Street Tacos

About once a month, we have a dinner party with some friends of ours, usually employing a creative theme when selecting the menu, and always cooking together as a group. This past Sunday we had 2 couples over for a Mexican food themed dinner, featuring street tacos with home made tortillas. Other dishes included pico de gallo, guacamole, tortilla chips, black beans, Mexican-style rice, corn on the cob, bacon wrapped chorizo stuffed dates, flan, orange cake, and plantos fritos - all made from scratch. To drink we had a variety of Mexican sodas, home made horchata, and even some margaritas. A highlight was the al pastor our friends had marinated ahead of time, which although initially intimidating ended up having the perfect amount of heat.


There was, as usual lots of food leftover, so tonight Melissa heated up most of what was left, made some fresh tortillas, and we enjoyed some of the best leftovers I've ever had. We even ate some of the empanadas that Melissa had made in advance and we decided not to cook up on Sunday because everyone was fast entering a food coma and there were still a few courses to go.

My horchata experiments have been successful so far, and I think I will be making it more often now that I realized how simple it is to do.

Horchata Recipe

• 1 cup long grain white rice
• 3 cups water 
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1. Pour rice and water into a pitcher and add cinnamon sticks
2. Leave in the refrigerator overnight
3. Pour pitcher into a bar blender and blend until smooth
4. Strain through 4 layers of cheesecloth to remove solids, squeeze solids thoroughly
5. Add coconut milk, sugar and half of the ground cinnamon (more or less of any of these ingredients may be used based on personal preference)
6. Serve over ice with a sprinkling of ground cinnamon

The result was very refreshing and tasty - I was quite pleased.

Tangled Gingerbread House

I recently took our 3 year old daughter to see Tangled, and she was so excited about it that we decided to make a gingerbread house that looks just like Rapunzel's tower. Melissa did all the baking, I built the molds and applied the icing. Our daughters were overjoyed!

Kitchen Renovation

It's been a while since we've posted to our cooking blog. Mostly this is due to the craziness that occurs when you move. We now live in downtown San Francisco in a two bedroom loft, down from a four bedroom house, so it took us quite some time to get things scaled down and organized well enough to have some free time and energy. A big selling point on the new place was the kitchen, which is very open, features granite counter-tops, and new appliances. Since our last post, I have gotten a little better at cooking some of our family staples such as Alfredo sauce and quiche, while Melissa has been mastering bread making including baguettes and biscuits.

Yes we have finally settled in the move was a way to get more of Trevor's time. Eating at 7:30 or 8:00 was not really what I would call functional, so this move has greatly improved our schedule around here and I gotta say having a nicer kitchen doesn't hurt either. My goal with attempting bread was to find and master a handful of go-to bread recipes that would serve as a replacement for store bought bread. Yes I probably am a bit extreme but have you read whats in store bought bread its amazing that stuff EVER molds. Also Trevor never stops talking about the bread in europe and how wonderful it is and how he wishes that they had that kind in the U.S. We have had many conversations where he tries to describe exactly the kind of roll thing that he wishes he could have... but enough about bread thats another post.

Over the last couple of months we've been working towards getting organized, and just last weekend acquired a used IKEA shelving unit which has finally provided us with enough storage space in our kitchen that we are no longer keeping kitchen appliances in their original boxes tucked away in storage areas. Now that everything is within reach and subsequently plain sight, it's likely we will start being more aware of how little we use some appliances while also making more use of others. So far I'm observing that the slow-cooker seems to be collecting the most dust while the waffle-iron rarely cools all the way down.

It goes in phases mainly depending on how lazy i'm feeling. The crock pot is awesome for make-ahead meals and chicken broth. However the crock pot is also very large and I'm not very fond of cleaning it. Wait 'till Trevor tells the story about our first year of marriage and the growth I refused to take care of in the crock pot. I have since gotten much better and never let things get that bad.

At the time when we started this blog, I was busy filling in some of the basic gaps in our kitchen. At that time, Melissa and I both decided we wanted to do a lot of research before making any large investments such as cookware and knives. Nearly a year later, our careful research and the selling of my soda making equipment has culminated in the purchase of a little over half of the All-Clad cookware we intend to acquire. Our initial buys have included a three quart saute, a three quart saucier, and an eight quart stock pot. We also grabbed a Lodge cast-iron reversible griddle that can straddle two of the burners on our cook-top, and a couple of grill presses. Future purchases will include something to the tune of a butter warmer, three quart sauce pan, three quart double-boiler insert and a three quart steamer insert. Aside from a wok, and including the twelve inch cast-iron skillet we already had, once complete our assortment of cookware should provide us with the ability to do pretty much anything on the cook-top we need. Oh yeah, and we got six new commercial-grade aluminum bun pans - which I love!

You know its funny that he loves the bun pans because I do all the baking and all he ever uses them for is bacon. Next time you are so cleaning your own bacon pan. I think that we need something more like a small sauce pan or saucier about one quart a really big stock pot and a ladle. Yes somehow in all of this acquiring that has managed to slip through the cracks and I still don't have a ladle! I usually use a measuring cup to ladle soup and other things into bowls its a bit ridiculous. I suppose at some point as I'm walking through Sur La Table I'll be like, "Oh yes! A ladle, I totally need this!" and it will cost me like $10 and I will love and give it a name. Someday!

Trevor made some crackers....

So as many of you may have heard Trevor is OBSESSED with Blue cheese specifically French roquefort. He has little cheesy daydreams about eating it or finding new ways to eat it. Similar to his obsession with bacon. Well after watching the cracker episode of Good Eats he had to have some homemade crackers for his blue cheese.


They were very easy to make, especially with my new French pin roller! Some of them came out a bit overcooked, but generally speaking these were some the best crackers I'd ever had - thanks not to my amazing cracker skills, but rather to the fact that they were fresh. It's quite amazing how stale all other crackers taste in comparison.

Melissa has Bread Skills

The more time I spend in Europe, the more I crave "good" bread. The bread you find in America is mostly too fluffy, sugary, and tender - what I crave is a good baguette. So Melissa started making bread on a regular basis, refining her skills, and before long she was cranking out some amazingly tasty loafs of fresh baked goodness. I'm totally spoiled, I know.

Sea Scallops with Mango Salsa and Coconut Rice

When I go to a restaurant, there are certain foods I will always go for. There's the exotic foods that I don't get at home, such as sea scallops or Kobe beef, but then there are foods I have such an affinity for it doesn't matter how much I get of them at home, I just want more - like blue cheese and bacon. I've been meaning to bring scallops into that latter category, but for whatever reason Melissa and I have always been intimidated by them.

So today, I finally got a chance to prepare some scallops, and to make the most of them, I used them as a substitution for tilapia in Melissa's amazing panko-crusted tilapia with mango salsa and coconut rice recipe. It took two trips to the store and lots of trading off cooking and holding children, but at about 9:30pm, our dinner was ready. I was so hungry, I totally forgot to take a picture... Sorry, maybe next time.

I used Alton Brown's scallop recipe which is very simple, involving oil and butter in a very hot pan where the salted and peppered scallops become seared in just a minute and a half per side. The butter was in my view the most critical part of this process, as it lends itself so nicely to browning while providing a creamy salty addition to the scallops.

Stuffed Burgers and Near Death Experiences

When people let me use their kitchens, I really feel honored. I try my best to respect their things and their space, and I always clean up after myself. But yesterday I failed pretty badly while attempting to make some french fries to go along with what turned out to be quite delicious stuffed burgers.

He is very good at cleaning up after himself even if he is a little slow at it. LOL. After the stuffed burger incident though I think all of are friends will think twice before letting him use their kitchens again.

But anyways - these burgers are totally awesome! We got the recipe from a friend of ours after we had them at her house.

2 1/4 pounds ground sirloin
3/4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 cups chopped parsley plus 2 Tablespoons
1/4 cups crumbled blue cheese plus 2 Tablespoon
1 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 garlic cloves minced
1/4 tsp. salt
3 teaspoons grainy Dijon mustard
3 teaspoons olive oil

You take the ground beef and form patties around the stuffing.

Not everyone has a patty press - so to improvise take 2 stackable tupperware bowls of the same shape and size and put the hamburger inside one and use the other to press the meat.

I seared them and finished them in the oven much like you would with a steak, as the thickness of the patties tends to inhibit complete cooking without drying out.

As the burgers finished in the oven, I thought, "french fries would be a fitting side dish". So I put some canola oil in a pan and turned the heat to medium-high, which on my apparently wimpy gas stove brings the oil to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit in a couple minutes. I started in on cleaning and Julianne cutting the potatoes and noticed the oil was smoking, which would indicate it had heated up to at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit already, so I turned the heat down. Unfortunately this stove was an electric one, so even though the heat setting had been reduced, the coil was still radiating heat at a higher level than appropriate. Within about 30 seconds of this adjustment the pot went up in flames. Thankfully my wife suggested choking the fire with a cookie sheet, which put it out instantly, but the smoke was still a problem so my friend removed the pot from the kitchen, taking it to the backyard where it reportedly exploded upon being dropped on the ground, but was successfully contained by covering the pot with dirt.

Yeah so a lot of this was Trevor screaming "aaaaahhhhh fire, fire" and running around the kitchen saying "what do I do what do I do." I smelled the smoke and heard him screaming and ran into the room at the same time as our friend who was about to dump water on the oil fire when I screamed "Nooo! Just smother it! Get a lid or something." I've set a few oil/ grease fires in my lifetime so I've learned from experience how to put them out. Remember how I wasn't allowed to cook when I lived with my parents? Yeah thats why. I burned everything - but we also had an electric stove, so I will just blame it on that.

So, note to self, when working with oil, especially on stove-tops I'm unaccustomed to, always use a thermometer, and be conservative on the heat. I'm a bit gun-shy now, but that's probably a good thing. I luckily managed not to burn down my friend's house, so it certainly could have ended much worse, but he did end up with some first degree burns from the hellatious ball of fire that resulted in him allowing oxygen to once again be consumed by the molten oil.

You know, I'm not sure if it really was him allowing the fire to have oxygen or if it was the moisture in the air/ coldness of the air that restarted it. But either way he did have a pink hand and was minus a few arm hairs.

The burgers were very delicious, which softened the blow, but the lingering smell of melted Teflon kept my face red with embarrassment for the rest of the evening. Thankfully they are very forgiving people, and might allow me to come over again - but I doubt they'll be offering their kitchen to me anytime soon..

Don't worry babe I told them next time we come over we'll bring a fire extinguisher with us...