quote Posted by chris on Feb 28th, 2011
When I drink wine and then drink coffee it’s like an internal battle in my head.
—Doug, realizing after dinner that he has to order coffee and work that night.
miscellaneous
Corkboard
Posted by chris on Apr 4th, 2010 4 comments
From Jill and Dan’s kitchen. Awesome.
miscellaneous
Tastes like chicken
Posted by chris on Jul 3rd, 2009 7 comments
- Pan-roasted chicken with sherry vinegar & marsala wine sauce
- Carrot mashed potatoes with fresh chives
- Asparagus with crushed garlic & olive oil
The past few weeks I’ve been traveling and moving around. I just set up shop in a new place in Oakland, next to Lake Merritt & Piedmont. So this is the first meal I’ve cooked in a long while. Luckily, I had the help of my friend, Brian.
I asked Brian to drop a whole chicken in a large bowl of salt water to brine it. Well, I misjudged the capacity of the bowl and the water (or “salmonella water” as Brian would call it) spilled onto our counter (or “salmonella counter” as Brian would call it) soaking a roll of paper towels (or “salmonella paper towels”) and his clothes (or “salmonella clothes” as Brian would call it).
He showered, changed clothes and did everything short of calling for a government Hazmat team to come sanitize the kitchen.
Everything else went smoothly and the mashed potatoes have been dubbed by Brian, “The best mashed potatoes I’ve ever had… That I can remember.” So unless he’s had mashed potatoes that were so tasty that it caused memory loss, I think that’s a good review.
miscellaneous, recipe
Serious Salmon & Quick Asparagus
Posted by chris on Feb 12th, 2009 add a comment
My dinner tonight: salmon poached with lemon & lime slices, pinot grigio and minced shallots. The white wine made me feel like a grown up, but I’m not totally sold on the idea of poached salmon, yet. It tasted great, but I don’t think there was a lot of difference between poaching & other cooking methods. I’ll give it another shot sometime.
The sauce (pictured below) was created by reducing the liquid I used to poach the salmon. With some added juice from an orange, brown sugar and honey.
Asparagus. Quicker.
Ready?
- Turn on your broiler
- While you wait for it to heat up, toss asparagus with olive oil, minced garlic, salt & pepper — you must get your hands dirty, don’t try to fight it
- Get baking sheet. Add aluminum foil. Add asparagus.
- Place the asparagus 4 inches away from broiler’s heating element
- Cook for 8 minutes, rearranging asparagus half-way through
Much better than all the boiling/steaming nonsense (which I’ve tried plenty of times). I’ve cooked asparagus several different ways, but this is the method I’m going with from now on. It’s faster, easier and tastes better. [resists urge to add something vulgar]
daily diet
The Steak Out edition
Posted by chris on Dec 8th, 2008 add a comment
- Sample of Hennings cranberry cheddar from Whole Foods
- All natural bone-in rib eye steak, seasoned with garlic, rosemary, butter, salt & pepper
- Green beans with chopped almonds and butter. They were good, but next time I’ll throw in some cayenne pepper or something to spice it up.
- Grilled vegetables. I lazily bought these from Sonoma Chicken Coop at the last minute.
- 337 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon
- Pineapple
- Kashi GOLEAN crunchy chocolate peanut bar. I’m tempted to stop mentioning this, since I have one almost every day.
The steak was cooked using a method that I believe Cook’s Illustrated gets credit for. I usually pan-sear first and then transfer to an oven that’s also cooking the vegetables/sides. But I read about people cooking steak in a 250 degree oven first and then searing it. This allows the steak to cook evenly at a low temperature in the oven, while still getting that nice texture by blasting it with high heat to finish it off.
The steak was super tender and I think as I use this method more, I’ll only get better results. But I’m all steak-ed out for the moment, so it may be a while before I get to try this again.
daily diet
Sandwich edition
Posted by chris on Dec 6th, 2008 add a comment
- 2 hamburgers “animal style” from In-N-Out with avocado
- Strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries
- Prosciutto, fresh mozzarella and tomato slices on La Brea Bakery’s whole grain bread
- 337 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon
- Organic red seedless grapes
If you haven’t tried a hamburger with avocado or prosciutto with fresh mozzarella, you’re missing out.
daily diet
Glutton edition
Posted by chris on Dec 4th, 2008 add a comment
On Monday, Annie and I cooked dinner while watching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. But before we could cook, she had to work on some nerd stuff and I had to eat slightly healthy things:
- Kashi GOLEAN crunchy chocolate peanut bar
- mix 1 tangerine protein & antioxidant drink
- Organic sliced apples from Trader Joe’s
Now that we got that out the way…
- Shrimp with cocktail sauce from Whole Foods. I ate it while cooking dinner, forgetting for the thousandth time that Annie doesn’t like shrimp (Who doesn’t like shrimp?! Nobody, that’s who.)
- All natural rib-eye steak (lots of marbling!), pan-fried with butter and chopped garlic, seasoned with truffle salt & black pepper
- Sauteed & broiled organic russet potatoes with extra virgin olive oil, butter, rosemary, garlic, Lawry’s seasoning salt and black pepper
- Sauteed organic California-grown green beans, wrapped in prosciutto
- Sauteed organic asparagus, wrapped in bacon
- 337 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon
In my defense
As you can see above, I ate sliced apples, a protein+fiber bar and a protein+antioxidant drink before cooking. What you don’t see, is that Annie had two espresso chocolate chip cookies and garlic+herb baked veggie chips before dinner. [Brushes dirt off his shoulder.]
