The day before the last day of Spring Break (yesterday--Saturday), I spent the whoole day cooking, tasting and prepping. Of course, I took some breaks in between, and of course, I did not cook everything by myself (but instead, I cooked with someone else, and mostly did dessert, prepping and toppings). Generally speaking however, I cooked from 10 in the morning to 7 in the evening. It was very...nice (therapeutic in a way even though I was tired when everything was all done). I believe that it was a successful dinner...and there were a LOT of leftovers after. Here's what we had (not actual pictures, these are all stolen from the internet):
1. Horseradish Soup topped with pan-fried pancetta and shallots
-This dish came out pretty well--we cheated a bit because we didn't use lard (instead, olive oil) nor did we use speck (instead, we used normal prosciutto). Also, instead of doing the whole thing for the brown chicken stock, we ended up using canned chicken broth, which we boiled all the vegetables and spices in for 2 hours to come up with a stock.
-The thing that surprised me with this dish was that the horseradish tasted very mild and not at all like how I would have imagined it (like wasabi paste, which is normally made out of horseradish). I think that the potatoes and cream probably tempered the "kick" that you would expect out of it, and the prosciutto added a meatiness that went well with the horseradish taste.
2. Prosciutto-wrapped asparagus topped with candied walnuts
(No recipe but we just wrapped asparagus with prosciutto, brushed them with olive oil, topped them with ground pepper and broiled them in the oven; walnuts were just toasted in a pan and coated with brown sugar and maple syrup)
-The thing with prosciutto is that if you buy it from Costco, you end up eating A LOT OF IT. I mean, we used some in the soup and some for the asparagus, but there was some left (and of course, since you can just eat it right away, it's a nice, gourmet cooking snack--which I used to wrap up some dried plums and walnuts...yumm). I wish I had figs, but plums were a good substitute.
-I guess at first I felt that the halibut tasted really acidic, especially because of the lime and orange in the marinade, which was just a striking contrast to the sweetish coconut milk. If I had to do the recipe again, I would probably not marinade the fish for that long (probably less than an hour as specified by the recipe) and would maybe put some brown sugar into the coconut sauce, or something fruity and sweet (like maybe mangoes) to even out the lime flavors in the fish.
-I thought this dish was really good. The pork was tender and had a nice balance of sweet and salty which to me was reminiscent of Chinese adobo (in the Philippines) or Pata Tim, pork leg which is normally served with steamed buns. Even though this dish took quite a while to make (mostly braising time), I thought that the time was well worth it, because the pork belly was tender and flavorful.
-I had this today with rice and mango and it reminded me of Manila. It was good. :)
...and for dessert:
-Hmm. I feel like this dish probably looks (and sounds) better than it actually was. I mean, these pancakes were good, even though they were a lot of work, but I don't think they captured the "tiramisu feeling," if that term even makes sense at all. For me, part of what makes a good tiramisu is the ladyfingers being drenched with the flavor of the coffee, and I don't think I got this very much from the tiramisu pancakes, which I think tasted a bit off because of the sour cream (even if I know that it was added in to make the pancakes fluffy). In addition, I think most of the taste from these pancakes came from the cream (which I have to admit was really good).
-Bottom line--I would probably find a way to drench the pancakes in flavor, and maybe not take the trouble to follow the pancake recipe (instead I would take a regular pancake recipe and add espresso powder/cocoa powder to it).
...and Guinataan (Yams in Coconut milk and glutinous rice balls)
-This was pretty good I thought, even though it was a bit too sweet for my taste (even though I added less sugar than was called for and diluted it already with water). It ended up pretty thick in consistency so I think everyone was pretty full after dinner to eat a lot of it--understandable.
-When cold, this tastes like taro coconut-milk...paste or something like that. Like ice cream but not creamy. Pretty good.
1 comments:
Sounds very good. Maybe you can do all of these (and more) when you get back in June.
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