Fotocuisine

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

Our last post was an entry for The Royal Foodie Joust hosted by Jenn, the Leftover Queen.

For Memorial Day weekend here in the States, there were wonderful sales on steak, so my reboot of this month’s entry is a filet stuffed with rice, roasted tomatoes, herbs, and bacon, with a similar tomato basil aurore sauce (since it was so good from the last post). Oh, and feta. Can’t forget the feta.

Memorial Day Jousting…

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

Michelle, over at Thursday Night Smackdown has a First Thursday challenge. Yesterday was the first Thursday of the month, and the theme was The Grill. The challenge is to pick a recipe you’ve never tried, using the theme, and bang it out. As usual for our First Thursday challenge, Christey and I switched roles — I shot the photos, and Christey cooked (though she edited the photos and I’m writing the post).

Christey was paging through cookbooks and magazines last week, looking for a recipe. I had the July Saveur out, as I was still doing the gravlax thing, and she said, “Oooh! Citrus grilled lobster tails!” and pointed out the recipe to me.

“That’s not a recipe from the magazine, it’s an ad for Frei Brothers wine,” I said.

“Who cares? It’s a recipe, and it’s lobster on the grill!”

“You have a good point,” I said.

So, for Christey’s very first grilling experience as chef, we present to you the Frei Brothers winery recipe of Grilled Lobster Tail, with Salad and Citrus Dressing:

Fire and shellfish, what’s not to love?

For those who haven’t seen the post, Christey sprained her right foot over the weekend.. So, she’s not climbing ladders, shooting over my shoulder, or dancing and weaving around getting shots. I think these turned out great, but they’re more planned than our usual impromptu cooking candid documentation. Photojournalism will resume in roughly 3-6 weeks.

Last Thanksgiving, our family and friends had an epic meal with close to 20 adults, and over 10 kids. I was responsible for the sweet potato dish. Now, I actually do kinda like the marshmallow and oven-browned sweet potato thing (though I almost think you could put marshmallows on foie gras and it would be good…). But, I was looking for something different, so I brought my mandoline (that wonderful, yet blood-sucking, infernal tool), and sliced up a dozen sweet potatoes paper-thin, deep fried them, and sprinkled them with feta. The feta on the sweet potato chips almost looked like marshmallows, which is kinda what I was going for. They turned out pretty good, but Thanksgiving in Florida was rainy and 78 degrees, so the crispiness definitely fell off as the dinner progressed.

The other day, Jonathan, from the wonderful food blog We Are Never Full commented on my roasted chicken with feta green beans, and that reminded me that I haven’t made sweet potato chips with feta in a long while. So, I did, with some grilled lamb loin chops.

boil and bubble

The March issue of Gourmet had a little recipe for steak béarnaise, with fried matchstick potatoes. It was kinda tucked in the middle, among all the other interesting French rustic meals hither and yon. How classic can you get? Meat and béarnaise, with fried potatoes. Steak frites with a twist.

Since March, I’ve probably made this recipe four times. I’ve made it more than any other idea from that magazine since I got my subscription this year.

Of course, I’ve personalized it a bit.

Mmmmm steak

I mentioned in my last post, I have a lot of eastern European in my background. Goulash, or the similar Stroganoff, is what the French would term a “peasant dish”. It throws together what is underground, either in the dirt or a cellar, with whatever meat can be scrounged, cooked with some local herbs, spices, and such from local gardens.

I’ve had a mother and two grandmothers cook their interpretations, and each is different. Throw in the rest of eastern Europe, and each recipe may be as different as the mother or grandmother cooking that day for the family.

I kicked the recipe up a bit with ingredients that would not normally be used in traditional versions of this dish, but the inspiration is from my upbringing.

But wait! There’s more!

I wanted to cook some lamb loin chops tonight, and had some crab left over from the other day, so decided to do a crab dip appetizer for the lamb.

Oddly, there was no stove used in this meal. The lamb was marinated and done on the grill, and the crab was already cooked.

More pictures and food

It’s been warm lately. Unseasonably so. From Christmas Eve to now, it’s been pretty much low-80s in the day (mid-to-high 20s C). That’ll end tonight when it’ll dip near freezing, and tomorrow night when there’s a hard freeze warning for Central Florida. Since we’re right next to the ocean, I doubt we’ll see freezing, probably a couple degrees above (a couple degrees above in C).

But, for now, it’s warm, and yesterday evening was pretty balmy. So, for New Years Eve dinner, I cooked Christey and myself some NY strip steaks on the grill.

New York strip steak over mustard cream sauce, garnished with feta and caramelized shallot, with a sauteed mushroom side.

Pictures and Recipe Here