement locally. I did find a supplier on the Internet, and within two business days, I had a new grate for my grill…one size too large. It still fits, but it sorta projects out the front of the grill and slants a little bit. I probably can’t grill sausages on it, but I figured it would work for my first attempt to grill pizza.

For our honeymoon three years ago, Christey and I went to Paris, Rome, and Venice. We loved the thin, personal pizzas of Italy, the thin crust and variety of different ingredients. I made homemade pizza dough and whipped up a tomato sauce. Christey and I formed our own pizzas (hers: thinly sliced mushroom, pepperoni and feta, mine: mushroom and sardine) and I grilled them on our new, somewhat slanted grill.

pizza pizza

I found some nice lamb loin chops the other day, and I decided to try another bit of regional swapping. I love taking a technique or recipe from one part of the planet, and mixing it up with a completely different part of the planet. I think the foodie word “fusion” leans a little bit to the Asian/Western combination, but that’s sort of what I’m shooting for — combining what works in one culture’s food with what works in another culture’s.

Sometimes, this may be reinventing the wheel. Similar methods of meal creation pop up all over the globe, independently from any cultural link. For example, many cultures have discovered the basics of food fermentation separately, from kimchi in Asia to the preparation of chocolate beans in South America. Other cultures have relied on connections, sometimes roundabout connections, and have adapted ingredients to their own culture — Mexican cuisine uses the Middle-Eastern cumin, and Italy uses the South American tomato.

Therefore, I’m not entirely sure there’s not a Greek equivalent to the Argentinian technique of creating chimichurri sauce — which itself has been described as something of a Patagonian pesto. Heavy on the herbs, with some olive oil, vinegar, some vegetables…generally local stuff blended and chopped together into a chunky, pasty, loose sauce.

In any case, that’s what I thought of when I saw the lamb. A nice marinade for flavor, grilled nicely, then a chimichurri-like sauce with classically Aegean ingredients.

More lamb inside

To some, May means the Kentucky Derby. To others, the start of the summer growing season. To many backyard chefs, May is the start of barbecue.

Barbecue used to be a very regional thing. One area might mean pork while another means beef. Some barbecue chefs prefer to smoke, some to grill, and some to braise. There are passionate arguments about dry (a spice rub) vs. wet (cooking with the sauce), and even the ingredients in a sauce, whether the meat is cooked in it or not.

I like to barbecue, and I don’t like to get drawn in to one technique over another. No matter the method, barbecue is just good food. For this month’s POM blogger entry, I’ve made a tasty POM pomegranate juice barbecue sauce for pork baby back ribs. The sweet spice of the sauce is a nice balance to the salty, tender rib meat.

OMG BBQ inside

Last month, we won the Royal Foodie Joust, hosted by Jenn, The Leftover Queen. As part of the prize (along with the coveted Joust apron), we got to choose the three ingredients for this month’s Joust.

I can’t help but play along, even though we’re out of the voting this month. I made a spicy tuna roll (red tuna, white rice, green nori), with a spicy sriracha wasabi sauce (red sriracha, green wasabi, white(ish) garlic/ginger).

Roll on in…

Lamb is one of those traditional ingredients of spring. These days, world-wide distribution and modern farming methods allow lamb to be available year round (for better or worse), but for many years, lamb was only available in the springtime.

Lamb is a great meat to use with pomegranate juice — it’s often paired with sweet condiments like mint jelly, and the complex pomegranate flavors go well with the earthiness of the meat. For this month’s POM blogger entry, I wanted to use a part of lamb that isn’t as familiar as chops. Lamb shank is economical, and is very tasty. Served pulled over linguine, with vegetables and fresh herbs, and this meal delivers a lot of flavor, but is very easy to cook.

spring on in

On the 14th of June, 1800, in the Northern Italian town of Marengo, Napoleon’s troops were hit with a surprise attack from the Austrian forces, commanded by General Michael von Melas. Napoleon figured the Austrians were retreating from Italy, and spread his army widely to try to cut them off. Instead, von Melas attacked directly, with a much larger force. Napoleon was forced to fall back. Some of the French outliers were able to reach and join up with Napoleon’s main force, and a counter-attack by the French regained the battleground and scattered the Austrian army, thus winning the Battle of Marengo. By the next day, the Austrians negotiated a retreat from Northern Italy.

Hungry after the long day (over 12 hours of combat), Napoleon commanded his chef to make something in a hurry. The chef was forced to scrounge the countryside and found herbs, chicken, tomatoes, garlic, wine, olives, and appropriated some of Napoleon’s personal stash of cognac. With these foraged ingredients, the chef whipped up a meal so tasty, Napoleon considered it his “lucky meal” and requested it before many future battles.

So goes the legend of Chicken Marengo. Though Napoleon ordered that the dish never be altered, many have done so over the last couple centuries. My basic “source” recipe came from The Joy of Cooking, and I’ve gone back and forth over several years altering and changing the recipe, from making almost a casserole version, to a more traditional approach. This version leans toward traditional.

March on in…