More steamed fish

Around a month after the last time we had some, we decided to cook more steamed fish. We used the same recipe as before, but this time, we wanted to have a whole fish so we got some whole black bass from the Asian supermarket. As a side, we had some steamed jasmine rice with green onion. We had a bottle of Moon Mountain Sauvignon Blanc lying around, so we just drank that with the meal. Pretty simple dinner but still very satisfying.

Cheese Shipment from Raymond Cheesemongers

For my Christmas present, Uly got me a cheese club membership! After much delays, the first shipment came in early April, and I was definitely looking forward to trying it. I was supposed to get three different cheeses, but he threw in a fourth one due to the delays. The cheeses are (from left to right): Bleu Sunshine from Winter Park Dairy (Florida), Bent River Camembert from Alemar Cheese Company (Minnesota), the freebie cheddar from Fiscalini Farms (Modesto, CA), and Lionza cheese, also from Fiscalini Farms. All were great...I've never had a really hard bleu cheese and it was milder than expected, the cheddar and Lionza were both nice and nutty, but my favorite had to be the camembert...it was just so nice and creamy with a bit of funk to it that you never get with brie.

To celebrate my cheeses finally arriving, we opened a 2004 Napa Valley Silver Oak cab that had been sitting in our cellar for a few months. This usually costs more than the Alexander Valley one that we opened last time but surprisingly I wasn't as impressed. It was good, but just not wow like the Alexander Valley Silver Oak bottle of the same vintage. Good thing we didn't pay the $75 retail though, since Uly got it for free from work! :) Still, it went well with all the cheeses, especially the Fiscalini Farms cheddars. Had our usual cheese fixings with it, and some leftover chorizo. Given my perpetual diet, I can't afford to eat cheese like this all the time, but these were definitely worth the extra points!

Steamed Sea Bass

Since I've been eating light, Uly and I decided to steam some fish. Got some sea bass in Marina Food used my favorite recipe for steamed fish. We made a few modifications to the recipe...instead of wine in the sauce, we used some sake since they sold little bottles of it at the market so we wouldn't have to open a full bottle. We also cut down the oil, and instead of using olive oil, used part vegetable and part sesame oil to give it even more asian flair. As a side, we sauteed some baby bok choy with some garlic and shallots.

Nice light Sunday dinner! Tasty and low points too! :)

French bistro dinner

We had Shirley and Phil over for the weekend, so figure it was a good time for some more home cooking! We still had a couple packages of duck confit, so we figured it was a nice easy-but-tasty meal to have with friends. Since the duck confit was already cooked, all we had to do was throw it in the over for 20 minutes, putting it on broil for the last 5 minutes to crisp the skin. We used the same recipe for duck fat potatoes as last time we had duck confit, which takes around 20 minutes as well. Finally, we just steamed some green and yellow beans from Trader Joe's so we can have a lighter vegetable dish. With our main course, we drank the David Bruce Pinot Noir 2004 that we got from Santa Cruz Mountains Passport Day a while back. It was lighter than I remembered, probably because it's been a couple years and it got a lot more age to it.

After dinner, we had some cheeses...forgot to take a picture since we were having too much fun! I still had a bunch of cheeses left over from the AWF party a little over a week ago, so it was nice to be able to finish them off. For the hard cheeses, we had Manchego, Dorset Drum English Cheddar, and an aged Gouda, while the soft cheeses were Brillat-Savarin, Humboldt Fog, and Gorgonzola Dolce. Shirley doesn't usually like blue cheese but we've converted her with the gorgonzola dolce with some honey, on a slice of cran-walnut bread. Yum! We started on the Ridge Old School Zinfandel towards the end of our main course, and the cheeses gave us something to munch on while we finished the rest of the bottle. I gotta say, I don't think I've ever had a bottle of Ridge that I didn't like...still one of my favorite wineries!

For dessert, Phil and Shirley brought us some yummy desserts from a pastry shop in Cupertino. I didn't think we could eat much more, but we somehow found room for the napoleon, cheesecake, fruit tart, and chocolate mouse cake. We also wound up opening a 2007 Henry of Pelham Reisling Ice Wine that's been sitting in my wine fridge for over a year now. It was light, fruity, and not too sweet, and went very well with all the desserts (even the chocolate!).

It's fun cooking for me and Uly, but it's even better when we get to share some of our good cooking and good wine with people who can enjoy it! Thanks Phil & Shirley for spending your weekend with us!

Candy!

Not much cooking for the month of March, I guess 'cause I've been traveling and eating out a lot. Right before my last trip to Toronto though, I decided to make some candy to bring to my coworkers over there. After all, I bring stuff to my Sunnyvale coworkers all the time, so it's nice to be able to share some with the faraway guys.

I have brought some peanut brittle before, but this time, I decided to make bacon brittle! I have made this before and it turned out alright, but this was probably the best batch I've made so far. The last time I made it, I just used one of the bacon brittle recipes I found online. This time though, I used this recipe for peanut brittle from Epicurious. This recipe has always yielded really great peanut brittle for me in the past so I figured it would be a better base than the other recipes. To make it "bacon-pecan brittle, I substituted 1 pound of bacon (which I then cut up and cooked separately) and 2 cups of toasted pecans for the 4 cups of peanuts. I also added a bit more salt since the pecans are unsalted. This made the "brittle" part a bit saltier and more savory. Then instead of heating it up to 295F as in the recipe I let it go over 300F for quite a bit, reaching even up to 310. This made it extremely brittle and not as sticky. I think I've definitely found my go-to recipe for bacon brittle!

For the fudge, I used this old standby recipe, also from Epicurious. It's not quite authentic and doesn't involve the endless stirring, but it's easy enough and I really love the deep chocolate flavor (the extra boost comes from the espresso powder)! I made 2 versions, one version with nuts and one without nuts, but I think the one with nuts is much better, since the salty walnuts help cut through the sweetness of the chocolate.

My suitcase looked pretty funny, with the big zip-loc containers of fudge and brittle on it, but it was worth it, as they were very well-received. I do enjoy cooking for other people and making them happy, so it's quite a rewarding pastime despite the work that goes into it.

Bœuf Bourguignon for two

After trying Julia Child's coq au vin recipe, I was looking forward to trying her Bœuf Bourguignon. We've made "Beef Burgundy" a couple times before, using the recipe from America's Test Kitchen's "The Best Recipe" book. We've had that cookbook for years, and has never failed to give us the best recipes for all sorts of dishes from Thanksgiving turkey to chocolate chip cookies. However, for French cooking, Julia Child is still the queen! Both her Coq au Vin and Bœuf Bourguignon are a bit more complicated than the America's Test Kitchen version, but the flavors are so much better and more complex. Maybe it's all the extra butter. =)

When we made the previous version, we made it for large parties, so we used a whole brisket roast. This time, we used lean stewing meat which was recommended by the recipe, and it was much cheaper and had less fat. I guess it didn't matter that it was cheapo stewing meat since it got tender anyway after cooking for over two hours. Since it was just me and Uly eating, we cut the recipe in half and there was more than enough to even have a third portion for Uly to eat the next day. It was a good time for us to finally try the Le Creuset 2-quart dutch oven that we got on sale months ago but was backordered at the store. It's the perfect size for two!



For sides, we kept them pretty simple, since we had such a flavorful sauce. Like our coq au vin, we stuck to the boiled potatoes, which soaked up the sauce really well. We also had some baguette on the side to have with some butter and also to sop up the remaining sauce. I've had baguette from Safeway, TJ's, Acme, and I still think that Lee's (of the Vietnamese sandwiches) has the best baguette!



Our usual standby wine for braising is the Réserve Perrin Côtes du Rhône ($6.99 at Trader Joe's), which is actually drinkable and has produced some great sauces for us. However, this time we wanted to use a real Burgundy, so we got a similarly priced real French Burgundy from Trader Joe's. When I tried out a sip of it, it was pretty horrible, and I was worried that it would produce a weak sauce, but it actually wound up working pretty well. Unlike the Côtes du Rhône however, we just couldn't bring ourselves to drink the leftovers, so I just froze the rest in an ice-cube tray to make pan sauces and such.

For our drinking wine, we didn't have any French Burgundy in our cellar, but we had quite a bunch of California Pinot Noirs. When we visited Merry Edwards in Sonoma last December, I remember their wines being extremely full-bodied for a Pinot, and since our bottle was pretty young too, I figured they could stand up to the beef. We had a couple of single-vineyard bottles from them, and wound up opening the Merry Edwards "Meredith Estate" Russian River Valley Pinot Noir 2007. As we expected, it was full-bodied enough to stand up to the beef and sauce, and went perfectly with our meal.

Since my diet started, I haven't really been able to indulge in one of my favorite foods, cheese! I've convinced myself to not buy any until my first shipment from the cheese club that Uly got me for Christmas. However, my shipment kept getting delayed and I actually have hardly had any cheese in 2010. When I saw the notification from Milk Pail that they had French soft cheeses on sale, I couldn't resist picking up the one cheese I haven't tried before, Fougerus. It was nice and ripe, more similar to Pont-l'Évêque than Brillat Savarin in texture, so it's not as creamy but it has a nice flavor. The parts near the rind have a nice musky aroma to them (or as Uly would say..."feet smell", but I actually quite like stinky cheeses so I enjoyed this one a lot. At least I don't feel so bad since I only had one cheese. Hopefully I can have more again once the diet is over!

Valentine's Day Feast

Since we had a blast cooking our V-day dinner last year, we thought we would do it again this year. Not only do we get to spend time together, but it's a really great excuse to get some high-ticket items for dinner. Last year, we got some fresh truffle for Osso Buco, this year it's Kobe beef!

We've ordered from 1-800-kobebeef.com before (seriously, that's the name of the site), and were very happy with their A5 Japanese Kobe beef. Previously we've cooked it sous-vide to make sure it's perfectly rare. This time however, since the steak we got this time was a bit thinner, we were worried we might overcook it with the final searing if it started off already a bit cooked. Also, since we got the steak a few days early, we decided to "dry-age" it a bit more, to give it a better crust. Kobe beef needs no embellishment at all, so Uly just threw it on the grill for about a minute on each side. When you've got beef this good, no sense covering it up in sauce, or even salt and pepper for that matter. The end result was a nice crust on the outside and nice juicy fattiness on the inside. I do think sous-vide would be a better choice for a thicker steak, since it cooks more evenly, but this piece of beef still puts other steaks to shame.



For our sides, we needed something worthy of the steak. I decided to reprise my truffle mac & cheese since it was so tasty the last time I made it. Having both the truffle oil and the jarred black truffles really made a difference in the flavor, fresh truffle would have been wasted since the dish was going into the oven anyway. For our vegetable, we sauteed some swiss chard, loosely based on this recipe from Epicurious, but using shallots instead of the onions.




We had a special steak, so it definitely needed as special wine to go with it. We had gone to Ridge for a Monte Bello tasting the day before, and were very tempted to open the half-bottle of 1987 vintage Monte Bello for dinner. However, we decided a half-bottle wasn't enough, and we wanted something younger to go with the meat. We then opened a 1999 Monte Bello that Uly bought a while back. At a little over 10 years, it had enough complexity to suit our sophisticated meal, but still had enough tannins and bite to stand up to all the rich food. I think we'll probably just drink the '87 with some cheese.

Since the Kobe was so rich, and we didn't want to be spoiled by eating something beforehand, we decided to skip the appetizers altogether. For dessert, we still had some leftover Kara's cupcakes from the package I sent him last Friday, so we just decided to have those instead. Saved me the trouble at least of having to run into the kitchen after dinner and so we just got to sit and enjoy our wine for a while. Once we were done, we just had a nice sherry to go with our cupcakes. We may have had some big-ticket ingredients, but at least the effort was not...it actually only took us a little over an hour to prepare everything.

Counting both the food and the wine, we actually spent more on this dinner than we did at Commis the night before, but it was well worth it. What better way to spend Valentine's day than to cook and eat great food, and drink great wine with the one you love.


Thanks babe for the flowers...they were gorgeous! :)