Happy Halloween

Cy's going for a really gourmet, ambitious meal tonight. It's going to take a long time so we won't be able to start eating until after we trick-or-treat. The best part about this once a year meal is that everybody gets a personalized version.

I get a Mr. Good Bar, Dad is going for a king size Take 5, Mom's dinner will be a single massive Peanut M&M and Cy, Cy gets a great big pack of Smarties.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

The Mind of Garfield the Cat, Explained!

It seems like it's been a long time, from that first spaghetti and meatballs dinner, to the lasagna that made the first blog post, and everything in between; in some ways it has been a long time. The weather has always been wonderful for our dinners and so with our first truly winter-like Sunday it seemed time to take a page out of Cy's book, "winter = tamales and italian". Comfort food. With the wind blowing and rain thundering down, even a bit of hail, it was time to get started. The same lasagna recipe and the same people, 8 months later.

The meat is almost done browning and the garlic smell has pervaded the kitchen, imagine what the three dogs in the house must be smelling! Wouldn't it be cool to have a dog's sense of smell, or hawks eyes, rabbits ears, the strength of an ox, it kinda' makes you wonder how these pink-skinned hairless creatures ever got to the top of the evolutionary food chain.

The sauce is done and the ricotta-egg mixture is mixed, the baking pan is greased and the oven is heating up. The Tulip Poplar outside is getting blown all over the place but in here it's warm, safe and smells really good.

The lasagna is layered; sauce, noodles, ricotta, Parmesan, sauce, noodles, ricotta, Parmesan, sauce, noodles, ricotta, Parmesan, sauce and mozzarella. It takes forever to layer one on top of the other, especially in our oval baking dish. Dad's slicing us an apple appetizer while the lasagna sits in the oven, the timer ticking down until time to eat.

Yum. It was a really good lasagna it was, meaty and cheesy and didn't flop and fall apart all

over our plates. The uppermost layer of cheese was really strong on top, crunchy and

wonderful, while underneath the cheese just pulled apart all gooey just like the cheese did on

last Sunday's pizza toasts. I was reminded why Garfield the Cat loves his lasagna so much.

Meat Cheese Bread

This week just flew by. It seems like just yesterday that we had come home from the beach so I could make clam chowder. On Wednesday Dad left to go to Orlando for an industry conference robbing us of our soús chef and blog editor so Mom asked Cy to cook something a little simpler than usual. Thinking on the simple tack, Cy decided to make closed-face pizza sandwiches. putting us where we are now, him grating cheese and me sitting here by the computer dead tired from my cross-country race earlier today.

We bought really good Vietnamese baguettes and Cy shredded mozzarella and Monterrey jack then sliced open the loaves and set the oven to warming up. Now Cy is spooning pizza sauce onto the lightly toasted baguettes while Mom is sprinkling on cheese. Looks like this last bit is going to go really fast as the cheese melts on to the bread. Not only does this look like it's going to be really good it also took only about half an hour all told.

This was a really good meal for a week like this when it needed to be a quick and simple meal. this was really good and something somebody could make during the week. Cy's working on a strawberry-banana smoothie for dessert. As we were eating the sandwiches, the different layers of the sandwiches reminded us of one of our favorite sandwich restaurants, Meat Cheese, Bread.

I Wish We Had More Clams

We spent the weekend at the beach. We rented a beach house with Cy's friend's family. We dug a tunnel system that our dogs were intrigued by and explored the dunes. It was a pretty awesome way to spend a long weekend. Now we're back home and it is time to cook.

I figured that after a weekend at the coast it was a good time to try clam chowder. Dad was baffled when he learned it was going to be a cream-less clam chowder. Right now the vegetables are sizzling on the stove and the recently shucked clams are sitting on the cutting board waiting to be chopped.

This chowder has us purée-ing some of the clam chowder and then adding it back into the soup, making for a really wonderfully thick soup. We just have to add some clam juice and then we're ready to eat!

That was a very good clam chowder. Every spoonful a murky mystery, filled with onions, garlic and celery. Though it could have used more clams it was a good soup. Especially considering all the ingredients had to sit on our fridge over the weekend and we had to squeeze all the prep into about an hour it was a good soup.

Like a Last Taste of Summer

The weather here in Portland is changing; our cool, rainy summer has given way to Fall. Today has been true Fall weather, so Cy chose to have one final summer meal, burgers on the grill. He's also dug up a "recipe" for potato wedges. We had BLTs for lunch, (all of a sudden we have about 10# of ripe tomatoes from the garden.) So Cy decided to make use of the leftover bacon grease to make crispy potato wedges.

As the coals warm up Cy shapes burgers and Dad puts the grease covered potato wedges in the oven. I have a feeling that the cooking will end before it's begun. Already the burgers are off to the grill.

Last Sunday Dad said how the sushi that we were making intimidated him. And it scared me too. Back in February, March, and April, we were scared of almost every meal. Each success felt like climbing Everest. But over the summer the meals became less scary. We had become more confident chefs. So I was thinking that some of you probably have a few good, scary, unusual or challenging ideas to offer. Why don't you give us ideas for what to cook. Maybe a dish that scares you, or an interesting local meal. You look at this blog from places as diverse as Moscow, Saigon, Kuwait, London and Omaha, Nebraska. What should we try next? What do you think would make our parents freak out?

Tomatoes are sliced, pickles are slicing themselves (this the coolest gladiatorial combat ever), Potatoes are in the oven, and the burgers have been flipped. I, am ready to eat.

Those were good burgers. But the real star was the potato wedges. These were salty, crispy on the outside and soft, almost mashed-potato like, on the inside. Cy has made us some sort of fruit juice berry puree mix for dessert, they were quite good. Like the rest of the meal they were like a last taste of summer.

Plate Upon Plate, Roll Upon Roll

Back in April when we made sushi Dad and I didn't really know what we were doing. So, now that we have more cooking experience in general (and a little sushi experience) we're trying again. This time, instead of cucumber rolls and miso soup, Dad and I are going to make California, and cucumber rolls.

Thanks to last time Dad and I aren't stumbling over pitfalls like last time, forgetting to make a vinegar dressing, and all sorts of other stupidities. One of our accidents last time was not really measuring that well, our sushi cookbook was printed in Australia, so all the measurements are in milli-liters, and grams. Leaving us and our calculators to get everything into cups and tablespoons. Enough to drive us crazy.

The cucumber rolls are done and, unlike last time I only had one " epic fail" in my attempts to roll the sushi. Progress! but on to new and better things, now I get to try to roll a California roll.

That was kinda fun... and hard. we layer the rice on top of the nori then you flip the rice/nori so that the rice is down. I then layered on mayonnaise, cucumber, krab, (we couldn't find the real deal) and avocado. Then we rolled it and covered it in roe which are flying fish eggs. My mouth is watering.

We made the salmon sashimi and spread out the sushi, plate upon plate, roll upon roll. A feast.

Sticky rice is gone, the roasted eel and raw salmon, cucumber, seaweed, and fish-eggs are gone. We swallowed whole the rolls and and left behind dirty dishes. And then we brought out the dessert that we picked up at the Japanese supermarket we went to today.We tried, but failed to choke down the play-do like bean paste. It is called Daifuku and is made from red bean paste. I never have and probably never will understand Japanese candy, or the lack of a cultural sweet tooth. Dad started to say something about Japan's historical isolation with no international trade and how lack of access to sugar lead them to develop desserts out of Adzuki beans. I was off to refill my glass of Sprite - sweet corn syrup- to wash down the red bean paste dessert experiment. But at least their raw fish is good. It's kind of strange the sushi rolls Dad and I made were really large and, for whatever reason the sushi restaurant a few blocks from our house makes massive rolls. This gives us "the saburo's debacle" Do you stuff it all in your mouth or bite it in half and watch it fall apart. It seems to be an interesting neighborhood curse. We'll call it the Sellwood-Moreland style of sushi. It was a good meal.

Better When You're Eating

Remember pirogi? Well the weather over here changed so fast this year that it's already winter. And as far as Cy and I are concerned winter weather means its pierogi time. So Cy is kneading dough and Dad is chopping potatoes and we're getting ready for a pierogi feast.

The dough is resting and with nothing else needing to be done, Cy spotted a brown paper grabbed a rubber band and put it on his head. "Chefs Hat," he declared! Cy proceeded to take a block of cheese and grate it to mix with the potatoes as the filling. Click, click, mash, mash. Yip, hooowwlll, dog dreams. Click, click, mash, mash, wait, wait. Just a quiet Sunday afternoon in Portland.

Since Dad is outside working on adding mudflaps to my bike Cy has taken it upon himself to shape the cheese and potato mixture into balls to fill the pierogi whilst the onions simmer in butter on the stove and the dough sits resting, waiting.

The smell of butter and onions fills the kitchen, the mouthwatering aroma of fresh dough mixing with the greasy sensation of cheesy potatoes wafting in and through the kitchen building the rafters and supports of a great shifting building to fulfill all the senses. This is the whole idea behind the open kitchen in a restaurant. This is going to be a true fête. For whatever reason we had a few extra cheese balls which, luckily, make an excellent snack.

Ohh. Is that kielbasa and sauerkraut I smell warming on the stove? Let the feasting begin.

Wow that was good. The kielbasa was rich and smoky, the pierogi were soft, greasy and wonderful. Don't try and get me started on those onions that got simmered in melted butter. Mmm. And everything was salty. I need a tall glass of water. Pierogi are always better when you're eating.