I recently had an another excellent short rib dish. This time, at Dd33 in Richmond’s far west-end.
I plan to make something like this at home this week… I saw a good recipe on TV with sherry vinegar… I was thinking a combination of balsamic, red wine, and beef demi-glace.
Recently, I followed a link from Metafilter and found this large knife. Evidently, Mario Batalli was using it in an episode of Iron Chef America.
It just looks bad-ass if you ask me.
This evening we hosted a small dinner party featuring a deluxe menu. Unbeknownst to your own chef, I wasn’t realizing each course included cheese. Parmesan, marscapone, romano, mozzarella, and a double-crème from France.
The first course was a garlicky duo of shrimp over a creamy polenta. This was my favorite course.
First, make polenta with vegetable stock. Add parmesan and marscapone cheese to finish off the polenta, and plate. On top, add shrimp you have marinated in olive oil and garlic, sautéed in more garlic, and add a garlic-chili sauce on the side for extra “pep.” Simple ingredients here, but a good marriage of flavors.
The second course included fresh melon, lemon sorbet, romano cheese, and Virginia country ham.
Simple, light, unexpected flavors. Salty, sweet, and sour. Deliciously refreshing.
The third course was a variation on “baked ziti,” featuring sweet Italian sausage, garlic, eggplant, and red pepper in a light tomato sauce. Fresh mozzarella cheese made things stringy.
The ultimate course was a special pairing of a melting cheese wrapped in flaky pastry with one of the more intense, thick chocolate drinks you ever had.
For the chocolate sauce, four chocolates were used… combinations of melted 64% semi-dark chocolate (Guittard) with triple cocoas with a combination of 50% heavy cream and 50% 2% milk. It got frothy hot, and was served alongside the melting cheese. Decadence, defined.
The cheese was made by wrapping phillo pastry and butter around the butter-like cheese. This really was too much, in terms of fat. But, I nevertheless enjoyed it. You have to try somethings at least once.
I hope you enjoyed the photos and menu!
Sometimes I worry about the warnings about eating too much “red” meat. Sharing a single steak between two via a salad seems like a sensible way to go.
This salad combined some things I had around the house. Fresh mozzarella cheese, roasted red peppers, and tomato. The steak was cooked simply, coated in salt and pepper. Aged balsamic vinegar played a role in the homemade dressing.
A couple of weeks ago, I sauntered into the Fresh Market and saw on display a sign of autumn: various squashes, gourdy-looking things, including acorn and butternut. Without thinking much, I put one butternut into the basket and it was the first thing I had acquired. Turns out, out of the two meals I made, the squash never made it to the party. But I knew what I wanted to make: a soup based on this squash.
This is where I digress and ask you a question. Have you ever made a dish, either from a recipe, or as in my case, completely on your own, where when you were finished it hit you in the head… this is haute cuisine? Because when I had finished my soup, I knew it was… special. It was that unexpected kind of special, like, “Hell, how did I make this again? Because this recipe might be worth something!” Instantly, I saw myself serving this soup in small cups that I obviously didn’t own (fancy, at that) to guests with their noses in the air, all poised to watch me fail at making great cuisine. Instead, they sip this magic soup, and expressions of utter shock and awe wipe across their face. Only soon, you see, those expressions are replaced with smiles and uttered requests for more soup. And a soup like this would set the stage for a killer meal, you know. “This is the best soup I think I’ve ever had,” one might say, and another, “definitely…”
Ok, dream-state aside, there was no fancy dinner party with discriminating women with fancy jewelry or male wine connoisseurs… but I did feel the soup was riche enough to serve in…. mugs. I need to get some smaller little fancy soup containers, for sure… the leftovers were still good in a full-sized soup bowl for a lunch, a week later, after freezing. Yes, it froze wonderfully.
I give credit here to Patrick O’Connell who was giving me inspiration in the last three recipes I made of his… no, this isn’t an O’Connell recipe, I figure the squash was really just wonderful and somehow some of O’Connell’s genius rubbed off. Maybe. Well, I don’t have a precise recipe, but here are the basics:
That’s it, folks… it was thick, creamy, and just the right combination of sweet, “nutty,” and savory. The color was gorgeous, too. Sorry, no photos this time around.