Father's Day Weekend '09 pt 1

Warning: Apparently I am very verbose and will need to put this into two parts, with one being very, very, very long.  My apologies.

My public has informed me (thanks Eric) that I have been slacking in my blogging duties, especially since they (or he) know(s) that I had plenty of food related activities that did not make it into blog format yet.  Soooooo, here I am with the food news covering this past weekend (including the Thursday).

It all started with the impending visit from my dad and stepmother from Arkansas.  This might not seem all that complicated until you start asking them what it is they like to eat, will eat, or can eat.  My stepmom is pretty simple in her restrictions in only being a vegetarian (meaning no meat, but allowing animal products such as dairy and eggs) and otherwise open minded to food.  My dad, conversely, is a very picky eater with his only constraint being a dairy allergy.  Now, being the good and patient child I am, I also had to think about my brother and nephew as well.  My brother is gluten intolerant while my nephew suffers from  a "over protective and finicky parent" eating disorder.  This left me with some serious meal planning to do!  

My hero for this culinary adventure turned out to be a cook book by Mollie Katzen, The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without.  This is a great book! Even if you are not vegetarian it has lots of great ideas for those vegetabley challenged to include more veggies into your diet in a variety of yummy ways. 

 I digress, like I said this book saved the day.  I found two great ideas: Asparagus Crepes with Mushroom Sauce and Green Bean, Eggplant, and Pumpkin in Tomato Coconut Curry.  I also picked out a dessert, Molasses Cake with Plum Raspberry Compote,  from one of my new cook books (a gift from Linds!), Four-Star Desserts, by Emily Luchetti*.  

Now of course I planned to do all my shopping on the greatest day of the week, Wednesday, double ad day at Sprouts.  And of course, I got a little carried away, again.  Apparently when I cook it has to be highly excessive. I was all set for Thursday and Friday.  

Thursday:  Spicy Garlic Shrimp Skewers, Grilled Salmon, Yogurt Marinated Grilled Chicken, Potato Blue Cheese Casserole, Balsamic Marinated Asparagus, and the Vegetable Curry.

Friday: Molasses Cake with Compote, Asparagus Crepes with Mushroom Sauce.

I decided it would be best to try to get most of this done on Thursday since I would be entertaining the parentals most of Friday.  I was soooooo very smart**.  Anyway, after finishing some last minute shopping I sat down and made a list so I could keep track of all the stuff I had to do.

Note the optimism in thinking I'd get the crepes and cake done too!  Needless to say, cake and crepes waited till Friday.

This time I didn't do as good a job photographically documenting my food but....I got a short video clip of the curry simmering, to bad you can only hear it and not smell it, sigh.

Clockwise: Ginger, Thai Basil, Green Beans, Indian Eggplant waiting to be curry.

This is the curry completed.

Blanching Asparagus, for all the novices out there blanching means to boil the veggies till just tender (2-3 min) and after that you shock the asparagus by putting it in an ice bath.  This stops the residual heat from over cooking your veggies.

The mushrooms being sauteed in preparation for sauce.

It all turned out really well!  Below are some recipes (per request) of things I made.

Yogurt Marinade for Chicken

2 tbsp Thai (sweet) Basil

2 tbsp Lemon Juice

1 tsp Lime juice

3 tbsp Olive Oil

1 tsp Curry powder

1/4 c Greek Yogurt

1 tbsp Minced Garlic

salt & pepper

Mix everything together and marinate for at least 3 hrs. 

Spicy Garlic Shrimp Skewers

First brine shrimp for 30 min, this means put the shrimp in a ziploc bag that has 1 quart of cold water with 2 tbsp dissolved salt in it.

1 Garlic clove minced

             - mash the garlic with 1 tsp salt using the edge of the knife, it makes a paste

1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper

1 tsp Sweet Paprika

2 tbsp Olive Oil

2 tsp Lemon juice 

Mix together in a bowl.  Toss in the shrimp and coat before placing them on the skewer.

Balsamic Syrup

1 bottle balsamic vinegar

1/4-1/2 c sugar

Mix together and boil it until it has a syrupy consistency.  This is great on veggies or even on cheese and crackers.  Be careful though, it smells very strongly!

Use this to make ----------->

Marinated Asparagus

1 large clove garlic minced

1-2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp balsamic syrup

salt to taste 

Toss this together with 1 bunch of trimmed asparagus in a ziploc and grill.

Part 2 on its way.

*This is the book that had all the recipes from "maximum consumption"

**Sarcasm