Up Over...

After a nice but too-short trip down under (a bit of a work/play holiday, really) we are back in Boston and mourning the loss of summer. As much as I like autumn in New England, it's hard to enjoy it for what it is knowing how quickly it will give way to winter...

We were in New Zealand and Australia just in time for the tail end of winter and the official start of spring. Already quite beautiful in Port MacQuarie (AUS), where Mel's brother was married -- congrats, Jamie and Melissa! And not too shabby in Auckland, either. I still enjoyed reading in the sun out on the terrace at Pam and Allen's place as I do in summertime, just with a long-sleeve shirt this time.

While in Australia we had some food and wine experiences worth noting. In Melbourne we had dinner at Markov Place (Drummond Street, Carlton) with our hosts from the biomedical research institute we were visiting. Great tasting menu with fresh oysters and paella, as well as a really nice Kiwi pinot gris. The coup de grace, though, was our dinner at Vue de Monde in Melbourne.

This is one of the top restaurants in a city where restaurants are very good. The experience was a first for us: a ten-course customized degustation menu with matched wines -- and over four and a half hours, no less. This is how to use your taste-buds to their full potential. Our personal culinary guide was a chef from Boston, so we got to discuss some of our favorites from our part of the world. Check out the sample menu below -- not exactly the same as what we had, but pretty similar.


Note the cheese course followed by a palate cleanser and two dessert courses. We all discovered some new delights -- the best truffle risotto ever, and some innovative ways to use the liver of a well-fed fowl. Thanks for your impeccable taste, Goffy -- we look forward to returning the favor.

We had the chance to visit just one winery while we were in Australia. Cassegrain wines, just outside Port MacQuarie, had some beautiful grounds and a great reserve semillon from 2000 that we brought back in my cunningly packed hardcase suitcase. This was different from anything we've ever tasted before: capsicum, citrus rind, floral and honey flavors with a deep straw-yellow color. We're looking forward to planning a meal for this one...

July 4th Holiday

Given how busy we have both been at work lately, we weren't planning to hold our usual all-day grill-fest for this year's 4th of July. The weather was looking pretty sketchy as well -- we've had a record shitty June here in Boston with low temperatures and tons of rain -- but at the last minute we hatched a plan with our good friends Etienne and Angelique to have a small, relaxing cookout. To our great delight, the weather cooperated and it turned out to be a really nice day.


We started off with a large pitcher of mojitos. We have been enjoying this particular libation with increasing frequency as the need to control the mint in the garden becomes more and more pressing. A simple recipe -- fresh lime juice, a ton of crushed (muddled) mint leaves, Bacardi white rum, seltzer and simple syrup made from unrefined cane sugar (recipe below). Along with requisite fresh guacamole and salsa, it made a great start to the afternoon.


Etienne, Angelique, Amanda and I enjoy ourselves over mojitos in the lush summertime green of the courtyard and garden.


As usual, Lily joined in the fun...


Etienne did a bang-up job preparing the pork loin skewers for the grill. His own secret BBQ sauce recipe includes smoked chipotles and cayenne pepper -- how did he get inside my head? Melissa prepared an avocado, tomato and romaine salad with balsamic vinegar, some beautiful sweet corn and her signature grilled eggplant. As usual, we had more food than we needed, but better too much than not enough, no? The same goes for wine, so we had shiraz and merlot (both of the Yellowtail variety), a Chilean cab sauv (2008 Cono Sur), and some chardonnay (2006 Santa Barbara Landing, a TJ's special from CA) open for the main course -- a great lineup of inexpensive cookout wines.


Unbeknownst to me, Melissa had put together a nice selection of cheeses for dessert, and the cheese board was so beautiful that we all had to take a moment to admire it before we dove in. Montagnolo Blue from New Jersey, a nice French brie, grana padano and tallegio from Italy, fresh sliced peaches, fig jam and fresh-picked basil and thyme from the garden. In lieu of baking our own bread (seriously, who has the time for that?), we have been buying a lot of Take-and-Bake lately -- 10 to 15 minutes in the oven and you've got worm, fresh-tasting bread. The baguette is quite good.



Here's a shout out to our two newly minted citizens on their first Independence Day as official Kiwi-Americans. Congratulations Melissa and Amanda!



Recipe for Mojitos

60 gms of raw sugar
~1/4 cup of water
450 mls of freshly squeezed limes (~12 limes)
~1 cup of mint leaves

450 mls of white rum
450 mls of soda water
2 fresh sprigs of mint for the pitcher
2 or 3 fresh mint leaves for each of the glasses
Ice

In a small saucepan heat the sugar and water until all the sugar is melted and it has become the consistency of a thick syrup (aka simple syrup). Combine the lime juice and mint leaves and simple syrup in a suitable vessel. Crush/muddle the mint leaves to release minty taste. I did this in advance and let stand in refridgerator for an hour or two before guests arrived.

To serve

Strain the lime juice mix into the pitcher and discard muddled leaves and lime pulp. To the pitcher add cold rum, soda water and stir. Add fresh spigs of mint leaves to the pitcher for garnish. Add fresh lime leaves to the sides of the glasses and fill with ice. We decided against also filling the pitcher with ice so as not to dilute the mojitos before they were poured.

The guys added a little more rum to their glasses, but the overall mix for me was just right. The mint growing in our garden is not your usual spearmint, but instead what seems to be a hardy variety of variegated ginger mint. It's nice because it survives the New England winter, and also nice is the fact that we have to drink a lot of mojitos to keep it from taking over the garden ;-)

Grill Update

Having skipped the entire month of May, I thought I'd give some highlights of our recent uptick in grilling activity with the warmer weather. We've had plenty of great food over the last month, but rather than attempt to catch up on all of those dishes, I'll show you what inspired me to get off my ass and put up a new post tonight.



We recently acquired a new ingredient to experiment with: a proper balsamic vinegar. This balsamic is made from Lambrusco, Trebbiano and Sangiovese grapes by Acetaia La Bonissima in Modena, Italy. It has been aged for a total of ten years in a long list of different woods. We had heard that a really good balsamic is something that you can enjoy sipping all by itself (vinegar? seriously?), but didn't really believe that until we tasted this. We were enjoying a beautiful Sunday out at the SoWa Open Market in the South End of Boston yesterday and happened upon a tent where a very passionate advocate of olive oils and balsamic vinegars was peddling his wares and offering well-narrated tastings. This stuff is ridiculous -- as fruity and rich as port wine, but with the sour bite of vinegar and a finish that stays with you for a few long, blissful minutes.




Used sparingly on grilled vegetables, fruit, fish and meats, it is a real treat. To inaugurate this new addition to our kitchen Melissa made a great meal tonight: grilled pork loin, romaine heart salad with mung bean sprouts, and a grilled peach half cradling a small pool of balsamic vinegar in its pit. The pairing of the pork, peaches and balsamic was so good that I forgot about the wine until the last few bites of my dinner -- which is a shame because the 2006 Tohu Pinot Noir we had (Marlborough, NZ) was a terrific match to the dish. Keep using that giant bottle of balsamic vinegar you bought at the grocery store for salad dressing, but get a bottle of really good balsamic and use it a few drops at a time on your special fruits, veggies and meats -- even ice cream or aged hard cheeses -- and you'll agree that it's worth every penny. I'm not optimistic about how long this rather expensive bottle will last in our house...

Two other recent dishes from the grill that were particularly noteworthy:

Another grilled pork dish, with sage and onion potatoes (the sage plant is already out of control and needed a serious pruning). The pork really needs nothing more that salt and pepper, and the trick is to get it off the heat before it gets tough and dry. Better to undercook than overcook -- it can always go back to the fire if you're squeamish about a little pink in the middle...

Last Saturday we were both thinking fish, so we picked up some nice looking rainbow trout and had it grilled with sliced yellow squash and Melissa's peach salsa (vine-ripened tomatoes, orange capsicum, peaches, lemon juice, chopped cilantro and sea salt). We enjoyed this meal out in the garden, and even Amanda ate the fish (we actually turned her ages ago).

Sorry for the long hiatus -- I'll try to post a bit more often...

Sunday Brunch and The Season's First Grill

While Melissa thrills to the next-to-finale episode of Hell's Kitchen, I thought I'd catch up with a quick post to Foodie Calls. We had a spectacular weekend of warm, sunny weather (and absolutely minimal lab work), so we made the most of it. Saturday we took a nice long walk around the South End with Amanda to check out some galleries and studios, then enjoyed a late lunch and drinks at the Gaslight Brasserie. On the way home we mustered all our remaining energy to shop for the brunch we planned to host at our place on Sunday...




We got up early Sunday to start the preparations. Melissa prepped in the kitchen while I made the courtyard and gardens presentable. Then I ran to Whole Foods to get some last-minute items before the guests arrived -- avocados, blood oranges and the bouquet of spring daisies pictured above. On the menu for ten people were prosciutto-wrapped asparagus bunches, potatoes with red peppers, avocado and onions, and eggs Benedict. We had some variations on the standard Benny by offering a choice of salmon or prosciutto and conventional or orange-chipotle holladaise sauces. I believe the prosciutto/chipotle combination was the most popular by a fair margin, but all were fantastic.




In order to serve everyone at the same time and still have time to enjoy a glass of bubbly with our guests before the meal, Melissa made a few strategic preparations early that morning. The asparagus were blanched and wrapped, and since we planned to serve them cold they could sit to the side until needed. The potatoes took some time to cook but were left warming gently on the stove top while people arrived. Most importantly, Melissa half-poached a dozen eggs for the Benedicts way ahead of time and plunged them into ice-water to stop the cooking. This is a great trick, because a brief dip in boiling water from the kettle finished them off and allowed her to serve them hot at the last minute. She made one large batch of regular hollandaise sauce and added in the orange and chipotle peppers after assembling the dishes that required the conventional stuff. (I don't know how she thinks of all this when she has never served brunch for ten before.) A little help with assembly and delivery from Amanda and me made the perfect service. Our guests brought fresh fruit and wines, and we enjoyed some bubbly, some fresh summery whites, and a sparkling shiraz from Australia (made by Paranga) that was really stellar. That was a new one for us.

Tuesday night we decided to initiate the grill for the new season. We had actually used it already to blacken some bell peppers for use in the Sunday brunch potatoes, but that doesn't really count. We made a very simple favorite of ours: pork loin medallions marinated in equal parts Worcestershire sauce and smoked chipotle Tabasco sauce. Melissa whipped together a great salad of arugula, blood orange and avocado -- all left over from Sunday brunch. Spicy, smokey goodness in about half an hour.




Here's looking forward to a lot more outdoor dining now that the big thaw is complete!

Shrimp Alfredo; Beef Couscous Salad; Chicken Curry; Beef Stew with Lima Beans

We're trying to settle into a rhythm of posting two to three times a month, and I'm even having trouble keeping up with that. Of course, Melissa is cooking as much as ever, but getting the photos and descriptions up is my responsibility...

Here are some recent highlights:

First up is a shrimp Alfredo pasta Melissa whipped together last week as a last-minute dinner decision (the way she usually cooks for just the two of us). This was a really nice meal, and the tomatoes lent a special richness to the dish because Melissa reduced them in the oven before adding them to the pasta. This concentrates the sweet and tart flavors, and it's a nice touch if you've got a little extra time and some olive oil handy. We already had the shrimp and peas in the freezer, so no extra trips to the store were required. A creamy Alfredo sauce was made with cream, egg, Parmesan cheese (a staple item we always have in the fridge) and plenty of garlic. With this dish, we finally opened a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse (white Burgundy) that Etienne and Angelique had given us some time ago, and it was perfect with the shrimp and pasta.




Melissa loves to make couscous salads with all manner of ingredients that need to be used up. This one was made with shredded beef, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic and plenty of cilantro. The beef was cooked in a stew of canned tomatoes that Melissa often uses: she reduces a whole can of diced tomatoes in a large saucepan and lets them burn just a little to caramelize the sugars and bring out a smoky flavor for the sauce. Then she adds back the volume of water that was boiled off along with garlic, onions, salt and pepper, and stews the large chunks of beef (chuck or some other inexpensive cut) in this mixture. This time she threw in some smoked chipotle peppers in adobo sauce that we had in the freezer (originally from a can -- we didn't smoke them), then shredded the cooked beef before mixing it in with the couscous salad. This was fantastic. I may be biased since I love chipotle peppers -- Tabasco makes a thick, rich smoked chipotle sauce that we often use as a marinade for chicken and pork on the grill, which I'm sure will make an appearance soon now that the weather is beginning to warm up...




Melissa's curries are always a welcome treat, and this simple red curry uses the same tomato base described above. After reducing and caramelizing the canned tomatoes, she adds back the water, onions, a curry spice mix, and some whole peppercorns and coriander seeds. This is simmered down again while the chicken cooks through (in the same pan). Melissa served the curry with raita on a couple of homemade scallion pancakes from dough that she wisely froze down the last time she made some for a snack. She makes the raita from a plain yogurt base with a little cumin and lemon juice, some chopped cucumber, and finely chopped cilantro or mint, whatever is on hand. The curry is really quite easy, and Evan recently added this dish to his growing repertoire in his cooking lessons with Melissa. His curry was served on store-bought naans that are great when warmed in the oven and brushed with oil and garlic.




Finally, we have a simple beef stew with parmesan-tossed lima beans. The beef was stewed in a sauce of chardonnay, Dijon mustard, onions, sliced button mushrooms, salt and pepper. The lima beans were boiled and then tossed in grated parmesan cheese while still very hot. It was all topped with chopped cilantro, which we quite like, but it was really just for garnish and parsley would be great if cilantro is too strong a flavor for you.




There is material for another post that should go up as soon as we get our camera back from Amanda...


Eat well!

Five-Course Dinner Party for Six

As you can see, I am playing a bit of catch-up this week on the food blog. I credit (among other things) the evils of television for my lackluster posting habits of late. Five reasons why TV is evil: (1) it's impossible to ignore when it's on, (2) it distracts me from the reading that I wish I were doing (3) it distracts me from posting to this blog, (4) it distracts me from all the other projects I wish I were working on, and (5) knowing all this, I watch TV anyway.

Well, one distraction that is much more powerful than television is eating and drinking with good friends. Last Saturday we hosted a dinner party with two other couples that have recently proven to be great new partners in the enjoyment of lovingly crafted foods and copious amounts of wine. For the occasion, Melissa planned an impressive five-course meal of dishes that (in Melissa's words) are all fairly easy to make. The night started with avocado and crab soup with creme fraiche and chopped scallions, an idea which Melissa borrowed from a dinner Ramon made for us on one of his visits here from The Netherlands. We had a chardonnay (Bogle Vineyards' current vintage, CA) and a kiwi sauvignon blanc (Matua Valley, 2008, Marlborough) open for this course.

For the second course Melissa pulled out that shrimp dish she put together for our anniversary dinner a couple of weeks ago. She sauteed some large peeled shrimp in garlic and butter (no wine this time) and served them up with tomato, red bell pepper, red onion, avocado, cilantro and lime salsa on small salad plates. If you look back at the previous post you'll notice that she changed the presentation a little to accommodate the smaller plates. Equally nice to look at. We were still working on those two white wines with this dish -- just getting warmed up, really.

Third course: prosciutto-wrapped asparagus with poached egg and Hollandaise sauce. Melissa dreamed this up as a brunch dish (previously using bacon), and couldn't resist bringing it out as part of a menu honouring the onset of spring (yes, it's still hovering around freezing in New England, but we know spring is out there somewhere...). Melissa wrapped up blanched asparagus bunches in prosciutto and then pan-seared them to create a great fried-ham aroma that had us all salivating, then topped them with egg and Hollandaise. This dish served as a perfect segue into the big beef dish...

We had a nice wine and cheese break during the preparation of the meat course: filet mignon with pan-roasted Brussels sprouts, reduced tomatoes and lima beans. David brought around a sample of his first stab at cheese-making. The gouda-style semi-soft cheese had a really great flavor and texture -- if this was David's maiden voyage in cheese-making I can't wait to see what he comes up with next... The Brussels sprouts were Melissa's inspiration for this dish, and her treatment made these tiny cabbages as beautiful to eat as they are to look at. They were halved and steamed before cooking them with butter and salt in a hot frying pan to brown the face. The sweet/tart reduced tomatoes and soft lima beans provided a nice variety of flavor and texture on the plate. And a good rare filet mignon never disappoints.

We had a couple of really nice reds with the meat dish that I want to mention. One of the wines brought by David and Kathy was a red blend from the Acorn Winery in Sonoma, California's Russian River Valley. Acorn's 2006 Medley is a blend of so many grapes it takes half the back label to list them: zinfandel, syrah, mourvedre, cinsaut, sangiovese, petite syrah, alicante bouschet and six different muscat varieties. Not kidding. The result is described in one review I found online as a "symphony of fruit." This is certainly accurate, but the fruit is also backed up by woody, peppery notes, and I would have guessed it was mostly zinfandel from my initial impression. This was a lively and thoroughly enjoyable red. The second bottle was a 2005 Miratus vin de pays d'oc from Domaine Phillippe Nusswitz between the Languedoc and the Rhône. We bought a couple of bottles of this wine after a recent tasting organized by a Quebecoise group some friends of ours belong to, and in the tasting we were struck by its unusually intense strawberry flavors. It's a really pleasant blend of syrah, grenache and mourvedre with plenty of fruit, a light to medium body and an eye-catching label. A great glass.

Finally we got to the dessert Melissa started making Friday night. She began with the idea of a trio of sorbets, then decided that cherries, strawberries and rhubarb had to be involved, and in the end decided that it needed a rich, creamy ice cream as well. The result was the beautiful trio pictured here. The one in back is a puree of Bing cherries (canned) frozen into a ball and then dipped into melted semi-sweet chocolate before re-freezing overnight. The concoction on the right is a strawberry and rhubarb puree that Melissa made on the spot with pre-frozen strawberries, fresh chopped rhubarb and a little sugar to sweeten. The tart berries and rich chocolate were balanced out by the scoop of butter pecan ice cream.

We brought out the second bottle of late-harvest gewurztraminer we brought back from New Zealand this year (2005 Judd Estate, Gisborne, by Matua Valley) to have with dessert, and when we finished that we opened the bottle of Weingut Johannishof German Riesling (2006) brought in by Beth and Per. I think we all suffered a bit of food and wine hangover on Sunday, but it was sooooo worth it.

Melissa pulled off another magnificent dinner without even breaking a sweat.

Our Wedding Anniversary

Melissa and I recently had a small but decadent gourmet celebration in honor of our second wedding anniversary (March 9). We like to have a bottle of wine from the vineyard where we were married (Ascension Wine Estate, Matakana, New Zealand) in honor of the special day, and so we bring back a few every time we visit Melissa's family. Currently we have "The Ascent" Reserve Chardonnay (2006) on hand, so we put together a small starter dish and a (considerably larger) cheese plate designed to complement the wine.

To start, Melissa made a simple but elegant shrimp dish. For each plate, a half dozen large peeled shrimp were sauteed in a white wine, butter and garlic sauce and served with a fresh salsa of chopped red capsicum, avocado, red onion, tomato and cilantro with a dash of lime juice. As you can see, it made a visually stunning presentation, and the classic shrimp, garlic and salsa flavor combination pairs nicely with a dry, crisp and fruity wine like The Ascent Chardonnay.

We love a simple cheese plate with a nice wine. You can find an endless supply of advice on wine and cheese pairings in books and on the internet, but of course what it really comes down to is just what you think tastes good together. Cheese can generally mask both the bad and the good characteristics of wine, so this is a terrible way to judge the intrinsic qualities of a wine. But just like any wine and food pairing, when you hit upon a really good combination the synergy can be a fantastically rewarding experience. We went to the Whole Foods cheese counter and chose a few cheeses based on three criteria: what we know we like, what looks (and smells) interesting, and what we think might pair nicely with a wine we already know quite well. The result of this thoroughly subjective exercise was the following collection of cheeses (clockwise from the blue):

Fourme d'Ambert -- a semi-hard, mild French blue cheese made from raw cow's milk

Robiola due Latte -- a soft-ripened brie from northern Italy made from cow and sheep's milk

Taleggio -- a semi-soft and mild tasting (but strong smelling) Italian cow's milk cheese

Hirtenkase Reserve -- a hard cow's milk cheese from southern Germany that resembles aged gouda

I think for both of us the Taleggio proved to be a very pleasant new discovery. It's a rich, creamy feel with an earthy flavor and a surprisingly fruity edge to it. That said, the Hirtenkase was the star of the evening as far as wine and cheese pairings go. Apparently what starts as a semi-hard cheese, kind of like a reggiano or aged gouda, actually softens with age. We had a relatively young one at 5 months, and we both would have put money on it to be aged gouda tasting it blind. Can't quite put a finger on what made the pairing so spectacular, but Melissa and I both looked around almost in confusion at how much the wine and cheese flavors both developed for the better when experienced together. A spot of fig jam added even more nutty, fruity goodness to the mix.

Happy anniversary to us...

Three Great Salads

In the couple of weeks after Valentine's Day, Melissa made good use of some leftover ingredients from our three-course love-day dinner by putting together some tasty salads. When we eat we are generally shooting for diversity, not low-fat or low-calorie per se, so you'll notice that these have some ingredients you wouldn't include in a typical starvation-diet salad. They tend to be much more enjoyable that way...

While I was away for a conference, Melissa made two salads for her own meals -- both with the aim of using up the iceberg lettuce she used in the shrimp cocktail. The first salad was stir-fried chicken thighs, sliced and marinated in a soy-sauce and sesame oil concoction with a drop of liquid smoke added for that wood-grilled flavor. Served up on a couple of handfuls of iceberg lettuce with cherry tomatoes and fresh green capsicum, salt and pepper and a dab of Kewpie Japanese mayonnaise for dressing. I wish I had been here to eat that.

A second salad saw a similar set of ingredients in a slightly different incarnation: an avocado half from that Valentine's Day shrimp cocktail replaced the capsicum, and a poached egg was added (because Melissa loves poached eggs). Again that Kewpie mayo makes the dish.

This last one I did get in on. Using the last of the great beef tenderloin in our freezer and the one remaining blood orange from the blood orange mimosas, Melissa made a salad that set my taste buds buzzing. On a bed of field greens she served up seared tenderloin slices (seasoned only with salt and pepper -- and very rare) with sections of orange. The dressing was balsamic vinegarette blended up with marinated green peppercorns and a few garlic cloves. The acids from the orange and balsamic complemented the seared beef beautifully.

All three salads would be good with a crisp, fruity sauv blanc (probably from New Zealand or Chile in our house) or a nice dry chenin blanc. I don't remember what we drank with the tenderloin salad, but it was probably one of those.

Salads make us long for summer weather -- only three months to go...

Valentine's Day Dinner

I've been away for the last week for a conference in Santa Fe, NM, so I didn't get a chance to post our Valentine's Day Feast before leaving.

For Valentine's Day, I brought home a bouquet of mango calla lilies I had the flower shop around the corner order for me. We had these flowers in our wedding, so I thought they would conjure some great memories. I have nothing against roses, but I find a lot of other flowers more interesting...


We started with a prawn cocktail recipe Melissa found online -- it's one of Gordon Ramsay's and it was really tasty. That sauce is made up of Japanese (Kewpie) mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and cayenne pepper, among other things. Served with sliced avocado -- perfectly ripe since my allergy didn't pop up -- and shredded lettuce.

With that prawn cocktail starter we made some blood orange mimosas. We ran into this variation at an After Hours event at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here in Boston. These are great events where you get to wander around the incredible courtyard and gardens in this very unusual art museum with a glass of wine and listen to special short lectures on particular pieces. We have gone to quite a few of them, and it's right around the corner from Harvard Medical School, so it's a very convenient after-work destination.

The main course was a spectacular lamb shank dish with a spicy tomato sauce. As usual, Melissa cooked the shanks to perfection. They need to braise for a good 3-4 hours, but if you take the time to do it right, the meat just falls off the bone and melts in your mouth. The spicy sauce was a new experiment that came off really well. Mexican chili powder, ground cumin and smoked chipotle peppers gave the lamb a deep, smoky flavor and a nice kick. Melissa topped it with fresh chopped cilantro and served it with cilantro rice. We initially thought we would pair the lamb with a pinot noir, but with the extra spice in the dish we decided on a California Zinfandel for something a little heftier. This 2005 Oriel Hugo old-vine zinfandel (Russian River Valley, CA) fit the bill just perfectly. The deep, rich black cherry and spice with a slightly sweet finish made this one of the best zinfandels we've tried, and probably the best food pairing we've made in a long time. Price-wise, it was in the mid-range of the better zins at about $25.

Dessert was a strawberry souffle with strawberry-rhubarb compote and raspberry white chocolate truffle ice cream (Haagen-Dazs). Melissa got this recipe from Cuisine Magazine online, and although rhubarb was not particularly easy to find in the middle of winter, Whole Foods came through for me. Melissa served the dish with a brandy-rhubarb concoction on the side (shot glass). What a sweet finish.

Melissa's recipe for the braised lamb shank dish can be found at the end of the post.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lamb Shanks

3/4 green bell pepper

1/2 onion

(sautee until soft)

1 tbsp of peppercorns

1 tsp of coriander seeds

(grind and add to bell peppers and onion)

2 small lamb shanks

(toss in pan with onions etc and brown)

1 tsp of salt

1 tsp of mexican chilli powder

1 tbsp of ground cumin

1 Can of whole tomatoes

2 tbsp of canned chipotle pepper

1 cup of water

(puree and pour over onions and lamb shanks in cassarole dish - braise at300-350oF for 3 to 4 hours, turning shanks every hour and a half)

Chopped cilantro

Steam rice in salted water with 2 tbsp of chopped cilantro.To serve shanks remove from cassarole dish. Stir in fresh chopped cilantro andtop shanks with sauce. Serve with cilantro scented rice.

Four Great Chicken Dishes

We have had a streak of successful chicken dishes recently, so I thought I'd put them together into a theme post.

First up, a colorful Asian-inspired grilled chicken salad. Here, Melissa has marinated skinned, boneless thighs in soy sauce with sesame oil and sambal oelek, then broiled them under the oven element. The salad is a bed of mixed greens with sliced red capsicum and enoki mushrooms. Melissa made a delicious dressing by mixing the chicken drippings with a small amount of balsamic vinegar. Great salad with a light Kiwi sauvignon blanc.

For a dish more suited to cold winter evenings, Melissa made roast chicken thighs with curry-spiced green peas and garbonzo beans (chick peas). For these types of dishes Melissa always uses bone-in chicken thighs -- it's a tiny bit more trouble and a little extra fat, but all that gets you an infinitely better flavor and texture in the cooked meat. She first pan-fried the the chicken thighs to get that nicely browned skin, then moved them into a covered sauce-pot with frozen green peas, canned chick peas, chopped onions and some curry spice mix. This was cooked on medium heat until the chicken was done, and served as shown. Simple, hot and satisfying.

Another great winter dish: chicken thighs with garlic and zucchini (courgette). Melissa first rubbed the skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs with chicken stock paste for extra-rich flavor. In a medium wok-style Calphalon pan, she browned the skin of the chicken in olive oil with chopped onions, then added a half-cup of chicken stock and sliced garlic cloves, and covered to cook the poultry through. Finally, she added large slices of zucchini and finished in the covered pan to soften them up and soak in the flavor from the broth. The chicken was plated on top of a smattering of zucchini and broth and served with a glass of 2006 Black Mountain Gravel Bar chardonnay (Napa, CA). Not a bad drink for a $6 chardonnay; nicely balanced oak and fruit.

The final entry in this series of chicken dishes is a stuffed, turkey-wrapped chicken thigh with green peas. We recently hosted a poker night at our place, for which we had bought deli meats and cheese for sandwiches -- after all, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich invented the food in the mid-18th century so he could eat with one hand while continuing to play cards without getting them all greasy, or so the story goes...

At any rate, Melissa made great use of the leftover deli fare for this dish. The chicken thighs were skinned, boned and beaten out flat, then rolled up with a stuffing made of fresh chopped tomato, onion, dried sage, chopped deli slices of smoked turkey and swiss cheese, bread crumbs, salt and pepper to season and a bit of water to bind. The rolled chicken was then wrapped up in a thin slice of said turkey and cooked in the oven in a deep casserole dish. When these were finished, they were set aside so the frozen peas could be cooked in the leftover juices and bits of stuffing that had escaped during the cooking process. The stuffed chicken was served with a scoop of peas on the side. The tomato from the stuffing makes a nice visual contrast with the peas.

We had a bottle of 2005 La Patache Medoc cabernet sauvignon with this dish, which was quite nice after decanting, but we certainly could have done well to leave it on the shelf another few years. Alas, we are not yet well practiced at leaving wines on the shelf -- they tend to meet their end in our glasses in relatively short order...

Beef with Bulgar Wheat, Asparagus and Enoki Mushrooms

Well, we intended to get more than one post up in January, but such is life. Rest assured, the recent paucity of entries has less to do with lack of material than with the ass-dragging winter doldrums that make it difficult to get things done in this part of the country during the dark days of December and January. Seriously, while I thoroughly enjoyed the two weeks of New Zealand summer weather we got to experience over Christmas, the getaway may have made it that much harder to get through the rest of New England winter. Here in Boston, we're scheduled to warm up again sometime in June. I know there are plenty of places that have it worse, but that won't stop us from complaining...

On the upside, Melissa recently made a nice, hearty bulgar wheat dish that was unquestionably blogworthy: the grain was boiled to a perfect consistency and then drained and mixed with a little pepper jack cheese that we had in the freezer (a nice save from a holiday party at Harvard where the cheese buyers got a little carried away) to make a thick cheesy mix. She then combined the wheat base with sauteed slices of flank steak, red onions, garlic and asparagus, and topped it with a small bunch of enoki mushrooms and cracked pepper.

This dish went really well with a bottle of Kathy Lynskey Casto Reserve pinot noir (2004, Marlborough, NZ). Amanda's parents left us with a bottle of this beautiful boutique pinot when they visited for Christmas, and we recently bought another from Huntingon Wine and Spirits ($25, and worth every penny). This is a floral, earthy wine with deep fruit and woody notes -- it really picks up the mushroom and asparagus in the food. It's definitely worth a try if you come across it in your bottle store...

Getting Back To It: Pork Buns, Indian Dinner, Thai Ceviche, Pork Ball Soup

Just back from a two-week holiday in New Zealand, Melissa and I are feeling fat and happy after all of the indulgences of the season. Both still recovering from the 36-hour trip back to Boston (free flights, terrible itinerary), but ready to get back into the kitchen...

There were a couple of dishes we didn't get posted before leaving on Christmas Eve. Melissa's best recent experiment was her pork buns. These were similar to the Chinese treat, but Melissa used a stuffing that was more Indian-inspired: curried pork mince with small cubed potatoes, canned corn, carrots and onions. She made a very moist yeast bread dough and raised it once before wrapping up the fully cooked filling (still warm) to form stuffed dough-balls. These were left to rise again in a springform pan, then put into the oven to bake.

The nicely browned surfaces were achieved by brushing with egg glaze halfway through baking. The result was hot, fragrant, moist buns with piping hot curried pork filling; something like a cross between samosas and Chinese pork buns. Melissa served two on a plate with a scoop of extra filling on the side.

One of the last meals we had before leaving our apartment and cat in the capable hands of Amanda's parents, Carol and Russel, who were visiting from New Zealand for the holidays, was saag paneer with chicken curry on warm naan (see Indian Feast from our gewurztraminer tasting last summer for some similar Indian ideas). This was my request, more or less, since I called from the grocery store to say I couldn't resist those tasty packages of naans so we should maybe have some Indian food. Alas, Shaw's had neither paneer nor Halloumi, so we made due with some locally made fresh mozzarella cheese. We can't really recommend this, since the texture is wrong and the cheese is a bit bland, but the spinach, chicken and curry seasoning were really nice on the oven-warmed Indian bread. We had a bottle of Cono Sur "Vision" gewurztraminer (2007, Casablanca Valley, Chile) with this meal -- a favorite of ours and a very popular entry at that gewurz tasting we held last year.

After a single day of recovery from our travels, we went to a fantastic all-day meal with some new friends in Cambridge. The hosts had put together plenty of wine, a starter of do-it-yourself Tunisian brik (look that up) and a great main course of New Zealand lamb shank with dried apricots and large pearl couscous. They had prepared gallons (not kidding) of homemade veal stock for the lamb dish and their own future use, and a few large containers of it were sent home with the rest of us as party favors. That veal stock came in handy the next day, when we had Amanda and her parents and Evan over for Sunday dinner.

First, we shared a special wine with our guests: a bottle of 2006 "The Ascent" Reserve Chardonnay that we bought from the Ascension Wine Estate in Matakana, New Zealand, when we were married there in March of 2007. We selected a number of wines on the occasion of our vineyard wedding, and the chardonnays are ready to drink, so we brought them back with us from this year's visit. It's a rich, creamy wine with peach, apple, toffee and vanilla flavors. The remaining bottles will be enjoyed on another occasion.

Melissa started the dinner off with a nice fresh Thai-style ceviche (recipe previously posted) while we enjoyed one of the many New Zealand sauvignon blancs with which Carol and Russel had graciously stocked our wine shelf at the end of their stay here (along with some nice NZ pinot noirs and a chardonnay I look forward to tasting) -- unnecessary since they were doing us a huge favor by looking after our beast of a cat, but much appreciated nonetheless.

The veal stock was used for the main course of pork-ball soup. Pork balls were formed using fine ground pork loin with garlic powder, Thai chili paste, sambal oelek, fish sauce, salt and pepper, and boiled in a veal stock base. These were set aside to cool while sliced shiitake mushrooms were boiled in the same stock pot for about ten minutes and then taken off heat until the ceviche course was finished. Just before serving, Melissa re-heated the stock to boil some vermicelli noodles for 5-6 minutes, then added back the pork balls along with some gai choy (Chinese mustard cabbage) for color and texture. Very tasty soup.

The dinner was topped off with a dessert of pineapple and mango crumble with toasted coconut topping (recipe and photo at the end of this post) along with a really nice late-harvest gewurztraminer we brought back from New Zealand (2005 Judd Estate, Gisborne, by Matua Valley). Not a bad start to the new year...