Chicken Bliss

Dinner last Tuesday is chicken at May and Hugh's.  We are invited along with our friends and neighbors Mike and Anita.  The evening stats with some home-made humus (courtesy of Hugh) on home-made crackers (Mary's).  To accompany those, we have an appetizer of cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and zucchini. I have not eaten much all day, so I inhale the first few bytes and they hit the spot.  It seems like the perfect start for that school night.

The evening is sold to us as a comfort food, which is an usual way of lowering expectations to indicate good but not surprising or elaborate.  Dinner might not have been a lot of work, but surprise it did.  Mary's kitchen produces a sublime combination that serves to satisfy and startle.  Very simple ingredients come together artfully to pair the warm company and conversation.  

Served over white rice, are pieces of chicken cooked along with peppers, golden raisins (plumped up to almost their original size) and kalamata olives.  That last ingredient complete makes the dish.  The olives are warm, slightly softened from the cooking and give the perfect amount of personality to the plate.  During dinner I interrogate our host to gather details about the preparation.   I have got t try this at home!

The knead-less bread (also home-made), with a nice dark crust on the outside serves to round the meal.  Ending the perfect meal for our school night is an also home-made apple pie (one of my favorites) with a hint of nutmeg.  Thanks, Mary and Hugh for a terrific evening at the heart of the Phoenix.

Doped

My ankle has been bothering me since last week.  I think I need to tweak my training schedule to ease the first long run after my last long run before a marathon.  At its current length, it puts too much stress on my joints.

Rest for a week didn't do much, so, while it does not bother me walking, after a mile running I start feeling some pressure and then a sharp pain develops.  With less than a week t go to my next race (none other than the Tokyo Marathon), I decide to go to the doctor.  Two co-pays later, I have seen my family physician and a specialist.  The X-Rays show no fracture, so I end up with a cortisone shot to the ankle.

Last night, just a few hours after the shot, I am limping.  This morning I am better, but I can certainly feel some pressure.  At this point I am giving myself no more than a 5% chance of finishing Tokyo without pain and at most 20% chance of finishing at all.  he 12 hour flight will be even longer with this over my head...

BTW, I did check and cortisone shots are not banned by the Olympic Committee.  Not that out of a field of 33,000 runners I'd be anywhere close to a qualifying finishing time to see a pee cup, but still, I didn't want to cheat.

Tonight... Italiano!

Teaming up with our friends MIke and Anita, Sharon and I invite a few friends and neighbors for an Italian meal. No, none of us are Italian, but we thought it'd be fun.

We start the night with some charcuterie and cheese with some powdered olive oil. Of particular interest was the dry beef which we found entirely by accident at the local grocery store. It wasn't the best of the cured meats, but it was different and interesting when compared with the pork.

Paired with Chianti and Pinot Grigio, it promised to be a good start to the meal. Still, the best part of the appetizers by far were the crackers. Sharon made those from scratch.

On our test run, Sharon and Anita found some recipes for the crackers online and an interesting note on one of them: "Once you start making crackers you will not stop and you will never buy them again". I can see how that would be true. The crackers were very cheap to make (flour, olive oil, water, baking powder and salt for the base).

For the day of the meal, Sharon made red pepper crackers, curry crackers and, my favorite, saffron crackers. They were all delicious.

The meal consisted of a grilled Caesar salad (we lightly grilled the Romaine lettuce and drizzled with home-made dressing and topped with shaved pecorino cheese, anchovies and croutons. Following the salad, we had lasagna two ways. Anita made a great and surprisingly light meat lasagna (with italian sausage) and Sharon made vegetable lasagna (with mushrooms, zucchini, fennel and a great white béchamel made with dried mushrooms). Yep, there were no complaints for either one of those.

Dessert was my responsibility and I opted for a lemon pomegranate panna cotta with candied lemon peel, a pomegranate syrup and some of Anita's cookies. They took a while to layer to get the desired effect, but patience paid off.

Dinner would not have been the same without our friends (plus we would have ended with a lot of leftovers ;-) Seriously, this was another Phoenix evening with the warmth that characterized them (so much indeed that the next day we hit a high of 45). All evening we had good humor, great conversation and yet another opportunity to catch up with our neighbors.

Heavenly couscous, accidentally

I have a piece of cod, which I haven't cooked in a while and I am not sure what to do with it. So I head to the fridge and I see that there are a few items that ought to be used or they risk going bad. I pull them all out and find some couscous in the pantry. Couscous is good because it is high in carbs (runner's fuel) and low in fat, but cooked right can really make a dish.

The ingredients were spinach, pine nuts, nicoise olives, cherry tomatoes and garlic.

I decided to cook the spinach separately, wilt them in olive oil with salt and pepper and place them in a circle on the plate.

For the couscous, I chop the pine nuts and toast them. Then, in a pot, I heat up olive oil and cook the garlic chopped until it starts to brown. Then add the cherry tomatoes (whole), the nicoise olives (roughly chopped) and the toasted pine nuts. As soon as the tomatoes start to blister I add the couscous and let it get coated with the oil. Last I add some chicken stock, stir, cover and take off the stove to finish cooking while I cook the fish.

I have enough flavors already, so cook the cod in a little but of olive oil with salt and pepper. I fluff and plate the couscous in the center of the spinach and top it with the cod.

The result was very surprising in that it all came together so beautifully. Flavors perfectly balanced, all within a very healthy dish. Definitely will have to do it again.

Tokyo ready...

We are all packed up and ready to go... Well, not quite, but last week we got the registration materials for the Tokyo Marathon (and the 10K for Sharon). Excitement is building up. A few more days and we will be airborne...

Pushing my luck, after having won the last two marathon lotteries (Zoom! Yah! Yah! and Tokyo), I decided to attempt New York again. I tried two years ago with no luck, but I am on a winning streak.

Will three times be a charm? Stay tune to find out...

Going Molecular

Look closely... can't tell what it is? Powdered Olive Oil, but of course! Have ben wanting to play with this for a while... finally pulled the trigger and bought myself a half pound of tapioca maltodextrin.

Derived from tapioca, this powder has been specially designed to have a very low bulk density. It dissolves completely when in contact with any aqueous medium. This product is primarily used to increase the volume of dry mixes and frozen foods. In addition, this bland tasting maltodextrin functions excellently as a dispersant for dry ingredients in low solids preparations. Can stabilize high-fat ingredients and which can then be transformed into powders.

Mixed with olive oil ( a good extra virgin olive oil), it makes a powder that tastes just like olive oil. It is good (and fun) to put on food where you don't want for the (liquid) olive oil to run over.