Author: sfarrisyoung

My favorite meal from last week- I bite my scone at you.

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Shakespeare in Love is my second or third favorite movie (it switches places with Stranger than Fiction depending on what’s going on in my life).

The Alamo Drafthouse ( our new favorite movie theater) had a special afternoon Shakespeare in Love inspired tea. This was a big deal for me because 1) I’ve never seen SIL on the big screen and 2) I love tea. Huzzah!

I thought it would just be regular tea and scones, but no, it was a tea flight. Each tea and afternoon snack was brought out at specific times during the movie. We started off with a robust green tea, and a olive, tomato and mozzarella cheese finger sandwich. Then when everyone was falling in love, we had a lemon rosebud tea with sweet potato scones and creme frache. And for the grand finally a (spoiler alert) a bittersweet berry tea with a rosemary almond scone (rosemary is for remembrance if you know your Hamlet).

Sigh. The lemon and rosebud and sweet potato scone combo was my favorite, but I am happy to say I couldn’t take a picture even if I wanted to. This is a post tea pic on the fancy placemat they gave us. The Alamo has a strict no phone policy and anyway, some things are better left to the imagination.

My favorite meal from last week– grilled cheese

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You can’t under estimate the power of a humble grilled cheese sandwich on a cold winter’s night.

This one was a Buffalo Mozzarella with garlic and a little olive oil. There was soup. It was good too, but it was the grilled cheese that warmed my soul.

My favorite meal of last week!

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An open faced sandwich made of hard boiled egg slices, melted cheddar cheese, smears of spicy mustard and mayo, topped with spinach (all on slices of whole wheat bread).

This sandwich was so easy (and filling) it’s probably going to become a standard for when I need a quick meal that’s hardy.

When all you have to do is rinse off some veg, slice a few things and broil– it doesn’t get much easier than that!
(I hard boiled the eggs a few days earlier).

Oh, and there were some leftover malt vinegar potatoes on the side, but they were old news.

Cooking School Confidential: My Inner Hermionie and Thor the Chef

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All my life I have been the shy and quiet student. I’ve never had that “you raised your hand too much” moment , but I had it last week. It all started when my new professor/Chef generally asked if anyone had made a soufflé?

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Sigh. I stopped raising my hand after 3 questions and just pretended I hadn’t cooked, or eaten, or was excited about X, Y, and Z. Because guess what? I am excited and I love to cook and I love to eat and it’s obvious.

This is Professional Cooking 101, so we are starting  as basic as you can get: stock, chopping, sauces, scrambled eggs, etc, so I should know a thing or two about a thing or two…right?

Wrong– Do I know why I dice my veg when chopping? No. Do I even dice my veg? No. Do I heat up my saute pan before putting the oil in? No. And that is just the tip of the giant KitchenAid Mixer.

Our Chef is focused on thinking well to create well (he also loves hip-hop and England) so he’s coming from a good, “food is love” place, which is important to me since it’s the foundation of who I am as a home cook.

This week we watched these fantastic videos from the MAD (A community of chefs, cooks and farmers with an appetite for knowledge) that I had never heard of before. They are all on-line and free http://www.madfood.co/videos/ . With so many interesting food people and topics I’ve never really thought about  (like foraging) on the symposium list, I know I’ll have a lot to watch on my lunch breaks for a while. So check it out.

The one by Mangus Nelson, a Swedish Chef, who grows all his own food at in an arctic climate was fascinating if you garden (and he reminded me of “Thor” the Chef if there was a Thor the Chef). Wiley Dufresne (Top Chef guest judge) talked about the how and why  cooking and it made me want to eat at his restaurant in New York.

I’ve only been to two cooking classes so far and I am so excited to be in a room with sincere, liked-minded food people, that I can’t go to sleep when I get home.

I know once the actual cooking starts next week, I’ll be so exhausted that going to sleep won’t be a problem, but until then it’s a little like Christmas.

Favorite meal from last week

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For over 2 years now I’ve posted my favorite meal from yesterday on Facebook and I thought the meal of the week should be posted here.

Last week was a tie…
I had the epiphany to eat my leftover guiltless French Toast with my apple butternut squash soup (topped with almond slivers).

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The combination of the egg and the butternut squash was awesome. I used a baggette so my pieces were small enough for dipping into the soup (no syrup necessary!)
To make the French toast “guiltless” you use 6 egg whites, a tsp of vanilla, and 1/2 cup of orange juice (with a pinch of cinnamon) – no milk!
I cut 8 inch wide rounds of bread. Dip and soak them with the eggs and cook then like regular French toast. The recipe recommends pouring the leftover egg mixture over the bread while it cooks…and so do I.

The other favorite meal was something I ate at lunch and dinner- sautéed garlic tofu with canniloni beans, 2 diced garlic cloves, 6 cherry tomatoes, 6 fresh basil leaves, and a sprinkle of fresh pecorino Romano cheese (garlic salt and pepper to taste)

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Um yeah, I had it with roasted potatoes then ate it again as a hot topping to fresh spinach with a little olive oil dressing.

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I kind of wish I had it now. So maybe there isn’t a tie after all…