New Job

Although I am taking an embarrassingly long time to post anything on my lovely little food blog, I just wanted all of my loyal readers to know (yes, all four of you) that I have recently taken on another writing gig. I am now the Austin French Restaurants Examiner for www.examiner.com. I am just getting started (I actually submitted my first article for review today), but I am pretty excited about the possibility of having my writing exposed to a wider audience. I will probably post my articles, especially since they will all relate to food, on my blog as well and I will attempt to continue writing about my personal culinary adventures. Hopefully, I will do said writing more often than, I don't know, once every couple of weeks. Geez. For someone who hopes to be a food writer and for someone who does actually eat every day, you would think I would find more time to post on here than I actually do. Oh, well. Perhaps I will have a little tidbit for you all in the next day or so - I am planning a creative use of leftover black beans for dinner tonight. It shall be in the vein of Cuban black beans and rice with fried plantains, but since I am doing all of this recipe-less, I am not entirely sure how it will turn out. No worries - we went to a birthday party this morning (yes, I made the cake) and I walked out with a lovely box of extra pizza. Should dinner be less than delectable, Domino's will sub just fine. Until next time, my friends!

Breakfast for Dinner

As I was making my grocery list this morning, I asked my daughters what they would like to have for dinner this evening. As per her usual request, my oldest shouted, "breakfast for dinner!" before her younger sister could even think of a particular food she would like to eat. Immediately following the first shout was, "bacon and eggs for dinner!" (My kids both could live on bacon alone.) I didn't even really have to hesitate before I agreed because, I too, love having breakfast for dinner. There is just something about flipping a meal on its head - particularly breakfast - that appeals to me. Apparently, I have, much like my own children, always loved breakfast for dinner nights. Ours usually was bacon and eggs with a little stack of toast that had always been freshly and generously buttered by my mother before she set it on the table. Ahhhh......the simple pleasures in life. In any case, since I am a chef and since I don't do anything, food-related at least, particularly simply, I asked my daughters if they would like plain, old bacon and eggs or if they would like.....wait for it.....breakfast quesadillas! I guess I sold it well, because they agreed quickly to the new menu item. Score!

Now, I have to give credit where credit is due here. I did not come up with the idea of breakfast quesadillas. I had breakfast with my dad a couple of months ago at Austin Java, a local coffee shop/cafe, and spied this on the menu. I thought it sounded really interesting, so I ordered it and ended up enjoying the heck out of meal. This is not a hard concept really - it is basically a potato, egg and cheese breakfast taco rejiggered into a....you got it....quesadilla! The tortilla was crispy, the eggs fluffy and hot, the cheese gooey and melty and the potatoes lightly caramelized. (By the way, Austin Java also has amazing salsa which was served with this dish. I am a bit of a salsa snob and I LOVE theirs.) Anyway, I decided to rip off their menu idea and try it at home.

I started by nuking a couple of red potatoes in the microwave for about two minutes per side. Basically, they were all but cooked when I took them out, scorching hot, four minutes later. I cubed them while I heated some canola oil in a skillet, then sauteed them for a couple of minutes until the cut sides turned a gorgeous crunchy brown. I pulled them from the heat, parked them in a bowl and used the same skillet to scramble a few eggs. While the eggs were cooking, I put some whole wheat tortillas down on a griddle, sprinkled them with cheddar cheese and then ladled the mostly set eggs over the top. I dotted the tops of the eggs with the cubed potatoes, crumbled some turkey bacon over that and finished them all with another dusting of shredded cheddar cheese. I pressed a second whole wheat tortilla over the top and....viola! Breakfast quesadilla! (Note: this all took a little bit longer than I had originally anticipated, so the bottom tortillas got slightly more browned and quite a bit crispier than I would have intended. Nevertheless, the end result was very tasty.) I cooked the first side, as I said, a little longer than I should have, but ultimately flipped them over easily since the cheese acted as a bit of a glue holding it all together, cooked the other side for a couple of minutes and served them cut into wedges. I even had some salsa (not as good as Austin Java's, but still) to eat with mine.

Verdict: the girls loved the breakfast tacos with a twist! Breakfast quesadillas were a hit tonight! As a matter of fact, my oldest kept saying, "mmmmm.....potatoes. I LOVE potatoes!" Apparently, that girl doesn't get enough tubers! So, another successful experiment this evening. I don't think it will take the place in my heart of that little buttered stack of toast, but it will probably come pretty close. Potatoes are delicious. Until next time, friends!

Less Complaining, More Cooking

So, I am sort of over my disappointment at not being chosen as a finalist in my last cooking contest attempt. It's cool, man. Really. Since I have moved on, I have decided to get more creative with my own cooking at home (trying to keep it as much in check as I possibly can so my kids will actually eat the food) and I have found a couple of other recipe contests to enter as well. So, to the creative cooking side of things, I present: Thai-inspired coconut shrimp pasta!

I started this dish in a completely different region of the world: Brazil. How do Brazilian and Thai cuisine intersect, you may ask? Well, in my head, of course! Last semester, one of my classes was International Cuisine and we were each assigned a former colony of the Portuguese empire. (Confused yet? I know this is convoluted, but stick with me, here.) In any case, one of the regions was Brazil and my classmate found an amazing shrimp soup called, Shrimp Moqueca. It is such a simple soup, yet so amazingly full of flavor that all of us fell in love with it immediately. It starts with a base of onions, bell peppers, garlic, tomatoes and chilies and is finished with coconut milk. The shrimp are simmered in this deletable concoction and the soup is served and finished with cilantro. Seriously - it is lightly sweet with a hidden spice that is not only surprising, but is also an incredibly delicious way to cut through the richness of the coconut milk. Yum.

Ok, so I considered making this soup because my kids LOVE shrimp and because I LOVE this soup. Then, I started thinking - they don't like spicy things and I don't like using full fat coconut milk. What to do? I definitely wanted to have a tomato, garlic, bell pepper base (mostly because I had a bell pepper that I needed to use), spiked with a teeny amount of spice and laden with light coconut milk. So, then that got me thinking about other coconut milk-based sauces and I remembered a Thai green curry recipe that I found on The Best Life website (www.thebestlife.com). That recipe called for (duh) Thai green curry, which I did not have and did not want to purchase. (Have you looked at the sodium levels on that stuff? Atrocious.) Anyway, what I came up with was a bit of a hybrid between these two recipes, as odd as the Brazilian-Thai combination might sound.

I started by caramelizing a small red onion in about a tablespoon of olive oil, with about a teaspoon of granulated sugar (to facilitate the caramelization). Once those were nicely browned, I added diced green bell pepper and sauteed the two together for about five minutes. I added a smidge of chili-garlic sauce and heated that with the vegetables, briefly. I then added a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes with garlic and allowed the liquid to reduce for a couple of minutes. All the while, I had a pot of boiling water going on the back of the stove, to which I added a couple of strips of lime zest. Once the water was nicely perfumed, I removed the lime zest and added a box of whole wheat linguine (standing in for Thai rice noodles). When the sauce reduced to the consistency I was looking for, I added about a tablespoon of Thai fish sauce, squeezed a whole lime into it and then added about a cup of organic, lite coconut milk. Immediately, the sauce bloomed into this gorgeous dusky rose, with peaks (pun intended) of bright, verdant green and deep, brick-red bubbling around in my pan. I am not sure there is anything better than a tomato cream sauce and this coconut one was no exception. I added the (previously frozen, peeled and de-veined) shrimp to the mix and let it simmer in the fragrant, sunset-colored liquid. By this time, the lime infused linguine was just about al dente, so I drained that and, as the shrimp began to turn opaque, threw it into the pot to finish cooking. I sprinkled the top with chopped cilantro and Thai basil (from our garden), mixed and served it.

The taste....well, the taste was pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. It was everything Thai food should be - lightly spicy, barely sweet, slightly tart and oh, so savory. The anise flavor of the basil and the herbal pungency of the cilantro set off all of the other flavors, which rather than fight each other to assert themselves individually, married together in a lovely fashion to create what I now realize was true fusion food. I mean, I started in Brazil, jumped over to Thailand and managed to bring in a little of Italy as well. How crazy is that? Wait. I think I mean, how crazy delicious is that?!?