A meal that both humans and dog can enjoy

After the success of the last meal, it was time for something similar, yet different. At the time, we were still very much having winter weather in San Francisco, and nice meaty saucy things were what we were after. So, I decided to make the famous potato-scallion cakes again:



and chose a main of braised short ribs to go with it. The short ribs were a basic recipe with the usual French herbs and aromatics braised for a very long time in the oven with red wine, from this cookbook



(Hmm, I seem to own a lot of cookbooks from Manhattan restaurants, maybe it's a sign we should visit soon?!!! - still haven't been to Momofuku yet! although we've already eaten at Alinea, which is truly amazing)

For something green, I made some simple sugar snap peas sauteed with garlic and red pepper flakes. This is what our dinner plates looked like:



The wine was a Bordeaux blend from Gundlach Bundschu in Sonoma.

We had a nice pile of beef bones after the main was eviscerated:



Huxley was very interested in the "leftovers":




He was a pretty happy dog! - which is to say, his begging worked.

For dessert, it was another one of my trusty pear rustic galette:



I know, I know, I make it a lot, but it is truly so delicious you could never tire of it. It's about the only dessert I like and will eat. I make desserts just for Dave, how lucky is he?!!!

A restaurant-worthy (really, several restaurants-worthy!) meal

I once made a meal entirely from recipes of famous chefs bearing very different cooking styles, and it surprisingly came together extremely well!

The main course was braised duck legs with a red wine reduction from a recipe from a cookbook from one of our favorite restaurants specializing in duck:



And the sides were 1. a potato-scallion cake from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc restaurant cookbook



and 2. a roasted brussel sprouts/kimchee concoction from David Chang's Momofuku cookbook



Actually, I chose David Chang's recipe because I'd had the cookbook forever and not cooked from it and the roasted brussel sprouts recipe was about the only thing that didn't take two days to prepare.

Here are the two sides:



And, the pièce de résistance - meltingly tender, luscious duck legs with crispy, savory skin, bathed in the most delicious sauce made from pan drippings and a red wine reduction- shown here with the potato-scallion cake side:



We paired the main course with a Santa Barbara Pinot Noir (not shown for some inexplicable reason in the photos).

For dessert, I had made my trusty pear rustic galette, paired here with a Lustau Moscatel (yes, we actually had our first taste of this excellent dessert wine at the winery in Andalusia!):



Some notes:
Thomas Keller's cookbook was worth it just for the potato-scallion cake recipe.
Roasted brussel sprouts are good, but even better with kimchee.
The duck legs are amazing and were surprisingly simple to make. While the dish was braising in the oven, I had enough time to make the sides. Those duck legs are going to become a favorite, I can just tell!

Dave's Pre-Birthday Dinner

Dave's birthday was on the 18th, during which we went out for a nice dinner at Commonwealth restaurant in San Francisco, but the day before the actual birthday dinner, I asked him what he wanted me to make for his pre-birthday meal, and he said, "Pork chops with cabbage" and "Chocolate cake", none of which were my favorite things, but I guess that was the point, to request things that I would never make spontaneously but that he wanted to eat.

The pork chop recipe was from a Fine Cooking magazine article, still available free on-line here. It is a marvelously simple recipe to throw together and appears more complicated than it actually is to make. We paired it with a very nice Gewurztraminer from a new winery that we discovered on our most recent trip to the Anderson Valley in February:



The smell of pork chops was too much for Huxley, who can be seen here shamelessly employing all his guiles to extort food from the humans:



He did get the cork from the wine bottle, which he heartily approved of. Here is what was left after he was done "tasting" the wine:



Dessert was the aforementioned chocolate(-and-almond) cake, from this cookbook:



We paired it with some nice Oloroso sherry:



Not too shabby a dinner, but I think Dave enjoyed it more than I did. Huxley definitely loved it. He got to chew on the cabbage core and had pork bone snacks for several days afterward. So, what's my kind of dinner (as opposed to Dave's)? The next two posts will reveal!

Cleaning out the refrigerator

To-day was unseasonably warm in San Francisco (temperatures in the 80's) and I didn't feel like stopping at the grocery store on the way home, yet wanted a nice meal because 1. it was Thursday and thus almost the weekend and 2. I felt like celebrating what felt like the advent of spring on such a nice, warm day after all the rain we got the last two weeks. Also, because it was so warm, the meal couldn't be too heavy (so the slow-cooked chicken with caramelized onions and cream that Dave wanted is out). And the meal had to come together with the produce that was already in the house. Well, we always have on hand staples such as rice, onions, garlic, bacon, frozen ground beef, frozen green peas, chicken broth, and all the spices imaginable. And I had half a head of cabbage left over from Dave's pre-birthday dinner. So, when I found the recipe for "Cabbage and chopped meat paella" in this book



it couldn't have been more perfect! The only substitution I had to make was to use green peas instead of julienned snow peas.

Here's what it looked like before we dug into it:



Yes, that's crisp-fried and crumbled bacon sprinkled on top. Yum! Bacon is like the most perfect food. The flavors were built up from a sofrito base of sauteed chopped onions, chopped serrano pepper, and chopped ham. Then, finely-sliced cabbage was added (Huxley LOVED gnawing on the cabbage core!) and then the rice was stirred in and then chicken broth kept simmering with a pinch of saffron was added, together with previously-browned ground beef and chopped scallions and a generous amount of that nice Spanish smoked paprika that I always have loads of in my pantry and the frozen green peas. 10 minutes on top of the stove and another 10 in the oven and some standing time and dinner was ready!

Some chilled Cline Mouvedre Rose wine was just perfect with it and with the warm evening. And, best of all, I got to clean out the refrigerator and use up some of the produce in it. We bought a really big tub of Kimchee from the Korean supermarket in Oakland last weekend and space is getting to be a premium so it was good that I got to make more space for... leftovers??!!