A special treat for my wife's birthday. A braised veal shank prepared the traditional way, but instead of topping the shank with Gremolata, I prefer to prepare a sauce from the braising liquid which is rich and very tasty. I served the Osso Buco with risotto Milanese and asparagus sautéed with white wine and finished with Parmigiano-Reggiano.
I have a small backlog of dinners from the course of the past year I'm currently working on. Stay tuned for new dinners starting this week.
In the past I used to use Adobe Photo Shop to crop and sometimes edit my photos, but I've switched to "light" weight free application called Paint.Net, so for all you techies out there the following might make sense, although paint.net is quite small 3.6MB, it requires the .Net 2.0 framework which is anything but small and light, but I digress.
So far paint.net has done a good job and looks like a keeper, I run it on a Virtual PC which keeps the .Net stuff off my main machine, a win-win in my books.
Stay tuned for more food coming soon, either from the past, but definitely in the future.
Chicken Cacciatore is probably one of the more maligned dishes in North America, and you don't see too many chefs on Food TV ever preparing it, but it is a simple dish to make on a cold and damp evening. Cacciatore meaning hunter in Italian, makes this a hardy and rustic dish, I made this one with chicken thighs which also makes for a great left over lunch.
It's been a long time since I've posted, but life has been busy. Now that the move to BlogMatrix.com has been completed, I plan to start posting again.
This was a five course dinner starting with a simple green salad and raspberry vinaigrette, the second course was simply sautéed foie gras with a shallot steeped in red wine. The second course (no photo) was a puff pastry stuffed with shredded braised oxtail and reduction, topped with a roasted white pearl onion. The main course was green pepper corn filet mignon and sauce, the starch on the plate is Potatoes a la Boulangere and the veg is sautéed asparagus. This is the first time I've worked with foie gras and the results were perfect in my books. I got a little carried away and started eating my meal before I took a picture, it was really that good.
For my Mothers Day we had a 4 course dinner which included salad, appetizer, main course and dessert. The appetizer was grilled lamb tenderloin served on a bed of fresh fiddle heads sautéed with butter, shallots and white wine. For the main course we had a seafood risotto, with clams, sautéed shrimp and bay scallops topped with a half lobster tail that was rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled. I used chicken stock for the risotto so as to not and overwhelm the other flavours of the dish.
A rack of lamb grilled and then coated with Dijon mustard and then a crust of course bread crumbs, parsley, and mint is applied, finally the lamb is finished in a 400° oven. The veg is baby summer squash and zucchini sautéed in olive oil, white wine and a little maple syrup. Finally the potatoes are fingerlings in a Dijon cream sauce with green beans.
A simple grilled pork chop with some simple jus, served with couscous which was steamed with green onions and red peppers. Contrary to popular belief, a well cooked pork chop can be almost as tasty and juicy as a reasonable steak.
Steamed mussels in a seafood broth that includes shrimp, peppers and snow peas, on a bed of glass noodles. The sauce is coconut milk, broth and green Tai curry paste. Light but filling and lots of flavour.
Scallopini of chicken rolled with provolone and prosciutto, breaded and then fried to a golden brown and popped in the oven to finish. The sauce is a creamy mushroom and sweet Marsala, also poured over the steamed asparagus, finally there are some simple parsley potatoes for the starch.
