I dropped my parents off at the airport today after a really nice visit of a little over a week. They did a lot of tourist stuff in DC before they got to Boston and the weather was pretty gross, so it was a relatively uneventful visit in terms of ever leaving my apartment... but there was a lot of good cooking and many competitive games of Scrabble. We made some good progress with bonding the rabbits while we sat out on the porch in a few hours of bearable weather. Charley really likes Rico now, and just needs to figure out how to express it in an appropriate way. Rico is being extraordinarily patient with him, and things continue moving in the right direction...
My Kaffir Lime tree is not only not-dead, but is actually thriving. My parents spotted a couple small places where new grown was just beginning to show when they got here, and there are now 8-inch branches in those spots. (It's grown even more in the day since I last took pictures, actually...)
Check out these two shots of the same growth two days apart:
Pretty impressive, no? I'm psyched... Oh, and speaking of impressive: I learned that my dad has artistic talent other than music (who knew?) when he impressively replicated the Ad Hoc at Home cover on my kitchen chalkboard (since that book spent so much time in my kitchen during the week)...
Aside from that, most of our activities revolved around cooking great meals (and tracking down great ingredients at Russo's, Blood Farm, and H-Mart). Here's a look at the Culinary Week in Review. On Friday, I had to work all day and decided it would be a great time to take my parents up on their offer to cook me dinner. We went with the simple-yet-delicious Donna Hay Classic of
Grilled Chicken with Warm Lemon Couscous.
On Saturday, I thought the traditional "Welcome to Boston" meal of Lobster and steak was in order... We picked up four lobsters (from the left, they are Bob, Mr. Pinchy, Bob II, and Mr. Pinchy II), three for dinner and one for seafood sausage later...
A little grilled corn, some perfectly grilled Blood Farm Rib-eye, tender and delicious lobster, and a bit of (Amish) butter... You can't really go wrong with that.
On Sunday, which was, coincidentally, the Fourth of July, we decided to make the
World's Greatest Fried Chicken. (Very patriotic of us, don't you think?) As the name suggests, it was pretty effing awesome....
On Monday (pardon the recycled picture...), we enjoyed dinner of
Totally Awesome Seafood Sausage from my kick-ass Charcuterie cookbook...
Tuesday featured a trip out to Blood Farm, and a dinner of
Pork Shoulder Steaks cooked sous vide and accompanied by the Momofuku Homemade Ranch Dressing and some charred zucchini and onion. It was the bomb, and will definitely enter the summer rotation...
We were hoping to do the Marinated Skirt Steak recipe from Ad Hoc at Home on Wednesday, but Blood Farm was out of skirt steak so we ended up having to use flank steak instead. The marinade was amazing, and my dad grilled the steaks perfectly. so they were tender and delicious. My mom, meanwhile, made a fantastic batch of homemade biscuits that we topped with the
Bay Leaf Butter that I whipped up... Along with some grilled asparagus, this was a great reminder of how great simple food can be.
Speaking of Bay Leaf Butter, Thursday morning featured our foray into the world of Momofuku's
Homemade English Muffins with Bay Leaf Butter, which we then converted into some awesome Eggs Benedict for a late brunch. As I mentioned in the linked post, they were pretty much the best English muffins in the history of English muffins...
Because that wasn't enough culinary awesome for one day, we completed prep on the Ad Hoc at Home Pork Belly Confit recipe for dinner. The broccoli rabe with chili flakes and garlic was a perfect side dish, and the pork belly recipe will serve as a good starting point when I tweak it (from oven-baked in a vat of fat to cooked sous vide while surrounded by a thin film of fat) in the future. Oh, and it was really really delicious, too...
Finally, Friday was the day we would assemble our Momofuku Bánh Mì. Because the baguette was still in the process of completing its final rise when dinner time rolled around, I pulled some steamed buns and pork belly out of the freezer to impress my parents with a quick, zero-effort appetizer of
Momofuku Pork Buns...
From there it was on to the main event: Momofuku
Bánh Mì. Not sure if my parents loved this as much as I did, since they don't have the same memories associated with these flavors that I do, but I thought it was pretty great and a fun dish to prepare.
So, there you have it. A week of vacationing at home with some culinarily adventurous guests. I think the moral of this post for any friends reading it is something along the lines of "Come visit me! I'll cook you yummy food!"... Then again, it would probably be easiest if you just move to the Boston metro area instead. Think about it...
For those of you who don't have the book, the peas in "Peas and Carrots" are represented by a pea shoot salad that finishes the dish... The carrot appears in a ginger-carrot emulsion that is so delicious it almost makes you weep... Finally, the garnish to your peas and your carrots is a savory crepe stuffed with perfectly seasoned lobster. I don't have words for how amazing this dish was.
This recipe wasn't at the top of my queue initially, but shot to the top of my queue immediately when I bought myself a new toy: the Sous Vide Supreme. I'll rave about that as it comes up in the post, but let's start with the food...
Possibly the best thing about summer is corn coming into season. I can't get enough of fresh, sweet, delicious summer corn... I was having a hard-core green bean craving heading into the weekend (which has never happened to me before... but the heart wants what it wants...) so I went looking for something that could combine these two vegetables. What I stumbled upon was a quick and easy recipe for Warm Corn Salad with Green Beans, Radishes, and Fresh Thyme. 
I did something a little different with my cookbook adventure this weekend. I could pretend it was inspired by something clever (like this great article), but in reality it was sort of random. I needed to drive out to Sherborn to pick up 70 pounds of hay for the rabbits at (the totally awesome) Sweet Meadow Farms, and it just so happens that the place where I buy kick-ass diver scallops is directly on the way home from there. This was clearly a sign from above that I should be cooking scallops this weekend. I couldn't decide which scallop dish to make, torn between a simple-yet-elegant recipe from the Gourmet cookbook and a somewhat-fussier recipe from the Momofuku cookbook. Not in the mood for tough decisions, the easiest solution seemed to be to make both. This sets up a bit of a competition: Who will win? Mainstream cooking magazine (with a few modifications from me) or fancy-pants restaurant cookbook? 
and Brahm Callahan from Post 390 (below, right) returned as the reigning champion sommelier. His challenger was Todd Lipman from Bin 26 (below, left).
Brahm had quickly become one of our favorite contenders at these events, so we were glad to have him back. He manages to be incredibly knowledgeable about wine without coming off as a pompous ass about it. I don't like to post negative things about people here, so I won't comment on Todd's personality. Anyway... The menu was pretty awesome, as has consistently been the case with Paul Turano at the helm...
My Kaffir Lime tree is not only not-dead, but is actually thriving. My parents spotted a couple small places where new grown was just beginning to show when they got here, and there are now 8-inch branches in those spots. (It's grown even more in the day since I last took pictures, actually...)
Check out these two shots of the same growth two days apart:
Pretty impressive, no? I'm psyched... Oh, and speaking of impressive: I learned that my dad has artistic talent other than music (who knew?) when he impressively replicated the Ad Hoc at Home cover on my kitchen chalkboard (since that book spent so much time in my kitchen during the week)...
Aside from that, most of our activities revolved around cooking great meals (and tracking down great ingredients at Russo's, Blood Farm, and H-Mart). Here's a look at the Culinary Week in Review. On Friday, I had to work all day and decided it would be a great time to take my parents up on their offer to cook me dinner. We went with the simple-yet-delicious Donna Hay Classic of Grilled Chicken with Warm Lemon Couscous.
On Saturday, I thought the traditional "Welcome to Boston" meal of Lobster and steak was in order... We picked up four lobsters (from the left, they are Bob, Mr. Pinchy, Bob II, and Mr. Pinchy II), three for dinner and one for seafood sausage later...
A little grilled corn, some perfectly grilled Blood Farm Rib-eye, tender and delicious lobster, and a bit of (Amish) butter... You can't really go wrong with that.
On Sunday, which was, coincidentally, the Fourth of July, we decided to make the World's Greatest Fried Chicken. (Very patriotic of us, don't you think?) As the name suggests, it was pretty effing awesome....
On Monday (pardon the recycled picture...), we enjoyed dinner of Totally Awesome Seafood Sausage from my kick-ass Charcuterie cookbook...
Tuesday featured a trip out to Blood Farm, and a dinner of Pork Shoulder Steaks cooked sous vide and accompanied by the Momofuku Homemade Ranch Dressing and some charred zucchini and onion. It was the bomb, and will definitely enter the summer rotation...
We were hoping to do the Marinated Skirt Steak recipe from Ad Hoc at Home on Wednesday, but Blood Farm was out of skirt steak so we ended up having to use flank steak instead. The marinade was amazing, and my dad grilled the steaks perfectly. so they were tender and delicious. My mom, meanwhile, made a fantastic batch of homemade biscuits that we topped with the Bay Leaf Butter that I whipped up... Along with some grilled asparagus, this was a great reminder of how great simple food can be.
Speaking of Bay Leaf Butter, Thursday morning featured our foray into the world of Momofuku's Homemade English Muffins with Bay Leaf Butter, which we then converted into some awesome Eggs Benedict for a late brunch. As I mentioned in the linked post, they were pretty much the best English muffins in the history of English muffins...
Because that wasn't enough culinary awesome for one day, we completed prep on the Ad Hoc at Home Pork Belly Confit recipe for dinner. The broccoli rabe with chili flakes and garlic was a perfect side dish, and the pork belly recipe will serve as a good starting point when I tweak it (from oven-baked in a vat of fat to cooked sous vide while surrounded by a thin film of fat) in the future. Oh, and it was really really delicious, too...
Finally, Friday was the day we would assemble our Momofuku Bánh Mì. Because the baguette was still in the process of completing its final rise when dinner time rolled around, I pulled some steamed buns and pork belly out of the freezer to impress my parents with a quick, zero-effort appetizer of Momofuku Pork Buns...
From there it was on to the main event: Momofuku Bánh Mì. Not sure if my parents loved this as much as I did, since they don't have the same memories associated with these flavors that I do, but I thought it was pretty great and a fun dish to prepare.
So, there you have it. A week of vacationing at home with some culinarily adventurous guests. I think the moral of this post for any friends reading it is something along the lines of "Come visit me! I'll cook you yummy food!"... Then again, it would probably be easiest if you just move to the Boston metro area instead. Think about it...