catching up and a little hiatus

I'll be back in a few weeks to start up posting again but here's a few things I made since my last.

rainbow swiss chard and bean sprouts in a garlic & soy butter sauce over fried brown rice: 

Meat "gravy" with spare ribs, meatballs and italian sausage over rigatoni. I eventually turned this into a baked rigatoni dish with ricotta and mozzarella cheese on top.

Peach cobbler cake with a healthy dash of rum and  brown sugar, pecan and peach layers baked in:

Chocolate cupcakes with ganache frosting. Callebaut and Guittard chocolates were involved. They like each other.

Till then. =) 

gramercy tavern & how I almost got sick before the meal started

So I love bread and I love butter, right?

Gramercy Tavern has awesome bread while you wait, right?

Well we went there for our anniversary on the 18th and I lovingly slathered soft butter all over a piece of bread. I sprinkled a pinch of sea salt they provided and then I began to devour this piece.

Moments later I had that feeling.

Y'know, the feeling you get when you're allergic to something and you get nauseated?

The feeling of saliva rushing from the depths of your mouth to flush it clean of the offending item. The feeling I hadn't had since I ate a raw almond offered at a Hindu temple in high school.... yeah that one.  It hit me full force and nothing on the table could cure me of the feeling.

And I still don't know what it was. I refused to experiment lest I get sick and not be able to eat anything.

After I ran to the bathroom to rinse my mouth out with water I felt much better.

Now onto the food.

For starters I had the special which was lamb with corn, roasted baby peppers and these cute little tomatoes I forgot the name of.

He had the paparadelle with lamb ragout which looked mouthwatering, but he said had too much swiss chard. I ate what he didn't.

For the main course he had the hanger steak with fingerling potatoes, red Russian kale and bourbon sauce.

Lots of kale, not too many potatoes. I ate the kale since he's not as fond of it as he thought.

Now onto my main course... you're going to frown at me when you find out what I ordered because I let out a deep sigh once I saw it in front of me.

I got... the meatball.

It's just one huge meatball and I think I might have enjoyed the ones I got at the meatball place on the LES better.

The potatoes were the best part.

I made up for it with dessert.

He got the chocolate pudding with salted caramel brioche croûtons.

I got the apricot bread pudding with sour cream ice cream and caramelized white chocolate. I also got one of the croûtons as garnish cause he's cute.

I wasn't too enamored of the ice cream but the pudding and caramelized white chocolate combined with it to make something amazing happen in my mouth. It almost completely erased the memory of my nausea earlier.... until I crunched down on one too many hazelnuts.

blaue gans, we were standing alooooone

We went to Blaue Gans because we were famished and the shop opening we went to lacked AC. He got the wings and fries (heh). I got the wiener schnitzel and a side of spätzle.



I don't like dill. No, really, I don't care for it at all. This made the cucumber and potato salad a bust for me. I requested more lingonberry jam.

Their spätzle was less buttery and more creamy. It was more like scallion flecked macaroni and cream (sans cheese). It was still tasty, but it needed salt.

The only thing that didn't need salt was the bread they served in the beginning.

It's a very cool space and the servers were all wearing different soccer jerseys in honor of the World Cup.

cooking slow by necessity and Dreamfields pasta

Now I love pasta. I adore it, but sometimes the carbs don't love me so much. When that happens I go and get a box of Dreamfields (WHY DON'T YOU MAKE ANGEL HAIR OR SMALLER SPAGHETTI?!)



...ahem anyway. It tastes like pasta because it is pasta, but they've done something special to the carbs to block them from being absorbed. Apparently this doesn't hold true upon vigorous reheating or possibly cooking in tomato sauce (but then why the lasagna? I'm going to mark this as a pasturban legend).


So last night I got home quite late and didn't have much time to cook since I had to raid in WoW (my second job, sometimes)

Here's what I did.

• The water I had boiling i set to very low so it was barely simmering.
• I'd cooked a few pieces of bacon and ate them while I put a sliced vidalia onion in their oil, added a little butter and put it on almost-off-low.
• When we wiped on XT hard mode I'd go and check on the onions and eventually added some garlic to them. I also added cayenne, oregano, basil, black peper and thyme
• Back to raiding...
• Smelled the garlic and added sliced crimini mushrooms to the pan
• Raid
• I let that go till the mushrooms were quite done and just turned the whole thing off.
• When we were done raiding (after 1am, we started at 9pm) I put the water back on high.
• I added sliced chicken breast to the pan and the juice of one lemon
• Cooked it till it was done and ooh.. remember not to overcook the Dreamfields pasta because it turns to mush. The spaghetti takes 9 mins!

I took a little bit and put it in a bowl and saved the rest for lunch today.

I also added ample amounts of parmesan.


Here's the recipe condensed:

1 chicken breast sliced
1 medium vidalia onion sliced thinly into half moons
8-10 crimini mushrooms
8 cloves garlic (I do love this, use it to your taste)
3 slices of bacon
butter, olive oil
spices like oregano, thyme, basil, black pepper and cayenne
a dash of soy sauce
the juice of one lemon
pasta to serve it over
Parmesan

cook bacon in large skillet and reserve (or eat!). Place onions into bacon grease and set the eye to low. Add a pat of butter. Cook until the onions are soft and near caramelized. Add minced garlic and cook until golden. Add mushrooms and spices. Add butter or olive oil if needed.

When the mushrooms are close to done add the chicken, soy and lemon juice. Cook until just done and still tender.

Serve over pasta with ample amounts of Parmesan!
This is what it looked like before I mixed (and devoured):


Best part about the Dreamfields pasta? One serving has 5 "digestable" carbs.

ragu and paparadelle

nuff said.