Last week of dinner before Ethiopia!

We are all excited for our big trip to Egypt and Ethiopia where the food is going to be awesome!!!

But this week holds promise as well... my last week in the ICU so Erin will still be doing a good proportion of the cooking. One unexpected benefit of Erin doing so much of the cooking recently was revealed to me the other night when we cooked together - we make a much better team in the kitchen now! It was a lot of fun actually.

Black bean chili with cornbread and roasted pepper mix (spicy and with garlic)
Cheese and tomato souffle with romaine, blue and carmelized onion salad
Salmon teriyaki over rice with edamame and rainbow chard 
Burgers and zucchini (with some for Mr. Atticus) 

To mix it up a bit, here's a photo of Erin and Katie hanging out before we went out to dinner and Aunt Katie stayed with Atticus... not that night, but another we had some great tapas at Buceo 95 (www.buceo95.com). Sat on the porch with some good wine and were in our own little happy world.

Vino: Monastrel, Bodegas Guardiola Crianza 2006 Jumilla, Spain
with...
Piquillos Rellenos - young manchego cheese stuffed peppers
Remolachas y Valdeón - pickled baby yellow and red beets, blue cheese, swiss chard chiffonade
Patatas Bravas - baby purple and red bliss potato medley, spicy tomato sauce, garlic alioli
Buñuelos de Jamón - serrano ham and manchego cheese fritters, pimenton alioli 
Paella - wild boar, cured spicy and mild chorizo, saffron rice 


With a lovely aniseed fig creme brulee for dessert

Soup!

Roasted-Yellow-Pepper-Soup-and-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-with-Serrano-Cream
Erin tonight made a version of an epicurious recipe that involves roasted yellow peppers and tomatoes with a jalapeno cream on top - it was amazing. Sides of quesadillas and roasted corn to boot! Here's what it looked like and the link below:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Yellow-Pepper-Soup-and-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-with-Serrano-Cream-11554

I'm getting spoiled with all of this cooking Erin has been doing though she still seems to think it's not fancy enough to blog about... but it's so good that I'm going to.

Fettuccini with freshly made pesto, eggplant bruschetta and salad
- Erin made the pesto from the Silver Spoon recipe, no adjustments. It's an interesting pesto because it's heavy on the pine nuts and no garlic which is more typical of American-style pesto. It has plenty of parmigiano which if mixed quickly with the hot pasta melts just perfectly. Again, flawless execution by the chef du month.
The eggplant bruschetta I must say was a no repeat. It's a great idea, but there's too much thyme in the eggplant and comes across way too strong - I think in the future adding some basil and spice with less thyme would work out well.

And finally, another picture of boy expanding his palate - carrots!

Dinners week of April 8

We have an exciting week coming up. Erin's been at the helm as of late and is pushing her culinary skills with fantastic results. This last week she made (I have none of the details available):

Indian curried potato and cauliflower with great lentils
Spinach, goat cheese, red pepper and avocado salad with garlic bread
Burgers with fries and broccoli

She's an amazing cook. She wasn't always the greatest in the kitchen other than desserts, but she has honed her skills for sure!

Little dude also had a couple of firsts. Erin sent me a photo while I was at work of what appeared to be guacamole on Atticus' face (see below). I was thrilled and he looked delighted. I figured the little guy ate some mashed up avocado... I always tell my patients to start with one food at a time to make sure they don't have an allergy to anything... Erin's an immunologist... but no. Turns out the little fellow had real guacamole with the usual 4-5 ingredients as his first food! Developing his palate early!

He also ate his first grass on a walk in Harlem and had his first swing ride (kind of) - I put him in (his mother was not around), and he sort of looked at me like 'really, Dad? I'm kinda small for this.' But he smiled when I pushed him.

This week here's the preview from Chef Erin:
Skate fish tacos with a cabbage/carrot/poblano relish
Bibimbap - if you don't know what that means, you haven't lived
Carbonara - really the best way to eat spaghetti known to man, here's the recipe from October that I posted... we'll see how Erin's version differs!
- cook the bacon with some garlic while pasta water boils (please don't add olive oil to pasta water!)
- beat two eggs
- grate about 1 cup of parmigiano
- after the pasta is done cooking and drained, I like to add the bacon with a little of the grease and garlic still in it to the pasta first so it doesn't stick together at all when you add the egg and quickly toss while quickly adding parmigiano