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Showing posts from August, 2008

Omnivore top 100

Yeah this is a little off topic. But being the blog is about food I find it appropriate. Andrew from Very Good Taste Posted the following list of 100 things that every omnivore should try. The idea is to copy the list and Bold everything you've tried and cross off anything you'll never try and see the result. On first pass, I'm really only missing 16 items. (I plan on crossing as much as possible lots of them are simply things I need to cook. There might be about 3 things I won't be able to get to. And I don't think I'd pass any of them up if presented the opportunity so no crossouts for me. How bout the rest of you? The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: 1. Venison 2. Nettle tea 3. Huevos rancheros 4. Steak tartare 5. Crocodile 6. Black pudding 7. Cheese fondue 8. Carp 9. Borscht 10. Baba ghanoush 11. Calamari 12. Pho 13. PB&J sandwich 14. Aloo gobi 15. Hot dog from a street cart 16. Epoisses 17. Black truffle 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes 19.

Birthday Bento

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Special bento today. It's my wife's birthday tomorrow, so I figured on making a special bento just for her. Pulled out the stops and splurged a bit on the menu. Hopefully a great week to start birthday week. Well on to the box. We'll start with the sides: First up we have Steamed Vegetables with a ginger miso dressing. I've latched onto the wonders of pre-bagged veggies that you toss into the microwave. They even have this one brand that also have a couple of slots of butter so that when you finish microwaving it's all done for you. What a great idea and timesaver. I'll have to re-use this one. Our second side is a Lobster salad with tarragon and chives. Picked up a couple of frozen lobster tails and put this little number together. I could easily have substituted chicken in place of this for a more budget conscious menu item. Note to self: a little tarragon goes a *long* way. For the main course we have Filet Mignon with a shitake wine sauce. Pretty self expl

Good for what ails ya

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No bento this week. The wife was ill (my fault, got it from the guys at work). What better way to aid in recovery than to make some homemade chicken noodle soup. Simple as it may sound it is a time intensive soup to produce if you want to do it right. My wife of course is worth every minute, so no complaint here :) A good soup always starts with a good stock. The added benefit of course is you're cooking the chicken you'll be using for the soup. Standard stuff here, chicken (of course), celery, thyme, carrots, peppercorn, and bay leaf. I cut some time out of it by only simmering the stock for an hour, as opposed to an hour and a half. I didn't want the chicken to fall apart in shreds. On to assembling the soup. Simple here, lots of the same veggies that went into the stock are chopped fresh. Gotta remember to pull out the thyme and bay leaf at the ends but all you do is dump the whole thing in and put the noodles in at the last second. I think I ended up with like 3 quarts

Gadgetry: Indoor Grill

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Got a new kitchen gadget! I bought an indoor grill with some holdover gift certificate that we had. I've always had a problem with grilling stuff. It's just too much effort to fire up the grill just to make something for one meal. You gotta clean it, you gotta fire it up etc. etc. Perfect solution: an indoor grill you can temperature control and fits on the counter! I couldn't help it, I had to build a whole bento around the fact I could grill on demand. I found these amazingly huge sea scallops at the store. I couldn't help it I had to put something together. So a simple soy honey sea scallops grilled to perfection. I think it'll be interesting to hear back to see how well they re-heated. I tried to undercook just a touch so that the microwave wouldn't produce a tough chewy scallop. I think the right thing to do was to grill at the max setting, I would have gotten some better grill marks. Still yummy, just not as pretty as I would have hoped. Had to add a bit