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November, 2009

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The Pleasant Pheasant Pot Pie

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Our friend Joel went hunting for pheasant a week or so ago and invited us up to enjoy the bounty in the form of a Pheasant Pot Pie.

He roasted the pheasant in the oven while preparing the pie shells and vegetable filling.  Like many of us modern cooks he grabbed a recipe online and altered it knowing that spices would make it taste like something.  Joel even knew the spices would make the recipe taste like something good!

POT PIE IX + roasted pheasant – minus the chicken + fresh herbs:

  • +2 Tablespoons fresh Thyme, chopped
  • +1 Tablespoon Rosemary sprigs
  • +1 Bay Leaf
  • +1 Garlic, minced

For full recipe ->

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A (s)Pacific Delight: Dungeness Crab Season!

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

$4.99/lb. Pre-Cooked Dungeness Crab from Coscto

$5 something a lb. at Whole Foods

4 crabs = 6 people

NOTE: The process of getting the meat out of the shells while sitting at the dinner table makes you think you are eating much, much more! This is part of the fun.

Steps to Deliciousness:

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More Than Just a Good Rolling Stones’ Song; Brown Sugar, SF Bay Area Day Trip to Oakland

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Brown Sugar Oakland, CA & An Oakland Day-Trip Itinerary

• A Creative Soul Food breakfast joint so good that your old-school grandmother and your hipster cousin from LA can come together and love every minute of it.  A bonus is also the fact that you won’t feel greasy or smell like the fryer when you leave.  The décor is very modern and has an updated tasteful diner feeling with a brown sugar color palette all around you.

Brown Sugar offers such specialties as Cornmeal Waffles and Fried Chicken, Pulled Pork Sandwich with Lime Slaw, Black-Eyed Pea Salad, Roast Pork Hash, and the Mac & Cheese.  You WILL wait in line to get a table at Brown Sugar because it is that popular even though it sits nearly by itself (at this point … hint, hint) in West Oakland.  You can watch the chef, Tanya Holland, prepare your food with precision alongside her other cooks in the kitchen.  I look forward to seeing the cook/chef who sports a green mohawk rockin’ out on the cooking channel with his own punk-rock palate show.

An Oakland Day Trip Itinerary – SF Bay Area Day Trip:

(Must go on a first Sunday of the month)

1st Stop Eat breakfast at Brown Sugar @ 8-10am

2nd Stop First Sunday of every month go to the Alameda Flea Market @ 10am-12pm

3rd Stop Go on a tour at Hangar One Distillery Tasting & Tour in Alameda @ 12noon – 6pm

  • Get Directions: http://www.hangarone.com/visit.html
  • Taste Creatively-Crafted Flavored Vodkas, Absinthe, & Whiskey
  • Take a tour with the Vodka Vixen
  • You can bring a picnic lunch or snacks to eat out front on the picnic table and admire the view of SF from across the bay

4th Stop (if you have time and feel up for it) Oakland Museum of California Sunday, 11 am–5 pm

  • Get Directions: http://www.museumca.org/directions
  • Get an overview of CA history in this interactive exhibit
  • See artwork made by CA artists (historical to contemporary)
  • Great Dorothea Lange Archives of photographs from the 1930’s

    Spotted Dick, Open Only in Case of Emergency

    Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

    I don’t know what it is about the British Isles and their unfortunate names for certain things.  Spotted Dick is by far one of the more unfortunate.  Not only are they known for silly names, but also for their dearth of tasty local food.  If ever there was a time to be proved wrong, it was during the week-long power outage we had about a month ago.

    Noting our dampened spirits (pun intended), we picked up the running joke for the evening and then decided to actually eat it.  A quick note about that week: we were running our refrigerator off of our car engines through an 800 watt inverter originally purchased for camping.  While it rained, car running, dealing with the loss of the Internet, we read the instructions on the can of Dick by candlelight.  All the while, we cracked terrible jokes, just the most awful lame jokes that you usually only laugh at when you’ve been enjoying some libations, but our lack of professionals like Jon Stewart to do it for us, we went on our merry way (at least two of us thought it was funny).

    Beyond the dick jokes, we actually ate the stuff (the sponge cake, that is).  The taste is if you were to take a sponge cake, bathe it further in trans-fats (don’t read the ingredients), soak it in a liquid form of molasses with raisins, force the raisins into the cake, and then add lead weights just to give it some more heft.  I actually enjoyed it, though after reading about the amount of hydrogenation needed to create this product, I probably won’t have it again.

    Get Schooled: Burrell School Vineyard & Winery, Santa Cruz Mountains

    Saturday, November 21st, 2009

    Easy & Enjoyable Saturday Afternoon at the Burrell School Winery

    • Great Deck & View: You can buy a bottle of wine and sip it on the deck at Burrell School Winery with friends.  The view is beautiful and looks out over the vineyard towards the Monterey Bay.  Open Thursday through Sunday, 11am to 5pm.

    • Short Weekend Drive: 25 minute south of San Jose, 15 minutes south of Los Gatos

    • $5 Tastings or Buy a Bottle to share on the deck

    • Free Tastings for You & Three Friends when you are a Wine Club Member: If you are a member you pay $70 for three bottles four times a year.  With this you receive free tastings including three guests and often can enjoy pick-up parties in the garden when you stop by for your wines.  We do this often when friends are visiting from out of town or even on Friday afternoons.

    Summit Road Wine Tour Idea after the jump…

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    Pump it up with Pumpkin Donuts

    Friday, November 13th, 2009

    Pumpkin-Orange-Cinnamon Spice Donuts!

    This recipe was really easy.  You can do it quickly and they are really tasty.  You could even try doing a frosted orange icing with orange juice, powdered sugar, milk, and orange zest, similar to a simple icing for cookies.

    Donuts

    1 c. brown sugar
    4 tbsp. cooking oil
    3 eggs, beaten
    2-4 tbsp. grated orange rind
    1/4 c. orange juice
    1 c. pumpkin
    1 tsp. cinnamon
    1 1/4 tsp. salt
    1/2 tsp. nutmeg
    3 1/2 c. flour
    3 tsp. baking powder
    1/2 tsp. Soda

    Cinnamon-Sugar Glaze

    1/2-1 cup sugar
    2 tsp. Cinnamon
    1 tbsp. Orange zest (optional)

    Put all ingredients together in your mixer.  Mix with the mixing hook until dough comes off of the sides.  You may need to add extra flour 1 tablespoon at a time to make dough firm enough.  Form the dough into a ball and let it chill for 2 hours (I skipped this part).  Pat down the dough on a floured surface and roll it to 1/2-2/3” inch thickness with a rolling pin.   Use a donut cutter or we used a round glass and a shot glass to make the classic donut shape with delicious donuts hole leftovers.

    Heat oil or fat (we used canola oil) in a 3” pan, we used our cast iron pan, on the stove to 375 degrees.  We didn’t have a deep fry thermometer so we put the heat on low and let the oil warm up for around 15 minutes.  Then we tested it with a donut hole to see if the dough would cook in about 3 minutes.  If the oil isn’t hot enough, the donuts will absorb a lot of oil.  Once the oil is hot, put 3 donuts at a time in the pan to fry about 1 1/2 minutes per side, 3 minutes of cook time total.  Then use metal tongs to pull the donuts out of the oil and shake the donuts to drip some excess oil back into the pan.  Immediately toss the donuts in the cinnamon-sugar glaze in a smaller bowl.  You can then set the donuts on old paper bags to absorb some of the oil.  Serve while warm!!!

    [We love donuts, but you can call them doughnuts if you want]

    You May Become Rubenesque Eating These Reubens

    Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

    Flank Steak Reuben Sandwich with Chipotle Reuben Sauce

    Tips:

    • You can grill the meat and assemble these sandwiches the night before.  Then wrap them in foil and place them in the refrigerator.  The next day you grill the sandwiches on your panini maker for a hot lunch.

    • You may grill the sandwiches on your sandwich press or in a hot buttered/oiled frying pan with a cover.  Grill the other side once the bottom is browned.

    Grilled Flank Steak:

    12-ounce flank steak ready to grill
    3 teaspoons coarsely ground pickling spice (can buy in spice section)

    Preheat grill on high.  Coat steak with pickling spice.  Grill steak to medium-rare to medium.  Remove steak from grill and let stand for at least 5 minutes.   Cut flank steak into 1/4 inch slices.

    Sandwich Assembly:

    12 slices Deli Rye Bread
    Grilled Flank Steak Sliced
    1/4  cup Chipotle Thousand Island dressing (recipe below)
    1 1/2 cups drained sauerkraut from jar
    6 ounces thinly sliced Gruyère cheese

    Nonstick olive oil spray

    Heat up your panini maker or sandwich press until hot.  Assemble the sandwich from bottom to top: 1 slice of bread, slices of meat, sauerkraut, sauce, cheese, and top with second slice of bread.  Spray the panini maker with olive oil spray.  Grill the sandwiches until the cheese is melted and the bread is browned.

    Zach’s Thousand Island-Chipotle Reuben Sauce

    4 parts mayonnaise
    1 parts ketchup
    1 chipotle in adobo sauce, finely chopped
    1 tsp chipotle sauce from can (to desired spiciness)
    1 part pickle relish
    Pepper
    Pinch of sugar

    Bread of the Dead: Pan De Muertos

    Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

    Skull & Crossbones: Day of the Dead Bread

    On November 1st and 2nd of every year, Mexican and Latin Americans pray for loved ones who have passed away.  On these days they make Pan de Muertos (Day of the Dead Bread).

    Some use anise seeds and orange zest when they make their Bread of the Dead.  We decided the cinnamon version sounded much more appealing.  In the end, I did add an orange-sugar glaze to the top, which turned out very well.

    Recipe after the jump. . . .

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