Mushrooms! – AKA Jill’s Guide to Entertaining!

Recipes on Foodnetwork.com as usual:

The Fungal Saute and That Ol’ Cap Magic

Here are our lovely Crimini mushrooms, or baby portobellos.  First step is to remove the stems from the caps.  Then take a sip of wine.  Next, slice the stems, and some of the caps for the saute and set aside the other caps for stuffing.  Take a sip of wine.

Saute the mushrooms and shallots in butter.  When they are cooked down, deglaze the pan with cognac, take a sip of the cognac first to make sure it tastes good.

Next add in the cream and herbs.  Take another sip of wine.  Let this all cook down a bit and remove from heat.

Toss the caps in olive oil and herbs and place them under the broiler for about 10 minutes.  Go ahead and take this time to talk with friends and enjoy a glass of wine. After all, entertaining is supposed to be fun.

Once the caps are tender, fill them with the stuffing and place them back in the oven and broil on high for another 3-4 minutes.  Make sure your glass and your guests’ glasses are refilled.

Eat!  And, if you are like Jill, serve with 3 or 4 other appetizers.

Get the Delicious pie recipe here on foodnetwork.com

Doing our Alton Brown best, we measured our dry ingredients by weight, not forgetting to tare between each addition.

Working with the various temperatures and integrations of butter is one of the more challenging bits to this recipe.

Our Dino spray bottle doing his job. ARRRRRRRR!!! (Get your own)

Note: definitely be sure to wet the dough enough.  We didn’t and had to moisten it some more even after it spent 20 minutes in the refrigerator. More on this later…

Don’t do what Peter did and forget to peel the pears until after you’ve halved and cored them

The pear slices take a nice hot bath in the balsamic. Yum!

The filling is done! And easy!  We’ll have to experiment with other flavors next time.

Rolling this dough was the hardest part of the recipe for sure.  We don’t own a big rolling pin like AB uses – just a smaller French rolling pin which made this significantly harder.  Also, remember how we told you to make sure you hydrate the dough sufficiently – even after our goof earlier it was still a bit to dry which further added to the challenge of rolling.

The ice-cold pan that AB suggests you use if the dough becomes to warm is an excellent tip, however.

Pound cake receives a dice before it goes onto the dough.

There she is!  Not a perfect folding job, but the relative dryness of the dough didn’t let us do this step much better.

Awww, came out looking beautiful though, eh?  Look at what magic a little egg wash and some sugar can achieve

Despite the challenges we faced during this episode, we have to say that the end result was totally worth it.  The crust was indeed both tender and flaky.  Good job, AB!

See you next time and keep cooking!

Footnote: This pie was enjoyed by a faithful reader.  If you become a faithful reader, perhaps you can share in the spoils as well.  Bribes via comments are accepted.

A story about the little Shrimp that could.

Get the Recipe here.

The shrimp, which were purchased from Central Market (de-veined), soaked in a brine for 25 min in the fridge.

As AB directs, we made the cocktail sauce in a food processor while the shrimp were at the day spa.

Instead of buying Old Bay, we used a seasoning we had previously purchased from William Sonoma.

After 2 minutes under the broiler, we flipped the shrimp over and put them back in for another minute.

These were some of the most delicious shrimp that we have ever had!  The seasoning was perfect, they were cooked exactly right, still juicy and plump without being over or under done.

The cocktail sauce was wonderful, but I must admit, we only used 2 tablespoons of horseradish instead of 4, and exactly 50% of the people eating it “casually” mentioned that it could have been spicier.

All in all, this was a fast, fun and fantastic appetizer that we will make again.   4 1/2 stars!

You can grab the recipes here.

We gathered our ingredients together for a brief moment before getting started.  It looks like a lot of food and, well, it sort of is.  We ended up eating on this for 3 days.

Alton looks quite happy to be backed up by a cup of mayo   We are sad to report that, apparently, you can no longer buy these Alton Brown branded ones, but there are other companies making similar products.

Jill dices up the red delicious.  We couldn’t find ginger golds so we used fuji apples in their stead.

All the ingredients (well, we forgot the celery for this picture) are ready to go.

Service! Skeptical about the taste?  We were too. Curry powder?  Really?

Alas, we are happy to report that the end result is delicious.  We all took a few bites of the “traditional recipe” salad before adding all the extras, and it tasted classically yummy, but this punched up version is fantastic as well.

See you next time and keep cooking!

UPDATE:

Just found out that National Fondue Day is this upcoming Sunday, April 11th – NO JOKE.  No Coincidence.

Read All About It Here.

Watch Good Eats – S2E2 – For Whom The Cheese Melts in Educational & How-To |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Recipes from this episode can be found here.

We’re back!

We popped the cork on a little bubbly to celebrate the first JillAndPeterEatGood dinner in the new apartment

The whole spread.  The three cheeses you see featured here are from our favorite local cheese shop, Scardello. For our fondue we purchased half a pound of Gruyere, half a pound of Sharfe Maxx, and three ounces of Appenzeller.  Yum!

Zoë is very happy to be grating cheese. Make sure you toss the cornstarch with the grated cheese.

TOWER OF CHEESE!

The fondue is coming along nicely.  Jill sprinkles a handful into the bubbling pot.

Service!  We had summer sausage, bread cubes, apple chunks, and blanched broccoli, cauliflower, and asparagus.  We don’t own a fondue pot, so a cast iron pan that was heated on the cooktop for a few minutes served as our warming base.

Jill and I loved this recipe.  The cheeses were a little bit too “funky” for Zoë to enjoy them, but we found the complex and tangy flavors to hit right on the mark.

See you next time and keep cooking!

But, I am glad to announce, that after 3 weeks, the kitchen is finally unpacked and we cooked our first meal last night!!! (we did not take pictures, now…gotta find the camera…..haha)

Here is what we had:

Shrimp Ceviche Cocktail

We made a few adjustments like instead of ketchup, we used canned tomato puree and we left out the cucumber… I think that’s it.

The entree was Fish Tacos with Mango, Onion and Cilantro Salsa.  We used Tilapia and corn tortillas, yum.  This was accompanied with Borracho Beans.

Again, we adjusted this recipe just slightly by using fresh onions and garlic, real bacon instead of packaged, and like many of the suggested comments, we let it all stew and simmer for about 4 hours.  They ended up amazing, better than most restaurants’.

For dessert we cheated and ordered a Quatro Leches cake from La Duni.

And of course we could not leave out Troy’s Amazing Margaritas:

1 can frozen limeade

1 can (use same can) tequila

1/2 can of water

Splash of orange juice

1/2 can of orange liqueur like Grand Marnier or Cointreau

1 -12oz. Mexican Beer – use light beer – XX Lager (Optional)

Serve over ice.

WE PROMISE TO HAVE A NEW POST WITH PICTURES AND AN ALTON BROWN RECIPE UP VERY VERY SOON.   MAYBE EVEN THIS WEEK.

!!! WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG READING !!!

!!! TO BRING YOU THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE !!!

Sorry to do this again to you, but really, fruitcake in February?  I think we will wait till next holiday season to do this episode.

If you still want to watch this episode in the mean time, here it is…

See you next time and keep cooking!

!!! WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG READING !!!

!!! TO BRING YOU THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE !!!

We discussed this at great length, but ultimately decided not to do this episode, at least not right away. The idea of making chocolate just didn’t appeal that much, especially since both of us are trying to be at least somewhat mindful of our caloric intake this year.

So look for us to come back to this episode.

If you still want to watch this episode in the mean time, here it is.

See you next time and keep cooking!

Watch Good Eats – S1E12 – Power To The Pilaf in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

First and foremost, we would like to apologize for this post.  We were in a big hurry, for no reason, and forgot to start taking pictures until about half-way done.  Secondly, because of this, we messed up a few other steps and almost ruined the entire dinner. Whoops.

A posed picture taken way after the fact.  These are some of the ingredients used in the rice pilaf.

Not pictured include: Saffron, green onions, chicken broth, butter, and bay leaves.

Extra ingredients in the picture that were not in dish: Garlic and fennel.

This is what everything looked like in the pan right before it went into the oven.

Let me catch you up on what you missed…..

First, place the saffron in hot water to steep.

Melt the butter in a 3-quart skillet over medium heat and stir in the onion, bell pepper and 2 pinches of salt ( NOTE: we forgot the salt )

Add the rice. Cook, stirring frequently, until you smell nuts – another 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the saffron and its water, the chicken broth, orange zest, bay leaves and the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. (Again, forgot the salt). Increase the heat and bring to a boil.

Thoroughly wet a clean towel, then place the towel across the top of the skillet. Top with the lid, then fold the towel corners up over the lid.

Transfer the skillet (towel and all) to the oven and bake 15 minutes.

NOTE 1: We did not turn the oven on and the rice sat cold for at least 5 minutes while we waited for the oven to heat up.  Crap.

NOTE 2: We did not wet the towel enough and it caught on fire.  Jill noticed the burning smell and declared “I think something is burning”.  Peter, knowing that the food was not even close to done, ignored her, at first.

We then attended to the oven to see what was wrong and noticed the towel.  See the slightly singed edges above.

You see, when AB said in the show, “a barely moist dish towel”, we perhaps took  him a bit too literally on the “barely” part.  The above pictures illustrates our attempt to rectify that misunderstanding.

We put it back in the oven for the remaining cook time.  We hoped.

Its out of the oven and looking edible….we’ll see.

Fish out the orange zest and bay leaves. Turn the pilaf out onto a platter, fluff with a large fork and garnish with the raisins.

We served this with a chicken and fennel recipe that we found on FoodNetwork.com.

The rice came out pretty tasty.  We discussed it and agreed that it lacked only for the mistakes that we knew we made during cooking. The actual star of the dinner was the chicken recipe. Here are a couple of cooking pictures from that dish.

Thanks and see ya next time.

Keep Cooking!

Watch Good Eats – S1E10 – Hook Line And Dinner in Educational & How-To |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I swear the fish was “this big”…

Ok, seriously, check out our 6 lb Red Snapper.  Cool Huh?

So, being the badass she is, Jill gutted the fish by herself.  Ok, not really, it came that way from the store, but we did stuff it with good smellin’ stuff.  Like oranges.  And …. Parsley….

He is ready for surgery Dr.

The caption says it all folks.  (put your cursor on the picture)….DUH.

Boring note:  Side side dish of veggies includes zucchini, broccoli, and asparagus.  If you want an extreme close up, please email us at JillandPeterEatGood@gmail.com

Cracking the hard shell of kosher salt is way harder than it looks.  Really wish we had taken a video clip for you.

Oh my.  The skin is gone!

This is all we get after all that hard work? (Yes, of course it is, dear – Peter)

The taste was amazing.  The texture was firm and every bite had the flavors of citrus and herbs.  The extra-virgin olive oil drizzled on top is the perfect dressing.

If you do this dish on your own, take a tip from the restaurant chefs and do as we do – heat up your serving plates in the oven (or microwave) – especially for family-style service like this.  The last thing you want is to spend all this time and money preparing a beautiful fish and then serve it lukewarm or even cold at the table.

See you next time and keep cooking!