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Kit took me out for oysters (my favorite thing) on Wednesday night, so for Valentine’s Day I made him his favorite meal: a classic steakhouse dinner. But with a few twists. Because it was Valentine’s Day, I decided to be kinda cheesy and use something red in every dish.  Wilted radicchio with blood orange, pomegranate, shallot, and a maple/balsamic dressing; Red wine sea salt crusted grass-fed NY strip steak, pan seared with garlic and thyme in a very hot cast iron skillet; Red wine-braised new potatoes with shallots and thyme; Wilted broccolini with crushed red pepper and garlic; and a local, biodynamic Syrah. Oh yeah, and dessert, not pictured: bouchons dipped in caramelized white chocolate and sprinkled with pink smoked sea salt. What did you make or eat for Valentine’s Day?

Kit took me out for oysters (my favorite thing) on Wednesday night, so for Valentine’s Day I made him his favorite meal: a classic steakhouse dinner. But with a few twists.

Because it was Valentine’s Day, I decided to be kinda cheesy and use something red in every dish. 

Wilted radicchio with blood orange, pomegranate, shallot, and a maple/balsamic dressing;

Red wine sea salt crusted grass-fed NY strip steak, pan seared with garlic and thyme in a very hot cast iron skillet;

Red wine-braised new potatoes with shallots and thyme;

Wilted broccolini with crushed red pepper and garlic;

and a local, biodynamic Syrah.

Oh yeah, and dessert, not pictured: bouchons dipped in caramelized white chocolate and sprinkled with pink smoked sea salt.

What did you make or eat for Valentine’s Day?

(Source: rebeccalando)

Date 15th February 2013

Notes 27

Tags #food    #cooking    #valentine's day    #steak    #red    #love   

rebeccalando: Bed for a roast chicken: carrots, pattypan squash, red potatoes, artichoke, lemon, garlic and herbs.

rebeccalando:

Bed for a roast chicken: carrots, pattypan squash, red potatoes, artichoke, lemon, garlic and herbs.

Date 11th November 2012

Notes 101

Tags #food    #cooking    #cookbook    #working class foodies    #wcfoodies   

"Your classic marinade … is to use a bottle of Italian salad dressing. And … the common thinking is that the acid — the vinegar in the salad dressing, or lemon juice, or red wine — is somehow tenderizing the meat. And you will read this in a lot of classic cooking manuals, that an acidic marinade will make meat more tender.
“It will, in fact, make the outer layer of the meat a bit mushy, but what it’s really doing is pulling moisture out of the meat and making it drier. And there isn’t really a great way to tenderize a cut that’s going to be cooking very quickly for instance on the grill, but you can make it juicier, and juiciness, when it gets to eating the steak, often is equated with tenderness once it’s in our mouth.
“So we use a salt-based marinade; you can use salt itself, you can use a salty ingredient like soy sauce, and then mix that with the garlic, with all the seasonings you want to use. And what you’re basically doing is, the salt penetrates very quickly into the meat and changes the structure of the muscle proteins, so that when the muscle proteins are cooked, they will hold on to more of their juices.”
- Jack Bishop on the myth of marinades Photo credit: Larry Crowe/AP"

NPR Fresh Air:  

Date 16th October 2012

Notes 224

Tags #food    #cooking    #chemistry    #salt