OBX 2014 - Bourbon Tasting (No cooking involved here :-))

We realized pretty quickly that our house at the beach had quite a collection of bourbons for the week.  It was decided pretty early on that we should do a tasting to see what everyone likes or think they like.  As I have never been a fan of bourbon I volunteered to lead the tasting.  We had 5 bourbons to go into the tasting.    

Woodford, Lexington, Blanton's, Basil Haydens, & Elmer T. Lee (Pictured above)...Even though I was so tempted to do so there were not pictured in order of the tasting glasses :-)

I kicked the group out of the kitchen and I poured out ~1/2 ounce of bourbon in each plastic glass label 1-5.  Each participant had their own sheet labeled 1-5 with an area for comments as well as a ranking. 

Everyone had the opportunity to sip straight as well with an ice cube.  It was definitely interesting to hear people's thoughts and reactions to bourbons they had assumed were their favorites and they were not liking at the time!

Overall, everyone got the opportunity to try different bourbons blindly and think about what they really enjoyed!  This could easily be done with other liquors, wines, or even sodas!  

OBX 2014 - Steamer Pot From Cravings

Over the course of the week in the Outer Banks I'm pretty sure our house of 8 made a nice dent in Coastal Cravings pre-Memorial Day revenues.  Tom and I with another couple enjoyed a nice lunch their with fantastic crab cake sandwiches.  We decided to go back one night when we didn't feel like going out but also not cooking an elaborate meal.  So the Cravings steam pot seemed like a great idea.   This place was highlighted on Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives for their scallop dinner and their steam pots.   A number of restaurants do steam pots but from the few that I researched this was the only one that included sausage, corn and potatoes with your steam pot.

The steam pot is great.  You order 30-45 mins in advance at a minimum, tell them how many people, what pot you want, and you are done!  You pick up a steamer pot (or aluminum can with a hole in the top) with instructions on how to cook.

This was so easy.  You take out the butter, shrimp and cocktail sauce from pot and sit on high burner for 20-25 mins until steams (see first picture).  Then timer another 25 mins, then put shrimp in and wait another 8 minutes.  Drain the pot and you are good to go!

This was a perfect meal for Tom and I and so very easy to do.  I would highly suggest getting a steamer pot while on vacation if available.  The Cravings pots were easy to use included a full meal with vegetables and protein and were delicious!

OBX 2014 - North Banks Restaurant & Oyster Bar Outing

The day after we arrived in the Outer banks with our crew we had done limited food shopping.  So after a few hours by the pool the whole group decided to go for lunch and a shopping trip.  We decided to take the group to one of our favorite places from our wedding week, North Banks in Corolla.  It was past a Harris Teeter so allowed us to not go too far out of our way for lunch and shopping trip!

We had a group of eight people but got lucky enough to have the majority of the bar open so we all just lined up at the bar for a quick lunch.  I started with one of their special bloody mary's made with Bakon Vodka and served with an old bay shrimp.  I like my bloody's spicy with a ton of horseradish and they even gave me extra to add and for once I didn't need to add anything.

First up for Tom and I were some oysters (not pictured) as well as one of their fried appetizers, Firebugs.  These were our favorites while down here for wedding week 2 years ago.  They are fried crawfish tails and fried jalapeños with a red pepper aioli.  DELICIOUS!

One of my favorites while on vacation are finding good crab or clam chowder soups.  I knew we were going to eat a big meal that night so I attempted to go lighter and get a soup and salad.  I of course "forgot" how filling a cream based soup is :-).  I went with their She-Crab soup.  It was amazing.  I actually had She-Crab soup 3 times over the week.  I have to say that North Banks makes a very good version.  There were numerous lumps of crab meat and a nice light sherry flavor.  I had a caesar salad on the side which I couldn't even finish!  Tom enjoyed a shrimp BLT which he enjoyed but he did keep trying my soup!

I would highly suggest a visit to North Banks on your next visit to Corolla or Duck in the Outer banks.  It is a small place and very casual.  I can't vouch for the dinners but I can say that appetizer and lunch are quite good but definitely go for anything on raw bar or shellfish side and you won't be disappointed.  If you go in high season anticipate a wait..however it is in a shopping center so you can keep yourself well occupied while you wait.

Anniversary dinner, one day late ...

Yes, we had our anniversary dinner a day late ... and no it's not because I'm inconsiderate, lazy, forgetful or any of the other reasons that a couple that's been married for two years usually doesn't celebrate the night of ... it's because yesterday we had just gotten home from the beach so we decided on pizza.

For tonight's dinner though, it was anything but pizza.  I started the night with a variety of shellfish ... not because I wanted the shellfish so much, but more because of the wine.  For those who know what they're looking at (Ross & Ben) you should realize that the shellfish were merely there to enhance the wine.  For those of you who don't know the wine by sight ... it's Didier Dagueneau's Blanc Fume de Pouilly, an incredible sauvignon blanc.  This is the last vintage that Didier produced before his unfortunate death, and is incredibly tasty with shellfish.

I drank the wine from an old friend ... the Schott Zwiesel "First" collection tasting glass from Enrico Bernardo.   I don't use it much anymore, but this seemed fitting.

I served Choptank Sweets oysters & littleneck clams for the "raw bar" portion of our first course ... followed by ...

Baked escargots with butter and basil

For the main course, I decided to serve up a 2007 1er cru MSD in recognition of 2007 being the year that Shells and I started dating (2008 was the year we started drinking real wine, so the Dagueneau was fitting too).

The main course was a dry aged strip steak topped with sauteed Shiitake mushrooms and served with pimento white beans & asparagus.  For the white beans, I must tip my hat to my old friend Freya.  She and I once had a long discussion, sitting on a 50ish floor balcony overlooking Darling Harbour, about country specific food.  While I grant to her that England has given us such culinary greats as: Marmite, boiled eel & meat pies ... she and I struggled to come up with America's contributions.

What we came down to was that America does not really create a lot of food, but what we do really well is make someone elses food better by adding cheese to it!

For tonight's dinner I took my standard shiitake white beans (White Beans) and added about 4 tablespoons of pimento cheese.  Before stirring the cheese in, I took the beans off of the heat and stirred it in slowly so that it didn't separate.  Enjoy!

Big group dinner #2 at the beach

I couldn't do a second blog post involving Matt Haladay if it didn't also involve tacos ... one of his favorite things about reading our blog.  So what did we do?  Well, I gave Matt a second field commission as my Sous Chef (he performed well enough the last time) and put him to work chopping.

While we didn't have the tortilla press, and therefore couldn't make tortillas, we made most of my other favorites.  For the main course we made chorizo (turkey to account for Kristen's no meat ways), Arrachera, grilled shrimp & grilled octopus.

Added to the mains, we made rice and beans, salsa, guacamole and all of the other fixings.  For tortillas ... you would assume I couldn't have, but I did ... we went to a Walmart and bought a Lodge cast iron pan so that we could make our store bought tortillas right!

The octopus (forefront) and chorizo (rear) on display.

Rice and beans with some fixings on either side.

The final tacos on display!

Big group dinner #1 at the beach

 With eight of us sharing a beach house for the week, it was inevitable that we'd cook at the house one or two nights.

Matt volunteered to be my Sous Chef for the two events and we decided to go with the easier option for the first night.  A quick trip to the Teeter saw us returning to the house with 3 racks of baby back ribs, 1 rack of beef ribs, fries, corn & all of the ingredients to make pancetta brussel sprouts.

The ribs were started in the oven & finished on the grill, half with Stubbs spicy bbq sauce and the other half with Sweet Baby Rays.  Matt and I both agreed that the real star of the show though were the brussel sprouts.

Pancetta Brussel Sprouts

2 lbs brussel sprouts

8 oz pancetta

1 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp sea salt

1 1/2 tsp black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F.  While the oven is preheating, wash the brussel sprouts and then trim the ends off with a sharp knife.  Put the sprouts into a large mixing bowl and add all of the remaining ingredients.  Use a spoon to mix the ingredients well and then spread evenly on a baking tray.  Roast the sprouts in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes, turning once in the middle.

Enjoy!!

It's a Wednesday, so you know what that means ...

Ha!! Fooled you, not tacos tonight (although there was no bread in the house so I did concede cooking some tortillas to give Shells a bread based food).

While you will never know from looking at it ... tonight I cooked swordfish as the base of the dinner.  To be fair, it was frozen and I could tell from the first second I unwrapped the packaging that it was going to be "fishy."  Shell's is not a fan of fishy, so I had to figure out what I could do to negate that.

I started up some of my rice and beans and then started grilling the swordfish.  I used a liberal amount of BW3s Desert Heat dry rub as the first line of defense against fishiness.

Once the fish was finished I served it over the rice and beans and then proceeded to layer on additional toppings to continue to mask the flavor.  First came a liberal dose of "Pato" sauce, a spicy chile sauce.  I then topped it with the leftover salsa from last night (see here).  To finish it off I drizzled over some crema and queso fresco.  I served with sauteed veggies.  Shells' verdict was fishy, but not the worst thing in the world.

Give it a try and enjoy!

Cinco de Mayo Dinner

So if you think it's bad that I end up posting pictures of tacos every Wednesday/Thursday, don't worry because this Cinco de Mayo dinner has things besides tacos in it ... like salad, and blistered veggie salsa.

I fired up the grill and began charring peppers and tomatoes for my blistered veggie salsa (I would have added an onion to the mix but when I went to find one, I found things growing on it).  The trick to these guys is to turn often to allow them to blister evenly and cook evenly inside.

While the veggies were cooking I tossed some arrachera and quesadillas on the grill as well.  Quesadillas cook quickly on the grill, so put them on late and watch them.

I brought out a bowl of taqueria style guacamole that I had made (avocado, water, lime juice & cilantro) that pretty much goes perfectly with everything.

Once the arrachera and quesadillas were done cooking, I stuffed the tortillas with the beef that I had cut into slices. and plated for dipping into the guacamole.

 For the main course I did a batch of homemade chorizo and topped it with queso fresco.  I served it with guacamole, crema, lime, hot sauce ... and the blistered veggie salsa!

Blistered Veggie Salsa
3 plum tomatoes
2 jalapenos
1 white onion (if you have one that things aren't growing on)
1 orange bell pepper
1 bunch cilantro
Salt & Pepper to taste

Grill veggies as detailed above ... allow all grilled veggies to cool before proceeding.  Rough chop all of the veggies (the peppers may have a bit of water in them).  If you want the salsa a little less spicy, deseed your jalapenos.  Add about 1 tbsp of chopped cilantro and salt and pepper to taste.  Stir and enjoy!

2014 Patio Opening Dinner

After five years we finally bit the bullet and had the patio cleaned up and touched up by the folks who had installed it for us.  We couldn't have timed it any better that the work was completed just in time for an 80 degree weekend day.  So in true us fashion, we celebrated with a fun dinner on the patio!

We opened up with a cheese plate and frosty cold martinis.  We had Jasper Hill Harbison and Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper as our cheese selection and paired it up with mini pretzel crisps, Olli salami & almonds.

For a second course we had oysters on the half-shell ... half Rappahannock River and half Olde Salts with some nice horseradish heavy cocktail sauce (for Shells) and a bottle of our favorite Champagne ... A. Margaine.  Margaine is a grower Champagne, unlike the big name Champagne houses these guys grow the grapes and then make their own wine from them, that we got turned on to years ago and has never let us down.

After finishing the oysters it was time to fire up the grill and get started on the main course.  For the dinner I decided on a base of grilled yellow & red onion (in hindsight I would probably have done one onion and one of something else, this was a LOT of onions) and then some grilled portobello slices to go with some veal rib chops.

I cut the onion slices fairly thick (four slices per onion) and so I grilled them for a bit and put a really good char on them.  The key to grilling is not to touch the food too much.  I divide the time in to three chunks, after the first quarter of the time I make a quarter turn of the food (this is how you get the good crossing grill marks).  After the second quarter I flip, and then I don't touch it again until it's time to take it off of the grill.  Also, depending on what you're cooking you should either be using a spatula or a tongs ... if you have a grill fork, throw it away and never use it ... all you do with that is puncture the meat and lose juices.

Once the veal was done I plated it on top of the onions and then layered the Portobello mushrooms over the top of that.

Final plating included braised greens and some sauteed avocado slices to add some green to the plate!!

One more cassoulet before summer

It's been a while since our last post due to some unexpected out of town travel so I thought I would come back with a fun, and hopefully informative, post on a dinner I made last night.  It was cold and rainy here in Richmond so I thought something a little more hardy would be a good idea.  Given that my obsession with shiitake mushrooms & greens continues I decided to fold them into a white bean creation to serve with some shrimp and scallops.

Veggie Cassoulet (for 2)

14.5 oz can Cannellini beans

1/2 cup chicken stock

8 large shiitake mushrooms

1 bunch of greens (I used baby chard, but anything will work)

Seasoning to taste (I used truffle salt & garlic pepper)

White vinegar (just a splash when cooking the greens)

I washed and removed the stems from the shiitake mushrooms and then sliced them into fairly thin slices that would saute well and not require cutting once mixed in with the beans.

I put a saute pan on medium high heat with some olive oil and once the oil was hot I tossed in the mushrooms and sprinkled a little garlic pepper on them.  While the mushrooms were cooking I added the white beans (including the water in the can), the chicken stock to a pot over medium heat & a sprinkling of truffle salt.

Once the mushrooms had browned I added them to the pot with the beans and then splashed a little more oil to the hot saute pan and put the greens in to saute.  I cooked them for about a minute, then using tongs flipped them over, splashed in a little bit of vinegar and then covered the pan.

 Once the greens had cooked down, I transferred them to the pot with the white beans and mushrooms, turned down the heat and let it cook until the liquid was almost all gone.  While that was happening I sauteed some shrimp and scallops to top it off with and voila ...

If you end up with another cold day before summer, give this one a try ... enjoy!