so, the chef picked up 100+ oysters from the local seafood market a couple days ago. we made our own mignonettes and cocktail sauce – it was soooo delicious. luckily, the chef’s parents were around to shuck all these guys!
Category: dinner
Our “Plated” Review
ads for boxed meal deliveries have inundated us online — facebook and instagram are full of them. the pictures look beautiful, but i’ll admit we was more than a little skeptical; first, that the produce and meat delivered to us would look as good as they do on the websites (i mean, when have you ever seen a big mac that looks like the advertisements?) and second… that the meal would be good at all.
we looked into plated, blue apron and hello fresh. we didn’t want to make a massive investment into something we weren’t sure about — so we went with the one that was the cheapest off the bat. we paid just $24 for three meals for the both of us. we thought $24 was an amount of money we’d be happy to throw away if it turned out to be a bust, but thankfully it didn’t. overall, we were really happy, and if you like what you see and want to try it out: there’s a link at the end of this post you can click on to get the same deal.
snow day pasta
ten inches of snow with eight more on the way. the temperature when i woke up this morning was -18. i’ve had five — yes five — days off of work because of weather. at this point, our refrigerator is almost completely empty. the fact that we were able to forage enough to cook dinner was a miracle.
manager’s special
the girl found two 6 pound roasting chickens at SAMs club for $9. we’re total suckers for great deals.
my apologies…
so the chef and i got in a pretty big argument the other day. he asked me to drive him to the butcher shop, which i gladly did. but when he came out with FIFTEEN POUNDS of pork belly, i was not so happy. “i’m going to make pancetta,” he said. “and think of all the home-cured bacon!” i thought he’d lost his mind. fifteen pounds of pork belly means i had to lose the bottom two crisper drawers in my fridge… for three weeks. but it turned out to be a small price to pay.
so this is my formal, printed-on-the-internet apology for doubting the chef — and for being grouchy the drive home from the butcher shop. i mean, look at this dinner. what a jerk i was!
pan seared rack of lamb on the cheap
the idea of having lamb for dinner may seem like a culinary impossibility if you didn’t spent two years at CIA like my chef, but this was so simple he sat on the sofa and let me do the work!
cold smoked salmon
i came home to the chef standing in the kitchen with a big, proud smile on his face. there he was, this mad scientist-looking lab set up on the counter, no “hello” or “I love you” — just a stammer of, “hey! look what I made! grab your camera, make a video! eat this!”
once he explained the tubes and the hookah and the burning coal it made sense. and to my satisfaction, it didn’t even make the house smell. that much. that chef, he’s pretty creative!
have you guys ever tried anything like this? or do you have any other DIY kitchen tricks?
road trip epiphanies
The timeline is a bit of a blur.
Barbeque in Memphis. Shrimp and grits on Florida’s gulf coast. Ramen at some hole-in-the wall restaurant in Some Carolina.
I couldn’t tell you what we did in every city – but I can certainly tell you what we ate. Somewhere between the 93 hours in the car and the 6,500 miles we spent traveling the country, a great awakening occurred.
road trip favorites: boudin balls
Boudin – /bü-ˈdan. n. A style of sausage popular along the Gulf Coast incorporating meat (commonly pork, gator, or seafood) and rice. Or the most delicious deep-fried, truck-stop vittles to be found south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
I spent this past summer watching it melt away in the rear view mirror of a Saturn Ion named Sandy. The girl and I racked up something approaching 100 hours in the car traveling across the country and back. I lost track of the number of miles and the gallons of gas. And the billboards, enormous swaths of peeling paint and splinters devoted to roadside attractions that no longer rank even among the world’s top 10 largest gophers. But there is one sign I hope I never forget.
In the heart of Cajun country, off of interstate 10 somewhere between Baton Rouge and the Texas state line there is a sign that says, “Shrimp! Gator! Andouille! Boudin! Go left, then 2.5 miles!” But to her, the most important thing was inferred: “Restroom!” Sign after sign eventually led us to a dingy little shop — part truck stop, part country store, part plate-lunch diner. As she hurried off to use the facilities, my life changed in an instant.
Fresh from the fryer, glistening under a heat lamp like tourists at Myrtle Beach in July, were perfectly formed spheres of Boudin sausage, battered and deep fried. Three for two dollars. The expression on her face changed from disgust that I would consider eating something made in that rickety old market, to disbelief as i implored her to try it, to elation as she came into the fold: a believer that there might not be anything better in the world than deep fried sausage.
The following recipe is my first attempt at recreating that moment of pure bliss.
first date pasta
i fell in love pretty quickly — somewhere between the starbucks coffee/hours of conversation and the first dinner date at my house. when you’re dating a trained chef, it just doesn’t make sense to go to a restaurant. i wanted to know what i was getting myself into. he came over with a backpack full of tupperware containers, each filled with ingredients to make the perfect pasta. turkey stuffed agnolotti, topped with fresh parmesan. he had me at the first bite.
chef meets girl 