Fall Flavors: Take One

Good evening, everyone. Neil and I are reviving this blog with a bang! We have a lot of exciting new dishes planned for the year.

The Menu:

APPETIZER
Shaved Fennel and Arugula Salad

SALAD
Whipped Sweet Potatoes with Cardamom

ENTREE
Pork Tenderloin with Apples, Calvados, and Apple Cider

As it is fall, the central ingredient of our main course was apples!

We really enjoyed this recipe because of the rich flavors from browning all the ingredients and melding them together with a thick, cider cream sauce. I was skeptical at first but it worked surprisingly well.

Browned to perfection

We also wanted a side dish that would compliment the rich flavors of pork. Another dish on the sweet side – whipped sweet potatoes. Prep was simple and involved roasting the sweet potatoes in an oven for over an hour. Then, we added small amounts of cream and butter, and whipped them all together using a KitchenAid stand mixer and reheated in the oven! The cardamom added an unusual but distinct flavor.

Extra sweet

Into chunks

Whipped & whipped

The final product

The last dish was the fennel arugula salad. Arugula as to combat the sweetness of the other two dishes (overall, it may have been too much sweetness). It was a simple salad. The hardest part was cutting the fennel extra thin to get a paper-like consistency. Other than that, it was a solid dish.

Paper-thin! Well, we tried.

Action shot with the Parmesan cheese

Stay tuned for more!

Chinese New Year (Jacket Required)

As with all Chinese New Year celebrations, there must be an extravagant dinner!

What better way to celebrate the lunar new year than to enjoy a multi-course meal with friends and family.

This dinner required a lot of planning, due to the number of dishes we were preparing. We went to Chinatown to buy most of our ingredients and spent the majority of the day prepping and cooking.

Our menu was as follows:

1. Scallion Pancake
2. Pork Dumplings
3. Stir-fry Pea Sprouts
4. Stir-fry Bok Choy
5. Steamed Eggs with Chinese Sausage
6. Sanbeiji (Three Cups Chicken)
7. Hongshaorou (Braised Pork Belly)
8. Steamed Fish
9. Niangao (New Year Cake)

The pictures:

Happy dumplings

Chinatown Ingredients

Chopped pork belly

Finale

Simply braised

The ingredients of ingredients

Thinly sliced green onion

Appetizers

The essential dish

The more alcohol the better

All ingredients in

All in the pot

Spreading

That’s a lot of fat

Adding

Ground pork with added sesame oil and soy sauce

Simple

Lobster Bisque

One of my favorite soups is a lobster bisque, but you can only really get it at fancy restaurants where they give you like five spoonfuls of soup for $15 or more, so I decided to make some myself and see just what went into the creamy concoction.

Started with boiling three one-pound lobsters.

After the lobsters were cooked, I de-shelled them and set the meat aside for later.

All the shells go into a wide pot with brady and sherry, sauteed to bring out some of the lobster’s remaining flavor.

Garlic, celery, carrots, tomatoes, tarragon, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, and onions.

After boiling all the aromatics with the water the lobsters or like two hours, I separated all the liquid from the solids. Everything in the pictures got thrown out (after being nibbled on).

After being strained, the broth is left to simmer with some added tomato paste. I simmered it until it reduced to a bit less than four cups.

After it had been reduced, I added whipping cream, and some corn starch to give the soup its thick and creamy texture.

Finally after the soup is brought to one last boil, the lobster meat is added to each bowl and the soup is poured over it. I finished the soup with a puff pastry on top.

Was it worth the work?

Well it took about four hours of pretty consistent work, cost about $50 in ingredients, and made about four cups of soup in the end, with the worst thing being de-shelling all the lobsters without proper equipment (ouch on the fingers). It tasted AMAZING (just like in the restaurants, if not better), but I think in the future I’ll leave it to the pros.