So, P and I are not big dessert people. As we’ve written in some of our restaurant reviews, dessert is definitely the least important course in our mind. This creates some issues at dinner parties, as most people obviously enjoy dessert so we still need to come up with something good. In the past we had fried several different desserts and went back to that crutch again here. If you’re unaware, chilaquiles are a Mexican dish where tortilla chips are sauteed in salsa and topped with any combination of meats, cheeses or vegetables. We thought this would be a good inspiration for a dessert if we changed around a few things. Overall, the frying is obviously a bit of work, but certainly less work than a lot of desserts and was passable enough given our lesser talents.
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dpetc Uncategorized
So the blog has been admittedly poorly updated as of late. We faced a series of hurdles over the early part of the summer which prevented us from posting too much. But now, we have more than zero functioning laptops between the two of us again and are ready to get back at it.
We made enchiladas at our last dinner party and wanted to do something a bit different. We decided we could both control the flavor better and be a bit more impressive if we made our own salsa. We’d never made salsa verde before but had recently become big fans at our usual rotations of taco carts, lunch stops, and the like. We were a bit concerned getting started about finding tomatillos. A first call to Whole Foods revealed that they usually had them but the staff had just used all of them to make salsa verde. Great. However, a few days later when we needed them, a new shipment had arrived and we moved on. All in, this was extremely easy to make and really fantastic. Having control of which peppers you use, onion to tomatillo ratio etc… really allows you to perfect the taste. The roasted flavor was fantastic and we’ll surely make it again.
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dpetc Mexican, Recipes
One recipe that all cooks/chefs should be extremely comfortable with is a basic tomato sauce. People make their sauces with all different kinds of bases; some use celery and carrots, others will use only fresh tomatoes, hand squeezed, others believe only tomato, garlic and onion should be listed as ingredients. Everyone needs to decide on their own tomato sauce as it will sure as a base for many a dish. Once I got comfortable with the ratios that I personally liked, it became a must have in the kitchen. I prefer to always have a can of crushed tomatoes in the pantry just in case. Once you make this sauce or perfect one to your own tastes, I’m confident that the days of bottled or jarred tomato sauces are well behind you.
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dpetc Uncategorized
We recently hosted another in our series of dinner parties, this time for 7 people. The planning stages for the party followed the general trend laid out in our first posts - a few weeks before we decided on our invites, followed by some broad menu planning before ironing out the nitty gritty details in the final days before the party. Then on the big day itself we went off to Whole Foods, shopping list in hand, and lugged six full bags of raw ingredients back to our apartment. The lugging and the effort cooking was well worth it as this was one of our best parties yet. Here is what we served:
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dpetc Dinner Party, Wine
This is a great colorful summer salad to make on the grill. I’ve made it two ways. The first time I added pretty much only corn and portabellos and found the salad needed a bit more. In this incarnation I added a couple of more ingredients and an Asian dressing alongside some Teriyaki swordfish. This could served alongside a number of different dishes and wouldn’t have to have an Asian dressing as well.
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dpetc Appetizers, Recipes
One recent Friday we decided to make a bunch of pizzas. The beauty of pizzas is that they’re really quite easy to make and allow for a wide variety of flavors and tastes in a single meal. Also, while there are a bunch of steps here, most of them can be done in little pieces ahead of time. Dough should be made well ahead of time and the sauce and toppings can all be made hours ahead kept in the fridge. This means a quick finish of just putting the pizzas together once you get hungry.
On this occasion, we were going to just make three pizzas. We tried a Lasagna pizza, with ground beef and ricotta, an Indian-inspired pizza with Saag as the base and chicken and a Thai pizza with a peanut-Siracha sauce and chicken. We had some leftover dough and sauce so added a traditional cheese pizza to the mix as well.
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dpetc Chicken, Indian, Italian, Pizza, Recipes
If you were to ask five people what is the best way to make scrambled eggs, you’d almost certainly get back five different answers. On the face, this is surprising. Scrambled eggs are simple in concept – cook eggs over heat, stirring to “scramble” them, and serve. And yet everyone seems to have their own method for making scrambled eggs that they claim is the best. I tried a few of these methods out before settling on my own favorite – pancetta scrambled eggs.
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dpetc Breakfast, Recipes
My mother had choice of restaurants for Mother’s Day a few weeks back. She chose one of my and her favorite restaurants: Bouley. We have traditionally gone for special occasions about once a year and had not been since they moved locations this past year. I was very excited to see the new location, give my Mom a great dinner for Mother’s Day and enjoy Bouley’s great food. Bouely really is one of my favorite restaurants so if I get carried away in this review, forgive me.
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dpetc Reviews
M and I found ourselves rather low on wine the other week so we decided to put in an order with Astor Wines. Although I prefer Chambers Street Wines when I’m trying to learn something new about wine, Astor is hard to beat for its vast selection of wines from around the world. This was right after the first nice day of spring, so we were both in the mood for some crisp white wines that would be well suited for weeknight consumption after getting home from work. For us, the wine that generally best meets those criteria is New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
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dpetc Reviews, Wine
P and I recently went over to BLT Market for their Roast Suckling Pig special. On Thursday evenings through the end of May, the restaurant offers a $30 plate of suckling pig served with homemade sausage stuffing and creamed Swiss chard. Despite having a reservation during the height of New York’s swine flu scare, we decided the suckling pig was a calculated and fair risk to take for a good meal.
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dpetc Reviews
