Archive for February 14th, 2010

Today is St. Valentine’s Day, and Trader Joes was offering these “long stemmed” strawberries. To me, this was a better gift than roses ever were.

After washing the strawberries and the leaves around the stem, be sure to dry them well. I dried them three times to make sure no water was left on the berries. They thankfully could be squeezed well without mushing, so they were perfect.

I used two types of Valrhona chocolate (76% and 42%, I believe) and mixed that with a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1 Tbsp. of butter. I melted it all over simmering water, then dunked the berries in, getting a good coat. Since the chocolate wasn’t too thin, you could manage to get a good, thick coat on the berries. I placed the berries on a plate covered in parchment paper.

After 30 minutes of refrigeration to set the chocolate, I took them out so they could be eaten at room temperature.

Bon appétit!

I had little to do with it, but we celebrated the Chinese New (Lunar) New Year last night with some homemade Chinese dishes.

First were homemade pork and chive dumplings.

For 3 hours I wanted to cook my pork baby-back ribs. As the sun was still coming into the kitchen, I grabbed this photo:

of the ribs ready to go into the oven. Five-spice powder, salt, and pepper coated the ribs.

Meanwhile, a special glazing sauce for the ribs was reducing on the stove…

which included things like blood orange juice, ginger, and hoisin sauce. I painted the ribs a total of four times through the cooking process, in the last hour. They were falling off the bone.

Here were things as we were winding down… ribs, fried rice, and brussels sprouts (not sure they are Chinese, but we like them).

Happy Year of the Tiger