Food, Glorious Food

Last weekend was a whirlwind of social engagements - all of which included food, of course!

Friday night was an epic restaurant meal with one of my great foodie friends. We ate at Nostrano, a Madison favorite, and pulled out all the stops. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that we shared three appetizers, two entrees, and one dessert.

This was our menu:

CELERY ROOT SOUP*

GREEN APPLE | CHIVE-CREME FRAICHE | CURED MACKEREL | MARCONA ALMONDS

SUNCHOKE SFORMATO

GRILLED RADICCHIO | BOSC PEARS | SUNFLOWER SEEDS | WILLI'S BANDAGED CHEDDAR | AGED BALSAMIC

GRILLED OCTOPUS SALAD

FINGERLING POTATOES | CHICORIES | SALSA VERDE | CAPERBERRIES | TANGERINE AGRUMATO

CAULIFLOWER RISOTTO*

HEDGEHOG MUSHROOMS | ROMANESCO | PECORINO | CURED EGG YOLK

GRILLED STURGEON

FREGULA SARDA | LITTLENECK CLAMS | ARTICHOKES | ROASTED GARLIC | SAFFRON

AFFOGATO

CARAMEL GELATO | SEA SALT | ESPRESSO | BOMBOLINI 

YUM!! Add a couple of amazing cocktails (wine for my friend) and we had a crazy-good meal.

Saturday I had THREE parties to go to. The first is one of my favorites of the year - the annual Garlic Potluck at my friends' Tami and Tom's house. It's exactly as you imagine. Everyone has to bring a dish that includes garlic and, of course, if you're playing along the right way, it should be a LOT of garlic. Tami and I were talking about the party a couple of weeks ago and I was musing about what I should make. I had this idea that I wanted to do a white pizza with garlic but realized I couldn't make enough to feed the entire party. That idea mutated into garlic bread and, between Tami and I, we invented a recipe for the most garlic-y of all garlic breads. It was easy to make and everyone loved it. The recipe is below.

(not the actual child)

The middle party was a combo birthday party for my friend and her two-year old. All I had to do was show
up to that one and be tolerant of a house FULL of very small children. It was a riot. There was one little red-headed girl who insisted on holding a giant bunch of balloons. Every time her mother took them away from her, she'd have a total screaming melt-down. She really loved those balloons... The menu was primarily child-friendly snack foods and cake.

(my actual crock pot & pork)

Party number three was one of two, annual beer tasting parties at my friend Andy's house. It's sort of pot-luck-ish although I was so full from my previous parties that I couldn't think about eating and just brought drinking material. Andy always provides some meat-based product as the core food and, for this party, he made pulled pork in the slow cooker. Holy cow (or pig, as it were), that was some amazing pork! So good, in fact, that I made him give me the recipe then stopped at the store on the way home and bought a pork shoulder to make for Sunday dinner. It's the simplest and tastiest pulled pork that I've had in a long time. The recipe is also below.

Finally, on Sunday, we had the pulled pork with cole slaw and "parmesan potatoes", which is a derivative of a popular side dish from a local restaurant called Quivey's Grove. Again, recipe below. :)

So... that was my crazy weekend of eating. It was so much fun and I really enjoyed creating some new dishes to add to my repertoire. I hope you like them too!

- Alex

Extra Garlic Garlic Bread

One long loaf (or a number of rectangular "rolls") of French bread. You want a bread that's relatively soft on the outside, not a hard crust bread.
5-6 heads of garlic plus a few cloves
Italian seasoning
Parmesan cheese
Salt (if there's not already salt in your Italian seasoning)

Roast the garlic. An easy way to do this that is quicker and eliminates the fuss of removing the cooked cloves from the head is to skin the cloves, place them in an aluminum foil packet, and drizzle with olive oil. Close the packet up tight and place in a 400 degree oven until the cloves are very soft and slightly caramelized.

Put the roasted garlic, along with the olive oil they cooked in, into a bowl and blend smooth with an immersion blender. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can do this in a regular blender. Take the garlic paste and stir in Parmesan cheese and salt to taste.

Cut the bread long-ways and place on a cookie sheet, cut side up. Brush the cut side with olive oil and sprinkle with Italian seasoning. Spread the garlic paste on the bread, making sure you get some paste all the way to the edges.

Mince the remaining cloves of raw garlic and sprinkle on top of the garlic paste.

Place in the oven and cook until the garlic paste is golden and the minced garlic has browned. Be careful not to burn the minced garlic.

Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork

Pork shoulder roast that will fit, whole, in your slow cooker
Worcestershire sauce
Brown sugar
Salt

Pour enough Worcestershire sauce to cover the bottom of the slow cooker. Place the roast in the slow cooker and pour more sauce over it to coat all sides. (I turned the roast over and sort of rubbed the sauce all over it) Then take about a 1/2 cup of brown sugar and coat the wet roast with it. Put the cooker on low and cover. Cook for anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. Remove the roast (it'll probably come off the bone in chunks) to a large platter or cookie sheet with raised sides. Discard the bone. Using two forks, shred the pork. If there's a lot of liquid in the slow cooker, pour off all but about a 1/3 to 1/2 cup. Return the shredded pork to the slow cooker, salt to taste. Turn the slow cooker to warm (if you don't have a warm setting, you can leave it on low) and leave it until it's time to eat. Serve with bbq sauce or "dry" (ie: no sauce) and top with cole slaw.

I had so much of this when I was done, I've also used it for pork tacos and with eggs in the morning. It's kind of all-purpose!

Parmesan Potatoes

A bag of frozen shredded hashbrowns
Onion (diced)
Salt
Pepper
Shredded Parmesan cheese

Place the frozen hashbrowns in a shallow baking dish. You want the layer of potatoes to be relatively thin. Mix in diced onion, salt, and pepper to taste. Level out the potatoes so the top is pretty flat. Cover the top with shredded Parmesan cheese until you can't see potatoes through the cheese layer. Bake, uncovered, in a preheated 375 degree oven for about an hour, or until potatoes are hot and cheese is melted and golden brown.

All You Can Eat

I'm a sucker for an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The irony of this statement is that I have the stomach capacity of a two year old. I can ingest about 4-6 ounces of protein and about a cup of other food in one sitting. And this constitutes a BIG meal for me. One would think that I'd be Audry Hepburn-thin, the way I eat. But, alas, due to my Southern Italian genealogy and my gastro-snobbery, I'm destined to be thick. Even when I was young, and really thin, I had chunky fingers, fat calves, and an appetite - clear indicators, all, to my impending girth.

At my worst, I weighed a couple of pounds shy of 220. Today, I fit comfortably in a size 12 and uncomfortably in a size 10 and I'm okay with that. Because, ultimately, there are certain things I'll never give up - like buffets.

In the past few days, I've eaten at three different all-you-can-eat establishments. I feel like a whale right now and plan to spend the weekend recovering with yogurt smoothies, and maybe a salad. In the meantime, I'd like to wax rhapsodic about my love for the trough.

Years ago, trough eating was just that - shoveling in copious amounts of food, like a farm animal, until I was in a veritable coma. It has nothing to do with the food itself, only the quantity available. For me, this was the era of the cheap Chinese buffet.

Then I had surgery and I couldn't trough-eat anymore. It was sad but a good exercise in portion control. The unexpected side-effect of the surgery was that I became much more selective about the food I DID eat. If I can only eat a couple of cups of food, why would I waste any of that stomach-space on cheap bread or overcooked meats? Suddenly what the food tasted like became infinitely more important than how much there was.

Then, one shiny day, I discovered the "gourmet buffet" and I'd found the perfect confluence of quantity and quality.

When a decent restaurant does a buffet, I can choose many different items and still eat a small portion of food overall. I'm their best customer because I consume the least and - pound-for-pound - pay more for my meal than anyone else in the room. But their service to me is to allow me the variety I crave without having to throw out half of the meal.*

So, this week, I indulged in a Japanese buffet, an Indian buffet, and the meat-parade of a Brazilian churrascaria. Granted, I did "overeat" - walking out with a ludicrously full belly after each meal. But, my lack of willpower aside, these buffets allowed me to not feel guilty about taking one cube of potato from the potato salad bowl, or one small piece of California Roll. These minuscule portions mean that I can try everything on the buffet that appeals to me. And, I'm telling you, it was ALL good (except maybe the undercooked lamb at the Brazilian place.)

Chow down, babies.

- Alex

*Please don't lecture me about leftovers. They're just not the same.