Recent Food Fun

Hello again! Last week was a great week in food. Monday was Valentine's Day and Boyd and I cooked dinner together. I had pulled out a recipe that we made for Valentine's Day in 2006. It was romantic to cook the dish again remembering when we cooked it together back in 2006 before grad school.

We made Asiago Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta. Yum! It was even more tasty and cheesy than it sounds. The recipe calls for bacon, chicken, heavy cream and asiago cheese, oh, and pasta. They only use 1 Tablespoon cheese but we ignored that bad suggestion and used about 1/3 cup instead! So cheesy! It's topped with parsley and green onions.

We had the meal with a bottle of Bonterra Chardonnay, which is my all-time favorite wine (it's organic too!).

Last Sunday, we had a wonderful "small world" moment. Our friend Beth had recently raved to me about a "cheeky" cocktail (she's from Britain) she had at a local bar, 116 Crown. Right at the same time I was trying to find the name of the drink and how to make it, Boyd, who was listening to his latest favorite podcast "Dinner Party Download" (check it out!), called out, "the bartender from 116 Crown is on the podcast!" A moment later: "They're making your cocktail!!"

After he had a moment to calm down, we looked up the recipe for the 4th and Clyde. The drink has a great mix of gin, bourbon, and elderflower liqueur (a nice sweet touch). It's topped with red pepper flakes, which give it a nice kick. We promptly bought the ingredients and made them the next day:

My third and final food fun from last week was a cooking club gathering. Yale's International Spouses and Partners group has a regular meeting where people from different countries teach us how to cook their ethnic foods. This week was Mexican food and as a Californian I felt compelled to go, especially because guacamole was on the menu!

Besides the guacamole, which is pretty standard, we also made some more unique foods, such as Nopales (cactus):

and Rajas de chile poblano (poblano chiles with sour cream and cheese)

Both dishes were extremely tasty. The poblano dish was really good, maybe because of all the cheese. The cactus (which was boiled) tasted surprisingly like green beans. It was fun learning about authentic Mexican cooking, and even better to learn that there actually is a good Mexican supermarket nearby! Yay - fresh tortillas are mine again! They want me to teach about American food, but I wasn't sure what to do. What do you think? Cookies? Potato salad? BBQ?

Have a good week! Bon appetite!