Would you like to know something interesting? I'm more busy during the summer than I am at school. Somehow that seems a little backwards to me. This summer I am working two jobs, one at the fabulous restaurant I interned at as a senior in high school, the other as a nanny, which job I have also had since high school. I work roughly 80 hours a week. As a result of my busy work schedule I have been a blog neglecter. Shame on me, I know. Please allow me to redeem myself.
My Momma's Birthday
This year we decided to go cakeless. I wanted to do something a little more simplistic but equally as fun to make and just as delicious. My mom is a fruit fanatic(seriously, open our fridge. There are usually at least 10 different fruits in there), so I thought it might be fun to make some fruit tartlets...which also gave me an excuse to buy some little tart pans, something I have been dying to buy forever, but never had a reason to.
They turned out nicely, no? These tarts are extra special because guess what? They're dairy free! Usually the pastry cream in the center has whole milk and butter. However, my family does not drink milk. I have a lactose sensitivity and the rest of my family just thinks milk is disgusting...which it totally is. It's not even good for you besides! Everyone thinks that you have to drink milk and have other dairy products to get calcium. Um, so wrong. You're body can't even absorb most of the calcium in milk! So why is it advertised so much that we should drink milk? Because the government subsidizes dairy farms, thus they are better off if we Americans drink more milk. And another thing. Did you know, that we are the only species that drinks milk after infancy? On top of that, we are drinking milkfrom an entirely different species! And you wanna know what that milk is designed to do? Take a baby cow and turn it into a 1500 pound behemoth in a matter of 6 months. Wanna drink milk now? It's just fat and cholesterol people. You get more protein from almond or soy milk. Anyway, I digress. Back to my fruit tarts. They're dairy free. I made them with almond milk and soy butter...and they were freakin delicious!
Father's
Day
I always like to make man food on father's day. Some people may think it's weird that as a future chef of the female persuasion I will differentiate between man food and chick food. But I do. Guys don't generally appreciate the aesthetics of a dish as much as a woman. That doesn't mean I won't make the food look good on a plate. It just means I won't take the time to artfully lay down some sauce or construct a pedestal of rice or potatoes atop which to lay my grilled chicken or something. No. Man food doesn't require as much attention to detail. What it does require is a nice juicy steak. Which of course I had. This was Father's day dinner after all. What would it be without steak? Oh, and I paired it with grilled lobster tail, wilted swiss chard, and rosemary roasted potatoes. A little surf n turf for my dear old dad.
Although I'm not usually one to blab about my kitchen mishaps (I like to pretend I do everything perfectly!), I have to relate to you the excitement surrounding my steaks. I marinated my steaks in thyme oil...mistake. While the flavor was fantastic after pulling the steaks off the grill, I had about five minutes of grill time where I was sure I was going to burst into flames. Because my steaks had so much extra oil on them, the grill flared up...a lot. I literally had 8 inch flames coming off my grill! I was about to panic, sure that my steaks would be completely incinerated. I was pretty ready to throw in the towel on my dinner, storm off and leave everyone hungry. But then an idea struck me. Fire needs oxygen to thrive. So I slammed the lid on my grill and luckily my bonfire burnt out in about a minute, leaving my steaks safe. From this experience I learned to NEVER marinate in oil if you will be grilling. Which when I think about it really should have been something I knew not to do. Anyway.
Amazingly, we managed to have every course be something from off the grill. Our salad was grilled. We even had our dessert grilled! The grilled dessert idea I can't credit to myself, however. When I was working at Vivace the Saturday before Father's Day, I was telling my boss, Joey, about my menu plan for fathers day. Suddenly I realized (out loud), "Crap! I don't have a dessert planned!" Joey looks and me and says, "Well, if you're already firing up the grill, why don't you do dessert on the grill too?" Um, hello! YES! He is such a genius sometimes. I mean, how perfect is it to do each course for a Father's day dinner on the grill? So as per Joey's recommendation I did grilled peaches and plums that I had cut in half and rolled the cut side in cinnamon and sugar.They turned out so beautifully! I served them with a dollop of mascarpone whipped cream and some toasted almonds. This dessert was so perfect for summer and it had everything you could ask for from a dessert. It was sweet but tart, warm from the peaches and plums, cool from the cream, the fruit was soft, the cream was smooth, the almonds were crunchy.....heaven. :)
Last Minute Dinner Plans
Sometime mid June my friend Jake got back from his mission in Chicago. One Monday morning, a few weeks after he came home my mother announces to me, "Hey, I'm inviting Jake over for dinner. So make something special okay?" Um, thanks Mom. I'm glad you gave me so much notice. I was also annoyed because the last time I had interacted with Jake very much at all was during high school...at which point he drove me absolutely crazy. So here I was, 8 hours out from a dinner that was supposed to be wildly impressive, with a guy that I practically couldn't stand, and I had no idea what I was going to do. Luckily I came up with something.
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I grilled chicken, sliced it and laid supremes of fresh orange and grapefruit between the slices, served it with rice and a salad of mixed greens and a spring onion flower wrapped in a cucumber slice so it would stand and topped it off with a citrus Dijon dressing. How's that for 8 hours notice? Boo-yah! Oh, and the dinner went great by the way. Jake is now one of my best friends. Funny how that works out. I always say, food brings people together!
