Grilling menu with Thai flavors

We went all out on the CI recipes this week. Thai-Style Grilled Chicken with Spicy Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce, Asparagus, Watercress, and Carrot Salad with Thai Flavors, basmati rice, and strawberry shortcake!

The Thai-style grilled chicken was delicious. It was brined, then rubbed with a mixture of cilantro, coriander (isn't that a bit of overkill?), ginger, black pepper, lime juice, and lots and lots of garlic. Twelve cloves of garlic, in fact. One-fourth cup. This was rubbed under the chicken skin and all over the outside of the chicken as well. Then it was grilled over high heat for much longer than the 18 minutes the recipe called for. But these were some big girls.



The dipping sauce made the chicken. It was spicy, with a lot of red chili flakes, and sweet with sugar and lime juice. Garlic and fish sauce balanced out the flavors. Served, of course, in individual dipping bowls with fancy chickens.




The basmati rice was made exactly as last week. The buttery flavor of the Tilda rice is just delicious. Too good, in fact. We have to buy some more Tilda before our next dinner!



On to the salad. The asparagus was briefly sauted, then cooled in the freezer. The asparagus and carrots were marinated in a sauce that is very similar to what is put on the ingredients for Vietnamese spring rolls. These parts of the salad were amazing.



The watercress that these were to be served on...well....it left a bit to be desired.




Doesn't that look amazing? It doesn't even look as good as it tasted!

And it wouldn't be a Sunday in June if we didn't have strawberry shortcake. This might be the last of the strawberry shortcakes for the near future. The berries used this week were hand picked by the chefs early, early on Saturday morning. A lot of effort went into getting into the berry patch to pick them, but this shortcake deserved the effort.





What do you think this busty chicken might be singing?

An Indian feast!

What a better meal for a hot Sunday in June that grilled tandoori chicken? On the side some fresh baked naan, basmati rice, and more delicious grilled vegetables.

The tandoori chicken was a recipe from CI. There was a spice rub with cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, cayenne, and ginger. This was applied to the chicken breasts.



Due to a misunderstanding regarding the size and cut of chicken breasts required for the recipe, we ended up with just two single breasts, a total weight of 12oz of chicken. But the two we made turned out beautiful.





The vegetables were a slight departure from last week's. Though prepared the same way, we had yellow squash, red onion and green peppers this week.



The rice was a modified basmati rice pilaf. Modified in the sense that we did not put anything other than rice and butter in it. We used the recommended Tilda brand of imported basmati rice, and the difference was definitely apparent. It might not look special, but this was special rice, indeed.



The naan recipe was from CI's Best International Recipes book. It requires a small amount of yogurt. Because we usually don't have time to let dough rise after grocery shopping, this dough was prepared ahead of time by one of the chefs.



The dough was divided and rolled into 8 balls (the 8th is not pictured, he was too shy). Then rolled out and cooked in a frying pan.



Immediately after removing the bread from the pan it was lightly brushed on one side with melted butter. Yum.

Dessert was prepared ahead of time. It was an old family recipe from one chef's mother: a raspberry charlotte. Homemade lady fingers were briefly soaked in diluted liquer (perhaps only out of consideration for the two non-alcohol-drinking chefs). The interior was reminiscent of panna cotta mixed with fresh raspberries.


The charlotte was accompanied by a lovely raspberry coulis. This marked the inaugural use of the beautiful new gravy boat.

Bertha's Big Day!

Bertha is a Kitchenaid 12 cup food processor. She has been in one chef's family for at least a year now. Bertha is very powerful, but often doesn't know her own strength.

Tonight's menu featured old fashioned burgers. For the chef who does not eat hooved animals, there was a piece of barbequed chicken. Also served were french fries and grilled vegetables. Dessert was an old favorite, key lime bars.

The burgers were most special. The meat was sirloin and short ribs (boneless short-ribs, the butcher thought we were crazy when we first asked for short ribs to make burgers with). There were a number of steps involved in preparing the meat. First, it was cut into 1 inch (2.54 cm) cube chunks. One cubed, it was placed in the freezer for 20 minutes. Once it was nice and firm, but not frozen, then it was Bertha's big moment! She tore that meat apart, but only to the proper consistency, no further. The meat was then patted gently into patties, but not handled any more than ABSOLUTELY necessary.






These burgers were much to fragile for throwing on the grill, they were carefully fried in a 12 inch skillet. The buns were prepared in that pan before, lightly toasted on both sides. Once the burgers were flipped, cheese was added. The cheese was melted, then the burgers were assembled!




We can't forget the "special sauce". A delightful mixture of ketchup, mayonnaise, vinegar, and sweet relish. The relish played an integral part. That's why we splurged on the organic sweet pickle relish.

The french fries were quite a production. They were first soaked in cold water (in the refrigerator) for 30 minutes. Then they were fried for 6 minutes in 325F oil. After the first frying, into the organic paper bag from Whole Foods they went, to soak up some of the oil. A ten minute rest, and then back into 350F oil to crisp them up.





The vegetables were delicious, but pretty standard as far as grilled vegetables. Zucchini, onion, and red pepper. Brushed in olive oil and sprinkled with salt.

All in all, a delicious meal.


And we can't forget the key lime bars. A truly dreamy dessert. This time we did the more conventional baking in the oven method. They can, however, be successfully prepared on the grill. Bertha did another lovely job on the crust. Go Bertha Go!



What could be better on a Sunday evening in June?

A brief cake interlude

When one chef has a birthday, the others might like to give a gift that will be cherished. The March 16th dinner saw one chef receive a copy of The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. To properly honor the birthday of the giver, a Blueberry Swan Lake cake was required.



This cake was quite an effort. The cake itself was White Chocolate Whisper. Between layers were strawberries and on top was a blueberry sauce. It was iced with stablized whipped cream.

Overall, the cake was quite delicious, though personally, this chef felt the cake was a little too buttery.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

The feature of this meal was by far the homemade pasta. There is nothing more delicious than freshly made pasta with a little butter and a little salt. Unfortunately, the pasta was camera-shy and we have no up close picture of it.



The pasta is there on the right in the background.

To go with the pasta, we had chicken paprikash. One of the chefs kept coming across recipes for it and was interested. The recipe we ended up using was from Cooks Illustrated. It was quite delicious.

And doesn't the sauce look gorgeous in that orange Le Creuset duch oven!


Dessert was back on for this night. There was a brief scare in the making of the lime curd when one chef realized that she had forgotten to add the lime juice to the curd. But as it had just been put in the refrigerator to cool, the missing juice could be added with no negative effects on the final product.


Served with a slice of pound cake. Fannie Farmer, if memory serves this chef correct.

Yum-o!

February 24, 2008

This was a busy winter night in Minnesota. There had been suggestions of having an all appetizer meal, with cold Vietnamese spring rolls along with fried spring rolls, and maybe even "chicken wrappers", which believe it or not are from the CIA, 8th ed. Instead of spending so much time wrapping though, it was decided that we would have cold Vietnamese spring rolls (with the best peanut dipping sauce ever) and Jap Chae. The spring rolls and sauce recipe were from Cooks Illustrated, and the Jap Chae was CIA.


In a contest for best dish, the spring rolls win by a landslide.


Thai basil, which is always available at Midway Cub, makes a nice statement. They are layered on the rice wrappers, then rice noodles are added as well as a carrot/peanut mixture, and some cucumbers marinated in vinegar.

The Jap Chae was a little disappointing. But there certainly was a lot of it! The flavor was a bit dull, maybe due to the poor quality soy sauce used.


No dessert tonight, the chefs were too busy.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

We're working on posting some of the wonderful meals the Sunday Night Chefs have created over the years. This was a special one, a birthday dinner!

On the menu: Avgolemono, skewered chicken, mille feuille with puff pastry and eggplant, and homemade rolls. For dessert: lemon curd cake.



The avgolemono was inspired by the amazing lemon soup we had at Acropol Inn. This was one of the strangest dining experiences we had. The restaurant was empty but for us and another table. The food, not all that surprisingly, was quite terrible. With the exception of the soup. Unfortunately, the Cooks Illustrated recipe was not the same. The eggs were added at the end of cooking, and instead of cooking like in an egg-drop soup, made the soup strangely creamy. The lemon flavor was too pronounced as well, making a soup that was very difficult to eat.

What more than made up for the soup were these dinner rolls:


A slightly sour-dough taste, crusty on the outside and warm and soft on the inside.

The chicken was marinated in a lemon, garlic and olive oil mixture. Only for a short time, no more than 15 minutes or the chicken and lemon interact unfavorably.


The mille feuille was chosen because this week in March was "Greek Week" at Lunds. They provided us with a set of Greek recipes, and we thought this looked interesting. It had two layers of puff pastry, a pan fried eggplant, a small amount of tomato sauce, and some mascapone. As one chef says, anything with puff pastry is delicious!



(The above picture is driving me crazy. It was taken and is saved on my computer rotated 90 degrees to the left. But when I upload it, it rotates itself.)

The cake was again the piece de resistance. The lemon curd was amazing. The cake was amazing. Even the seven minute frosting was amazing. And it was just so beautiful.


Happy Birthday!

Sunday, June 8, 2008

It's been a while, but three of the four chefs were all back in town tonight. The fourth was enjoying himself at a CPF event. He certainly missed out!

Tonights menu was really just a backdrop for the desserts: blueberry pie and raspberry tart!


We started the meal with butterflied grilled chicken (CI) and rosemary roasted potatoes (also CI). And a lovely salad.

The butterflied chicken was brined for approximately 45 minutes, or the time it takes for one chef to begin cleaning the raw chicken contaminated area of the chicken and another to give a practice Ph.D defense talk. Then on to the grill:



It spend a total of about 25 minutes under a baking sheet and some bricks, but then we took those off to make room for the potatoes. The potatoes are pre-cooked in the microwave, then brushed with a wonderful rosemary and garlic infused olive oil. After they are grilled, they get tossed in the remaining oil. Yum!



All in all, quite a successful night, but we'll be glad when all four of us are once again cooking together!