5th Anniversary Dinner

Laura and I celebrated our 5th anniversary by going to a unique restaurant in Broad Ripple called L'Exploratuer. The restaurant was set in an old house, and there wasn't a bad table in the place. It was no surprise that Indianapolis Monthly rated this as one of the top ten restaurants in the city, once we started our meal.

After great indecision we both decided to have the tasting menu, but first things first, I ordered us a split bottle of champagne. The menu started with an amuse buche (a bite size niblet set out by the chef to tempt your palate and set the tone for the rest of the meal), which was shrimp cake.

Following the amuse buche, we had the most amazing scallop ceviche. A ceviche is a preparation of cooking seafood using acid instead of heat. In this case, the scallops were cooked using a lime juice and garnished with habenero peppers and avocado, served with homemade tortilla chips. To make this great dish even better, it was served with a Geverst (I forgot to mention that the tasting menu included a different wine for each course).

I should mention at this point that the meal was very well timed with the waiter coming at the right time to serve each part. In fact, when serving the food she brought another waiter so our plates were presented at exactly the same time.

For the next course, we had a simple winter salad of fresh greens, various mushrooms and topped with a black truffle oil. The wine for this course was a Fume Blanc.

The main course was beyond imagination (at least mine, perhaps not the chef's). The main course was a preparation of wild halibut over pearl potatoes which were cooked in duck fat. The halibut was topped with thinly sliced pieces of chorizo layered to give the appearance of fish scales. Underneath was a red pepper sauce as well as figs. The halibut was accompanied by a Bordeaux with blackberry and cherry aromas. This combination of flavors in the halibut along with the chorizo was unique and the texture of the potatoes with the fish was superb. Laura and I both raved about this dish all night.

Since it was our anniversary we decided to go all out and finish our meal with dessert, and here's where Laura and I parted ways and each tried something different. While I had a banana creme custard with chocolate, Laura went all fruity and something with no chocolate. Shame on her.

The fun and joy that we had during this meal at L'Explorateur was excellent, but pales in comparison to just a moment spent with Laura.

**this mostly grammatically correct blog was brought to you courtesy of Laura's typing skills, under Jeremy's dictation. Please note that the last sentence was purely dictated and not altered by Laura in any way**

Pasture-Raised Dinner

We had our first dinner using the pasture-raised meat we bought at the Apple Family Farm....two words....HOLY COW. (pun) It was spectacular, it tasted so beefy. And, you know sometime beef or any other grocery store meat leaves a film on the inside of your mouth form the high fat content. This didn't you ate a piece of succulent beef and it left your mouth with a wonderful aftertaste and watering for more. We each had a nice size portion and it was a bit deceiving at first because we thought the steaks were rather small, but since they were dry aged they had already shrunk in size a bit....so they didn't shrink much it all during the cooking process.

I grilled the steaks at 600 degrees on the grill for about 2 minutes on each side for med. rare. I used the gas grill this time, we'll try charcoal next time, but I wanted to have more control over temperature on this first try. Before grilling I rubbed some sea salt on them and they came out great. Laura didn't even use A! steak sauce (a rare occurrence). To accompany the steaks we had Kale & Feta Pasta (Onions, garlic, Kale, salt, red pepper, feta, parmesan and Penne). Rounding it off we had a glass (yes only a glass) of Yalumbia Barossa 2004 (Shiraz & Viognier).

Feel free to join us next time.

The Stove Is Here

After much anticipation the new stove was delivered on Wednesday and Thursday morning I made my first meal on it. I made scrambled eggs and polenta. You might think, would gas make a difference? YES!!!! to get eggs just right you need good temperature control throughout the cooking....and the gas stove met the challenge, the eggs were perfect.

FYI, the formula in the picutre is not for Tessa. we've giving it away today on Freeshare (or something like that).

Food Poisoning

Just like visiting Las Vegas, eventually your odds catch up with you. On my recent trip to Korea I contracted Food Poisoning. Either e-coli or salmonella. Thursday night I the symptoms began and kept me up on night. By the time morning came around I was completely drained and still convulsing.

Since I was in Korea its not like you can just go look for a building with an "H" on it or a "clinic" since everything is written in Korean. So, instead I called the concierge at the hotel and asked if they had a doctor. Thank God they did and the on-call doctor form the local hospital came to my room. I had a bad case with a fever too. She gave me some shots and some medications. The 24 hour of travel (3 flights) was horrible, but I got home and I am now almost back to speed.

So, what do I think gave me the food poisoning? Sushi? Sashimi? Korean food? No.....pizza.

The lesson in this....stick to the local foods.

Stove Update

No new stove yet...it comes Wednesday. We found out that we can donate the old stove to the Salvation Army. so, they are going to come pick it up on Firday. I hope it finds a good home.

You gotta love kimchee!

I'm in Korea now and had a great lunch with a co-worker and customer. We had a normal selection of vegetables and pickled items in hot kimchee like sauce. We then had braised beef in a kimchee like sauce. By the end of the meal my sinus was clear, belly full and my legs asleep (from sitting on the floor).

Sushi

If you like Sushi then obviously your nirvana would be in Japan (or Montreal). Two of the best sushi restaurants I have been to were in these two places. In Montreal it was all about interpretation on a sushi them and working with local ingredients to make neat new sushi combinations. Here in Tokyo, Japan it is all about the basics. In fact, sashimi to be precise. It was really neat watching the master at work. He would take raw fish and occasionally throw it down on the wood block to see how the raw flesh responded. Sometime it didn’t bounce back well, or didn’t flatten out enough….meaning it was not good enough. The master made so many different combinations I lost count and all of them were superb. One of the simplest and more interesting combinations of sashimi was of tuna. Three different cuts of tuna with different percentages of fat each having a distinct texture and flavor. What a fun time….it makes up for the airline food yesterday!