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Zaca Mesa 2008 Viognier
Since I am abandoning the idea of being a “foodie” and am instead becoming an “alcoholie”, i thought i’d post about the bottle of wine me and davey had tonight.
Paired well with our turkey meatloaf. Something about the turkey flavor with ketchup highlighted the honey-sweetness and hint of canned peaches in the wine. Now I am drunk.
Christmas Pawty 2008! Part II!
- Nearly one year later… look what I found! It’s a good thing Barry documented our first? really? official Christmas dinner (a very deep fried xmas, December 24th, 2008), cuz it’s all a red wine colored blur to me! But ah, witness the emotional roller coaster that is White Elephant. O the savagery!
- yeeah!
- snarl
Yay! Looking forward to Christmas Extravaganza 2009!
Chicken N Waffles (July 2009)
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- Unfortunately no photos of the hilarious waffle batter disasters
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- Mm! Davey’s cinnamon rolls and collard greens
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- That white blob is the maple syrup ice cream Erin made, gggg…
Images de Poulet! (Sept 2009)
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- Poulet provencal and kale w/ cannelini beans. and deglazed pan by Chef Erin
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- there’s an arm growing out of my face
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- oh, it’s just jancy
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- Jen’s praying for more
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- wine, wine, wine
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- Cheers! (cute ending)
Well, Hello There, Fall. Nice To See You Again.
So, the first day of fall kicked off on Sept. 22 and despite being, like, 385 degrees outside, I decided to it was a good time to recreate a pumpkin sage cream sauce ravioli dish that Katie had been craving for years and years. Last time I made it, it seemed like a perfect weeknight dinner because it was so simple and you could just use store bought ingredients and still make it taste swell.
However, I wanted to up the challenge a little and decided to make everything from scratch. So, Tuesday night, I made chicken liver mousse and quince paste for an appetizer, then Wednesday morning, roasted some butternut squash (could not find any pumpkin yet. so much for fall.) and pureed it, made some pasta dough with a little saffron for color, made a ricotta porcini filling, pickled some onions for the mousse, then made some orange blossom panna cotta for dessert.
When I got to Jancy’s, we all set to work cranking out sheets of pasta and filling those babies up. It went surprisingly fast and we slipped them into the boiling water while I whipped up sauce. So easy! Heavy cream, butternut squash puree, chiffonade sage, salt and pepper and soon we were eating.
Oh, and appetizer was chicken liver mousse crostinis with quince puree and pickled onions. And we had roasted broccoli on the side of the pasta. And old fashioned cocktails to imbibe on. So delicious and so drunk.
No pictures of the panna cotta, but jancy made some cookies to go with it that didn’t flatten, so we crushed them and ate them on top and it turned out better than if they had been wafer-like.
testing testing…
oh computers i hate thee
erin was having problems uploading images. something happened to the upload directory setting, i think when we changed servers. all fixed now!
Rivera Restaurant, a new favorite
Though $$$, its genuinely a fantastic beautiful place. The drink-ologists along with the drinks are superb, service was fantastic and polite, and the food… definitely top tier and superbly crafted.
I had a ‘Brooklyn’ which was so me. Whiskey-like but with a softer touch. Not sweet but not harsh. (Buourbon or Rye with DRY VERMOUTH, AMER, MARSCHINO)
The flower tortilla was very good. Though not as different as you may expect, very very hardy and gorgeous looking. We had the (chile pasilla relleno PICKLED MILD CHILE, BURRATA CHEESE, SERVED CHILLED), cordorniz cubana GRILLED QUAIL, BLACK BEANS, pato al vino DUCK CONFIT, RIOJA REDUCTION, CASCABEL CHILE, and for dessert — estudio en flan THREE DIFFERENT STYLES OF THE CLASSIC DESSERT, WITH THREE COMPLEMENTARY SAUCES.
The barrata, always a favorite food item, was solid, not as soft as I prefer it but with the chile relleno, slightly sweet, textured and cheesy in that mozzerlla kind of way. My other favorite was the quail. Cooked perfectly and soft, it was placed ontop of oyster mushrooms which was a nice delight as I LOVE mushrooms and it wasn’t listed on the menu. The duck was solid, a little salty but i definitely wiped up the plate. Thought I maybe bias, the flan really won me over. It made me realize how creative the chef is in the way he made these three flavors. I’ve never had flan such as this, one extremely creamy but with the four sauces to compliment, it was perfect and refreshing. The middle, though the most traditional and non-unique solid and flavorful. The last, the most rich was the closest to my heart. YUM. It was love at first touch.
Here are some photos I found online as I didn’t realize I didn’t save the photos I saved on my cell. Enjoy and I hope we can all go together and try the food together. I know I’m down to try the pork, mole, the cod, spanish creme brulee…and the jamón ibérico!
Birthday Pizza at Bollini’s is the Best!
Omg Erin, you’re so funny. I didn’t see these expressions til I came home.
So I’m using this as my personal blog here, but I wanted to post the pics from the pizza place I love! Bollini’s Neapolitan Wood-fired pizza randomly situated in Monterey Park, not otherwise known for their wood-fired real Italian style pizza. The very thinnest crust, with a burnt edge, I love it. Totally reminds me of how pizza was in Italy all the time. Mangia, mangia.
Barry showed up after these pics. Good birthday pizza, thanks everyone! Oh and the corkage is free! Afterwards we went shoe-perusing at DSW where I made Jancy try on all sorts of trashy shoes 
DFT is Back From the Dead! And Bryan Cooks Dinner!
It looked just like this, I swear
So I felt like I better contribute something, and it was also my birthday coming up, so I finally cooked dinner! Sorry to be a moocher all this time guys!! I will have to come up with more recipies. :{ Well even for this it’s more like I picked the recipies and brought the ingredients and then Erin and everyone else helped cook them. Haha. Yay!
Jeudi dîner de soir { Thursday Night Dinner }(if the internet’s French is correct) consisted of my favorite, easiest oven dish ever!
“Poulet Provencal” — Chicken, herbes de provence, olive oil, lotsa sliced and minced garlic, kalamata olives, tomatoes, potatoes, throw it in the oven and it cooks itself. Juicy and fills the whole house with the mm mm goodness. Yummy to sop up the juices with a crusty bread. Erin made the dish even better by having Chef Barry brown the chicken pieces first in a frying pan to get them nice and crispy. Then she deglazed the pan with white wine to make even more yummy sauce. In all the pre-frying excitement I forgot that I was supposed to rub the chickens with the herbes mixture but we smooshed it all on and threw em in the oven pans chock full of tomatoes and onions and it came out great. I’m making myself hungry…
Side dish: Sauteed kale with cannellini beans, & garlic. I think we substituted red wine vinegar. People seemed to like it, it went fast!
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Sauteed-Greens-with-Cannellini-Beans-and-Garlic-241906
I have to figure out how to post my phone pix and will add later. It was mm good.
So, in honor of all this, and me trying to return to DFTs more regularly, I’ve resurrected the blog! Hey, only 9 months since the last post! Welcome back everyone!
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2009 8:17:58 PM
Subject: Re: Jeudi dîner de soir? { Thursday Night Dinner }
Yum! And Bryan is cooking? I can’t miss this !
See you there
Jancy