Just a quick service announcement here. I’m renewing the site. Not only did I buy www.lovethroughthestomach.com (which currently still redirects here), but I’m revamping everything as well. the new site will have many more options in the back-end, which will serve me in making the blog prettier, easier to navigate and hopefully more fun for you!
The weather has been beautiful here and we had a 4-day-weekend due to Easter. We visited my mom on Easter and I brought her a cute and happy little cake. Here’s the preview. The full-on post will likely follow after the move to the new site. Bear with me and keep checking to see how the new blog turns out!
Despite the fact that in the last 2 days the temperatures here have spiked up and I can’t think of anything but spring or summer dishes, I didn’t want to hold out on my coq au vin. I made this a couple of weeks ago, but forgot about the pictures, so I didn’t write about it.
Coq au vin, to me, is fall or winter food. It’s warm color and taste pulls you through the dreary cold evenings. So if you’re in the same climate as me, you might want to hold out on making this for a while. There are more climates in the world though. And some people don’t have such strong feelings about what kinds of food to eat in what weather.
There are tons of different recipes or methods for making coq au vin. The common denominator is red wine. Oh, and poultry. Officially rooster, but most people just use chicken. After all, it tastes like chicken, right?!
I actually use different ways of preparing coq au vin. Depending on what I have in my fridge I’ll make it differently. In this instance, I had 4 small chicken thighs, which are perfect to make coq au vin.
If you have chicken and a bottle of red wine (one that you are willing to drink as well!) you’re good to go. You’ll probably have stuff around your fridge or pantry to make it great. Here’s this version.
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Dutch people have told me that the way I grill is all wrong. There’s no charcoal in my grill, my food is properly cooked and has a nice color. So I must be doing something wrong, right?
The way the Dutch grill, or barbecue, is by lighting charcoal under a rack and roasting several kinds of meat over that. The result is burnt meat with a raw interior. You eat outside with sides of salads and bread and sauces, preferably embellished with ants and sand.
Now that the weather is getting nicer, I’m grilling more than I did. It’s just more comfortable to stand outside now. We still eat inside though, from actual china with silverware (no paper and plastic) as around dinnertime it’s starting to get chilly outside. And because we prefer not to eat ants. It’s strange, I know. But that’s just who we are.
Last weekend I decided to finally smoke something on that big fancy grill of mine. I’d bought some hickory chips and found a suitable aluminum bowl. I soaked the chips and placed them in the bowl, directly over the flames of my grill. I placed a lightly seasoned piece of chicken breast on the other side of the grill, so it wouldn’t cook quickly and close up to the smoke. I closed the lid, kept my eye on the temperature once in a while and just let it go.
One of my 11 in ’11 goals was to host dinner once every quarter. So far I’ve managed. They might not have been super fancy parties where people were specifically invited, but still they were nice dinners with someone other than ourselves.
Just before the first quarter was over my dad stayed at our house and even though he had meetings everywhere and was hardly here, he did join us for dinner one night.
I made us spaghetti carbonara as a primo. It was tasty. Seeing my dad enjoy it also made me realize how completely used I’ve gotten to the Italian way of eating. I don’t give people spoons with their risotto or their pasta anymore – at least not without them asking. I had already put down knives, so my dad cut his spaghetti. It made him more comfortable, which is good. However I -as Laurens and all my in-laws do- just roll spaghetti on a fork and slobber everything in. Slurping and slobbering pasta has become normal. While non-Italian kids are taught that eating that way isn’t cool – or even rude, even the fanciest Italians will just roll their long noodles and slurp them in. That just happens when you eat pasta. You dab your mouth with a napkin and all is well and you’re on to the next course. I like that.
The spaghetti was followed by my fennel and chicken recipe. I love that recipe. My dad first taught it was Belgian endive (before he tasted it) and fortunately he voiced that, so I could warn him. Nothing is worse than tasting something completely different than what you expect. Once it was clear what it was the dish was enjoyed along with a nice rocket, tomato and mozzarella salad.
No pictures of the actual dinner were taken, because I didn’t think of it.
Last Sunday my parents-in-law came over to see us. Instead of taking them out to dinner, I decided to cook them a nice dinner. We started out with fresh made pasta with butter and sage. My mom-in-law was excited about the pasta and grew surprised that I’d made the pasta just before while they were in the living room talking to Laurens. The pasta was wonderfully eggy and perfectly al dente. The sage was picked from a pot of herbs I just planted in our yard a week before. (I’m working on that other 11 in ’11 goal, starting my tiny urban garden!)
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That birthday cake I made for my bloggiversary. I still owe you some recipes.
Now I can’t give you a recipe for fondant, as I buy that ready made. And there’s no photo tutorial of making the calla lilies either, because Laurens wasn’t around while I was rolling them and he always takes my pictures. But the cake itself was heavenly and I can give you those recipes.
The sponge was great, light and fluffy and airy and eggy. Not overly sweet, which is good when you’re filling it with buttercream and ganache.
The buttercream wouldn’t come into the exact right consistency, which had to do with the temperature, but the recipe still tasted really good, and once on the cake, you really couldn’t tell the difference.
The ganache, oh the ganache… I could just eat ganache with a spoon and call it heaven. If ganache were a person, I’d become a polygamist and Laurens would just have to share me. (Yes, I sure as heck love that ganache.)
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