Picking up on Top Chef Spain from where I left off at the end of the pilot episode. We move on to episode 2 – I’m actually way behind on these as I think the show is already in its 10th week, but I’ll get to them as I have time. This is the first… Read More Spain’s Top Chef – Episode 2
Just a few quick leftover photos from November. My goodness this year is going by quickly! A gift of bourbon balls from Kentucky based guests – shared with the table at the end of dinner and then the remainder consumed by us over the following days. I got all excited when I heard there was… Read More November, Gone
Just a look back at last week’s dinners, bringing back a few favorites, adding some tweaks, bringing in some new ideas too…. Minor changes to our smoked tomato cheesecake plate. Infused the cherry tomatoes with kombu. Replaced the dehydrated tomato crumble with a dehydrated caper crumble that adds a nice little sharp note to the… Read More Somethings Old, Somethings New
[Spoiler Alert – don’t read if you plan to watch the show and don’t want to know what happens in advance.] Not surprisingly, the Top Chef empire continues to expand as “reality” tv encroaches on more and more parts of the globe. The newest offering comes to us from Spain. I haven’t really commented on… Read More Spain’s Top Chef – Episode 1
Just a little bit of dining out over the last couple of weeks. As regular readers probably know, from early November until the end of the year we tend to be swamped here at Casa S with both public and private dinners, ’tis the season and all that, so I’m not getting out as much… Read More Nibbling Trio
A week of bringing back some favorite dishes, but each of them tweaked in some way – trying out new combinations. Overall, quite successful, at least as of now the only naysayers being a trio of Norwegian gen-xers who apparently found not only the food to be bland (which is weird, since during the dinner… Read More Playing with Favorites
The things I find out when I start researching into dishes and ingredients sometimes scare me. I mean, just try plugging “potato” or “cauliflower” into the Urban Dictionary, or even just Google paired with “slang”… expressions, personal descriptors – some of them vulgar, gifts, and even sexual acts (really, that? why?). Seriously, you may not… Read More Cheap and Quick: Potato and Cauliflower
Back when living in the East Village in NYC, my late night snacking, after a long shift at whatever restaurant I might have been working at, tended towards one of three things – a slice of “lasagna” pizza at East Village Pizza; sushi, generally because of the hour at Sapporo; or a bowl of ramen… Read More Noodling Around at the Bar