862 replies to this topic

[fatguyaz]

i'm currently enjoying a peach from my very own tree!! Delicious and juicy and organic!

And delicious!

[John MFer]

Peaches grow in Phoenix? I thought they needed cooler weather.

I came here to say I've been eating two nectarines a day for weeks and they're so good.

EDIT, I found some info...

Peaches need a certain number of chilling hours, time below 45 degrees Fahrenheit, to produce fruit and stay healthy. The majority of peach varieties will not produce in Phoenix because there is not enough cold in winter. Luckily, there are a few varieties that do very well. The best varieties are Earli Grande and Florida prince.

[mancopter]

SUUUUUSHI.

Great way to kick off a 3 day weekend.

[differently biotic]

rainier cherries... they are SO perfect right now. Meaty and sweet. and only $1 a pound. weeeee.

[mig50]

trader joe's pumpernickel pretzels.

washed down with trader joe's simpler times lager.

awesome.

[Tony]

so yesterday we had "iron chef" at my house. sherry picks an ingredient and i have to make a dinner themed around that ingredient. but unlike the iron chef show, i'm not competing against anyone - mostly because we've got a pretty small kitchen and nobody else could fit in there. also, i don't think anyone would care. and the other big difference is that i get more than an hour to work because our pantry is not stocked like kitchen stadium, so i need to run to the store and do a bunch of prep work.

the secret ingredient to yesterday's meal: cherries.

i started the meal by serving a cherry martini, which was basically just vodka that had been marinating in cherries all day, shaken with a little lemon juice and simple syrup and strained into a martini glass. garnish? a cherry. duh.

it came out with an amuse bouche of tuna tartare with dried cherries and shallots. i served them on those japanese soup spoons and sprinkled them with poppy seeds, cayenne, sea salt and pepper.

next up was the appetizer course: "bruschetta" of cherries, mint and goat cheese, topped with a little lemon zest, crushed almonds, and sea salt, on a slice of toasted baguette. i felt like a sauvignon blanc would be appropriate to drink.

i wanted to have a palatte cleanser, so i made a cherry-mint granita and served it up in a shot glass.

the main dish was grilled pork tenderloin with a brandied cherry sauce, served with a fried potato pancake (w/ cheddar, bacon, and green onion) and sauteed green beans. we switched to a merlot at this point.

dessert was home made cherry ice cream. i used store bought chocolate crisps as garnish, because at that point i didn't want to bake anything else.

after dessert i made sherry tell me what her favorite and least favorite thing was.

the least favorite was easy for both of us. the cherry sauce for the pork tenderloin just didn't work out. the pork itself was great (i almost felt like i was cheating here, because we grill pork pretty often and it's easy to make it taste good), but the cherry sauce just didn't have enough zing to it. i felt bad because i figured this would be an easy score - it just didn't stand out like some of the other stuff. i either needed to add more cherries or more spice or something. it wasn't bad, it just wasn't very good.

the favorites? i was actually surprised by sherry's reaction, because she really liked the tuna tartare. i purposely kept it as a bite sized starter because i know she's not a big raw fish fan, but it was really pretty good. bonus points for serving with the cherry martini.

personally, i liked the bruschetta a lot, and i think it went nicely with the sauvignon blanc. cherry/goat cheese/mint is a pretty good combo. the almonds and lemon zest were kind of unnecessary, but made it look good.

i'm sick of cherries, by the way.

[Rocquero]

tony, will you marry me?

[Tony]

tony, will you marry me?

[weener]

I just made a box of this:

and as an afterthought, threw in a couple handfuls of shredded cheese and a dollop of cream cheese.

I think I'll put cream cheese in everything I cook, from now on.

[The Real Jeffrey Lebowski]

I think I'll put cream cheese in everything I cook, from now on.

I like the way you think!

You know what's awesome? Jalapeno cream cheese.

[weener]

Based on a tip from either this thread or something on the Minibosses board, I started putting cream cheese in mashed potatoes. That's an excellent idea as well.

[JJames]

WATERMELON

[WorkingClassWhore]

rainier cherries... they are SO perfect right now. Meaty and sweet. and only $1 a pound. weeeee.

WHERE!?

Damn, I love thse things.

[Tony]

Okay, so yesterday’s iron chef challenge was simple: cook whatever I want, but I have to use stuff that’s already in the house. We have a well stocked house, but if there was some ingredient we didn’t have I was screwed. Sherry ultimately changed her tune to provide me a $5 budget in case I needed to get some sort of fresh produce or something. I spent my budget on fresh ginger, coconut soda, and rock candy. Yes, I went to the asian market on 44th street.

Unlike last week’s cherry mayhem, I opted to keep things relatively simple. My appetizer wasn’t creative at all. In fact, it wasn’t even an appetizer. I just ate some cheese and salami while drinking a coconut soda and rum concoction. Although I still made some pre-dinner cocktails that turned out okay.

We had fresh strawberries so I boiled them up with some sugar and water and made a strawberry syrup. That was mixed with vodka, a splash of cranberry juice, and a little fresh lemon juice to make a strawberry martini. I had it in my head that the rock candy would be a cool looking drink garnish – almost making it look like the drink was “on the rocks” and that they would dissolve over time and add sweetness to the drink as it warmed up (and subsequently tasted more like alcohol). But the rock candy never dissolved, so you were left with little choking hazards as you finished your cocktail. I’m convinced that the rock candy was a wise investment (for $1.29 for a huge bag, you can’t go wrong), but it didn’t really do much to the martini. The verdict: good, but not as good as the cherry martini last week.

The main dish was a little more ambitious. I wanted to make some sort of grilled flatbread “tacos” with the leftover pork tenderloin we had in our fridge. So I started by mixing up some dough. I figured I could roll it out thin, grill it, and then put my fixins inside it and it would be straight up delicious.

I cut the pork tenderloin into long thin strips, marinated them in chile, honey, and a bunch of that fresh ginger that I grated.

At the same time, I julienned a cucumber and some red onion and got some cilantro leaves.

Pork = grilled. That’s a good marinade to keep in your back pocket in case you need something different. Chile/honey/ginger. After it rested we cut it into strips as well, so as to match the shape/size of the vegetables.

The flatbread dough was rolled into little tiny pizza crusts and thrown on the grill as well. Here’s where I realized there was going to be a problem. The flatbread, while delicious, grilled up to be rather firm. I thought it was going to be all soft and flexible like a gordita shell, but it was more like a pizza crust. So these “tacos” weren’t going to fold over. It was going to be more like a tostada.

We put some goat cheese, the pork, the veggies, and a little sour cream on the “taco” and started eating. The flavor combo was really quite nice, but the delivery didn’t work because you couldn’t fold the taco shell. What we SHOULD have done was chop up everything nice and small like pizza toppings, then as the flatbread was grilling top it with the goat cheese and maybe some cherry tomatoes. Then put the chopped up swine and veggies on it and cut it up like a little pizza. Oh well.

So I wound up getting an E for effort and a T for nice try. I’m definitely going to make this again and just change it up a little bit.

Oh, consume with Inversion IPA from Deschutes Brewery, Bend, OR.