meatless Monday and we’re having Crack & Cheese. Meatless Monday actually started way back during World War I by Herbert Hoover who was appointed to the US Food Administration. Kind of interesting to me as I never heard about it until a year or two ago. I guess it is a backlash against the massive pork, bacon and huge portions we eat in the US. As for Crack & Cheese-I blogged about it here before. Same recipe mostly applies and still like the way that strong Gruyere stands with sharp cheddar. Tonight we are having it with steamed broccoli and I don’t think we will miss the meat at all.
Category: dinner
dinner #25
what started out as Richard Blais’ 10 hour brisket rapidly evolved into something else. I brought home a 2# pot roast cut of meat and wholly planned to use his recipe and then read through it with my thinking brain on. Ten hours? Yeah, that isn’t happening. So, I pulled out my dutch oven and put a sear on the meat. Instead of then letting it rest and rubbing with his coriander, brown sugar and mustard slather I poured it over the top, added a cup and a half of apple juice to the pan and let it go for 3 hours. Spicy, sweet and perfect for dinner. We had some fresh sliced asiago bread & butter, steamed zucchini and a few pickles made of green beans and cauliflower and a few slices of Skellig Irish Cheddar cheese. One of my favorite dinners of the month so far!
dinner #24
I am feeling tired today for one reason or another. Didn’t get this done last night because I was tired then too. Dinner 24-almost finished with #31days and quite glad of it actually. I cleaned house most of the day yesterday and then that culminated with a leaking toilet and Z having to drop the wet cat (from the toilet) in the tub because it put me over the edge. We went out for dinner to one of our standby restaurants. We like it but I think I realized they are trying to cash in and expand last night because the food felt more…institutional. More like they were figuring out how to produce more for less. It could have just been my constitution though so I won’t hold it against them. Tibby’s New Orleans Kitchen. It has po-boys and gumbo, shrimp & grits. You know the drill. I had a half po-boy filled with shrimp and a dab of remoulade with a side of fluffy grits. For dessert we had some beignets. Honestly they weren’t my favorite beignets that I’ve ever had but they were comforting in that fried dough sort of way. I hope they are able to expand and not lose the charm that they had for me in the beginning. 
dinner #23
today was quite the day. And really, if i just posted what I ended up eating for dinner it wouldn’t tell the whole story. At 8:30 this morning we left for Epcot and “kitchen memories’ event featuring brother chefs Michael and Bryan Voltaggio. The event started later than the advertised 10am because as we heard while waiting to be let in to our tables there were three pours of wine to get out before we were seated So, at 10:30 we sat down to three glasses of expectation. After a bit of storytelling from the winemaker owners of Schweiger Vineyards as they explained the first glass of Schweiger Vineyards chardonnay. They don’t oak for that buttery thing that chardonnay usually has and it was definitely higher on my list of chardonnays. Then the Voltaggios came out and Michael proceeded to talk about his memory of grilled cheese and tomato soup but served it to us in a very atypical way. It was a super fun dish of cuttlefish and sea beans with gazpacho and ink gruyere gougeres with tomato pates de fruits. The cuttlefish was chewy like noodles and the sea beans were definitely a salty taste They served these on top of seaweed and shells because they like to garnishes to make sense with the dish. The shells and seawood were a bit lost under the blue (reading as water) glass plates but all the tastes together were really interesting and definitely did elevate the grilled cheese tomato soup experience. 
The second course was done by Bryan and was roast chicken. As they prepped and discussed this course Michael worked as hard as he could to push his brothers buttons. Messing around putting the obviously not ‘just cooked’ chicken on his face – they discussed poking a lemon up the butt (their words) of the chicken so that it doesn’t dry out and is full of more aromatics. He showed how to make a pumpernickel topped creamed spinach and gave a brief lesson on smoking guns as he discussed the grits (smoky cheesy) under the chicken. He talked a little about pan gravy from the juices and generally gave tips about his course and how the smokey Cabernet Franc wine would be a good match for it.
The final (and gigantic) course was dessert and was served alongside Schweiger Vineyards Port X. First came out a little tray of peanut butter ice cream and dark chocolate pops to hold us over (as though we needed it???) with our port as they discussed halloween candy and caramel apples. The final plate was a deconstructed candy apple. Little drops of applesauce (not sweet), smunched cookie crumbs and the most delicious caramelized lady apple. I could eat a dish of those apples every day! Then, as if it wasn’t enough they sent us home with a goodie box of chocolates-two fun swirly pops, fruit bark, truffles and some caramelly looking things dipped in chocolate! So, three glasses of wine before noon-can i call that dinner? We walked out of that fun meal happy to have paid the price and it having given us some new things to think about. We took a stroll through Food & Wine and made our way out of the park. It was far – FAR beyond the funny little dinner I made myself. Z is a bit sick and lying in bed – something that kind of developed this afternoon. So, I pulled a frozen crust out of the freezer and made a quick cheese pizza and ate a few truffles out of my box. I’ve probably had more than my share of fun today.
dinner #22
I totally don’t know what to write. Comfort food? I guess so. Tonight we had gorditas – what does that mean? Little fatty? Anyway, our thick flour tortillas were filled with lucsious comfort-pan fried potatoes, bacon lardons, huge shreds of cheddar, avocado chunks and hot sauce. Z opened up a bottle of boccalone hot sauce that freaked us out when it surged out the top of the bottle. It’s a grainy sauce, maybe better suited to roast meat than tacos but it was tasty. Fresh and fun cooking at our house tonight.
My Urban Pantry 