Dr. J

Thanks lhollers Great rack marlene

Went to Fox & Obel and found this incredibly looking fresh swordfish. Had to buy it. Also bought some skate, and kobe beef which is the best I have seen there in 1 year. Ill put the pictures of that up later. One thing that I have been learning over and over is that when you have amazing ingredients it is better to tone down the rest of the meal/flavors. I have found that if I make complex sauces or accompaniments with a specific ingredient the original flavor of the ingredient gets lost. I used to just think that perfecting a sauce or preparation would further enhance a great dish but I am leaning more and more to the belief that when I deal with average ingredients, I need to step up the prep and cooking methods. When I am working with a quality material is is better to pull back and do very little. This dish is Squid rice (I am going to have to start coloring the rice darker because the color it is now doesnt look great). Taste came out great though. I would like it to look really black. I will see if i can fix it next time. Swordfish was seasoned and made in a slightly browned butter and rice vinegar mixture.

Yes Sandra quenepas in the background. One of my favorite things to eat along with passion fruit which is soo expensive in the US.

Have been cooking but not taking many pictures. Now in Puerto Rico for vacation/work. Dinner for 4 turned into dinner for 10+ here are some of the pics. Sorry if its too many pics, ill edit if its a problem, but sometimes its cool to see the people and the food too. Great party atmosphere at my brothers house. Big menu....here it goes. Not pictured. For starters we had sorrullitos, (fish, land crab, cheese croquettes) and a a serrano, lomo and cantimpalo cured meats plate served with fruits. Order is messed up in the pics the order it was served was appetizers, scallop, lamb, fish. Lamb with 90/10 ratio mashed potatoes and sweet potato. Served with a yogurt version of the green goddess sauce and a red wine/red wine vinegar reduction. My brother helping out with the plating. The fish was a caught yesterday and mostly snapper with one seabass. It was cooked in the oven with a tomato and wine sauce with local spices. Scallop was served with a plantain cracker topped with an avocado slice on a pumpkin sauce. Hope it wasn't too much. Have to stress the complete difference cooking is when you have better vegetables and products. Avocadoes, Plantains and other spices were purchased by my brothers wife who studied agriculture and knows where to find all the great stuff. World's difference in taste. Too bad I cant get that stuff in chicago

Great dish Peter. Growing up this was a typical dish I ate (brings me back). Sans the Morcilla, we normally fried that. Although, dropping it in the stew sounds like an awsome idea. Great work man.

Nice dish andanand. I agree with with prawn, the plate is a bit too big for the dish but I love the style and presentation.

Nice looking dish C.sap. Here are a couple of dishes from the week. I made some spanish calamari rice and served with a 1/4 chicken marinated in some 5spice and rice vinegar. Came out great. I normally like the make the rice as black and dark as I can but not enough ink. Second dish is monk fish with some mango chutney. In the plate also is a rice vinegar slaw. The mango chutney was store bought and was very tasty.

If you stare at the animal crackers long enough you can see a very nice steak and sausage, with very nice tomatos and asparagus. J/k the steak looks very tasty, great pics!

Was the taste of the prime rib from costco any good? I was going to buy it to try it on my next trip there.

Great dish marlene! This dish is a safron pasta with shrimp. I put some proscuitto when I made the garlic/wine/butter sauce to give it a different edge. The tomato was added at the end and not cooked , came out well. I also added some capers at the end. The cheese on top is shreded gruyere.

Thanks for the compliments guys. Peter, the duck breast was a moulard duck form gepperth's meat market in halsted in chicago. It was frozen. In my opinion I have gotten better results getting duck breasts from costco or even the duck breasts I get from regular supermarkets when buying a whole duck. The duck was tasty but just not as tender as the other ones I have made. As Qwerty and ndy pointed out the fat ratio is a bit high, didnt taste like a 1:1 but certainly not optimal. I didnt break it down or render it because It was my 3rd try with the same duck and its taste was not too overwhelming, and again that wasnt even the problem. The duck was just not as tender as the other ones I had purchased from other places. Qwerty I put the skin side down so the meat resembled the other fruits that I sliced in the salad bowl. I was a bit disillusioned because I have heard many people swear by moulard duck and my first experience was kind of dissapointing (because of the expectations) the taste was just fine. Out of the 4 experiments the salad was the best of all 4. Perhaps it was not as soft as others it is because it was frozen. Any hints, tips or opinions would be most welcome.

Great looking dinners Percyn. I like the idea of the peanut butter. Here is my duck breast dinner. I put a sweet orange dressing on the duck before serving. Came out great.

I eat them all at once daniel. I try to time everything to the point where everything comes out at a great temperature. However I will admit that the picture process messes all of that up. Depending on how fast I take the pics and how well I plan the plating is how warm the meal ends up. Include level of hunger in that equation as well. If I am really hungry, I wont even take picures.

Very nice pics prawn. Here are are some meals that I had recently. First good ol' lunch. Hot Dogs. Everytime I see some new or freshly baked hotdog buns I buy them in search for the perfect buns. These were purchased from fox and obel in chicago and were not very good. I am sticking to the cheap kind. Hot dog is a veal dog from costco, awsome buy. Next are a couple of lamb chop dishes. Made two different ways. First was a Framboise + Veal stock reduction sauce with the chops. The salad is a bacon, mushroom, egg, spinach salad Pumpkin ravioli, the same salad from above with fruits and lamb chops with Framboise vinagre and a moddified version of green goddess dressing.

Love that dish ce'nedra.

NIce soup matthew. Here is some braised ribs with asparragus, sweet potato, and potato on a bed of rice. I found the pic interesting from the standpoint of how the flash came out. The potatos look funny. Remind me of the stars in the sky. (probably me seeing things again)

too much for the dinner thread? Hell no...... lisa that was awsome. I love it. Love the step wise pics and love the finished product.

Very nice dishes Doctim and chufi. This dish is just a simple steak with potatos and carrots. The only interesting thing were the potatos and carrots which I cooked only using clarified butter. A little sea salt on that done. Steak was seasoned using Adobo. Fast and easy. Next day a steak sandwich. Onions and mushrooms in the bottom, topped with tomato, olive oil and balsamic.

Nakji - The meal took some preparation before hand. I did some of the sauces ahead of time and tried to make as much as I could before that way it wasnt too labor intensive although it came out that way. Potato salad with french toast - Well I made the potato salad the day before so it is served nice and cold. My friend loooooves potato salad so that was her request. Pretty good though.

Had a friend come and visit me in chicago. So i made a nice meal for her. Not the best pictures becuase I tried my best to make sure things were served at the best temperature possible. First pic is breatfast of the day. French toast with potato salad. Dinner. Mixed green salad with fruits. Pumpkin ravioli with vodka sauce and pesto. Scallop cooked in butter served on top of a tempura shizo leaf and topped with the Green Goddess sauce from one of David Ross's recipies and some masago. Sauce came out great. The plan was to foam it up, however I did not have time to mess with it. I made the sauce exactly as the recipe stated except I added some heavy cream to smooth it out since the scallop was cooked in butter. I also put a small peace of mandarin orange to replicate the look of a scallop off the shell. The main course was Wagyu rib eye. Very tasty, it was probably a 4 or 5 marble rating. Definately worth the price. Topped with fried onion rings and bernaise sauce which is not pictured. Great combo the fried onion rings/bernaise/steak. Next to the beef is some king crab which I served with some potato infused clarified butter.

Beautiful dishes Prawn and DRoss. DRoss can you share the recipe for the salad dressing....looks awsome. Great dishes suzi.....how was the difference in flavor of the kurobuta? Here is my take on asparragus with beef. First time making the dish so have not perfected it yet.

Very, very nice prawn..... Since you went twice with the dish and were that impressed, can we get some more details or proportions on the dressing?

Thanks a lot Heidih and Kim, i really appreciate the feedback. I will certainly try to mix up my presentations a bit more since I have been going way too much with the simplistic style. DRoss those fries look really good and the chilean sea bass dish looks awsome. I really like the use of the salad with the sea bass and am totally with you on the modifications... I will definately make this dish. Nice looking tuna daniel, I like the color contrast in the dish. This is a weird dish combo but worked out very nicely. I got inspired to cook some tongue becuase of Tex's spread. I didnt try anything new, just cooked it in a spanish style stew. However I was craving Fried egg with rice and did just that along with the stew. I also made some sweet plantains to sweeten the deal. I also added some tonkotsu sauce to the egg, reminiscent of the homemade curry dishes I used to eat in japan. On second thought I should have made tongue curry. Will do that next time. For whatever reason the tongue presentation came out to be a picasso rabbit deconstruction. Probably me seeing things.

Nice meals everybody. I am a little behind on my postings....been really busy lately. The first one is the last of the mango dishes. I used the rest of that mango I bought and made stuffed a chicken breast mango with a spicy beef reduction sauce on the side. The second one is a good ol steak sandwitch with tostones on the side.

Great pics markk. D.Ross that shrimp thai lime butter recipe looks awsome. Kim Shook great minds think alike. The second purpuse of the dish was to make crab rangoons.I got some wonton skins and filled them with that crab mixture to which I also added cream cheese. The rangoon is then topped with a mango sauce. Came out excellent. Been a while since I worked on my folding technique. I made like 30 and the last 10 looked decent. Great dish by your daughter kim! The next dish is one that I make over and over because i just love it. Its a moroccan style stew made with tons of spices and some tomato paste. I also put some honey and heat to give it all the flavor i can. With it, I serve some cold yogurt which soothes the overall power of the dish. Since I had some mango left over I used it for garnish. But let me tell you it went awsome with the dish, to the point where I went and cut some more and just ate the beef, yogurt, rice, mango in every bite.