Chef, What Was Your Inspiration…

The Inspiration… It comes from all the strange places. And limitations… Like you want to bake the Diana Kennedy’s mushroom pudding but you won’t dare to start the oven – it’s damn hot and AC is still broken… Or your friend comments on somebody’s pic on FB, you click out of curiosity, and start looking [...]

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3P for Dinner: Poblano, Potato, Pancetta

It was a busy day – work, then driving to JFK and back to drop the daughter off so i got to Wegmans when the wine section was already closed (not that it’s relevant to the post but it’s totally relevant to my state at the time) and they were cleaning pretty much all other [...]

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Perfect Summer Drink

Called Muscrat, i found it in the book Wine Cocktails. Mint, pineapple juice, apricot brandy and white wine – excellent! I will serve it at the next summer party! I might experiment with different liqueur, like rum or cognac.
ok, i repeated it with pineapple Bacardi rum infusion (homemade). The drink was almost savory and [...]

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Acelgas con Elotes y Crema

Fantastic dish i just learned from my friend, Rancho Gordo. He made it already twice in the last three days and i’m planning to do the same.

RG made it with watercress as the original idea suggested – i went with chard. There was not watercress in the store and in hindsight chard was no less [...]

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Mushrooms and Potatoes, the Eternal Duo

After a hearty lunch that included tacos de lengua and carnitas, meat was out of the question for dinner. I got mushrooms and potatoes. And dill. Scallions were already in the fridge.

Should i mention that our AC has been broken for several days already and i started to master the art of stovetop cooking?
Luckily i [...]

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Green Split Pea Dip

So good – the recipe adapted from Michael Psilakis.
Boil 1cup of green peas with a small onion and bay leave until soft. Drain. In a food processor pulse 1 roasted poblano, couple garlic cloves, 1 fat scallion, some cilantro and couple tbs of good white whine vinegar. Add peas. With motor running, slowly pour 1/2 [...]

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Pickled Carrots

A nice quick relish.
1.5lb of carrots shredded in food processor. 3 jalapenos seeded and cut into rounds (next time i won’t seed them or use more – the relish was not spicy at all). 2 cups of cider vinegar, 1 cup of water, spices (peppercorns, cloves, allspice and couple of cinnamon sticks), 1/2 cup of [...]

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Bacon and Squid con Scallion Rajas

One more variation on stir-fried squid. This time i added an excellent thick cut bacon.
Couple of squid cooking tricks i learned from somebody. Cut the squid in strips, put them into a bowl, add lemon juice and then olive oil, stirring until emulsified. At this point i usually add some flavorings – onions or other [...]

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Moorish Chickpeas with Spinach

Wegmans started to carry nice organic legumes – got some split peas and chickpeas to try. Decided to make the chickpeas/spinach dish one can find in every spanish cookbook. My version came from Jose Andres. I made some changes in spicing – braised chickpeas with cloves and cinnamon. Didn’t use saffron, and forgot paprika (stupidly). [...]

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Green, and Greneer

I liked greens in Kennedy’s arroz verde so much so that i decided to use this to flavor grits. In fact, it sounded like the right thing to do. And even more than that – the sauce seemed a natural as a shrimp marinade. Don’t need to explain where shrimp came from – you know, [...]

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