F YEAH DINNER!

One Pot Veggie Night

On Mondays, Ryan and I go vegetarian.

If you read his lastest post on Offal, you'll realize that it's not because we don't love meat. We heard about this Meatless Monday idea and thought that it sounded like something healthy to try. Plus with our new cooking projects, it gives us an interesting challenge every week to come up with something tasty and vegetarian. That's where my Coconut Curry Soup recipe came from last week and also means we'll be regularly posting veggie recipes!

Tonight we made a giant pot of tofu stir fry w/ mushrooms, bok choy, collard greens, and zucchini. 

listening to: Wye Oak, If Children

drinking: Waterstone, Rose, Napa Valley 2010

Start by chopping your veggies, then put them to the side and blend the sauce ingredients in a large pan or wok.

SAUCE:

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp honey mustard
• 1 Tbsp champagne vinegar
• 200 mL (6.7 ounces) sake
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 Tbsp hoisin sauce

Next add:

• 10 oz tofu diced in small cubes
• 1/2 red onion, diced

After 5 minutes add your vegetables:

• 1 package mushrooms, diced
• 3 small zucchinis, diced
• 1 chopped bok choy stems and leaves
• 1 bunch collard greens, discard stems and slice leafy greens to 1 inch strips

Let everything simmer for 5-10 minutes until vegetables are tender, stirring often to get the sauce flavors mixed around. Serve with sriracha on the side for heat!

-Erin

Dang, That's Offal

My old friend Dang was visiting ifrom LA last week, and he and two of our other friends invited me to join them in a dinner at Incanto. Now, if you know me at all, then you know I like meat. If you know me beyond my fondness for meat, then you know I like to eat weird things, like a milder version of Andrew Zimmern. Give me tongue, give me kidnies, give me hearts; anything you don't want, I'll eat it. When they told me we were all going out to Incanto, I was more than ecstatic. I'd been meaning to eat at this restaurant since I found out about it on No Reservations a whlie back, and Chris Cosentino is now a bit of a hero to me. The restaurant specializes in offal, and the night's menu didn't disappoint. Chris Cosentino was even there!

 

For starters we shared a whole plate of boar salumi, courtesy of Boccalone

and the foie gras over smoked mackeral:

The tuna hearts looked really interesting, but I just had to go with the sweetbreads. Who wouldn't be tempted by delicious thymus glands?! Especially when they're covered in smoked tongue?

The sweetbread dish was excellent, as was the boar salumi, but I have to say my favorite part of the entire meal was the marinated carrots on the salumi plate. Marinated carrots! I think my professional meat eater's license should be revoked just from stating that publicly, but dude, the carrots were off the heezy for sheezy, as the kids say. It's inspired me to try to recreate my own version of them. Anyone have any good recipes? Send 'em over!

-Ryan

Rainy Day Soup Recipe

Coconut Curry Soup in Acorn Squash Bowl (vegan optional)

I made up this recipe this last night for dinner and it was delicious! It was a mash up of 2 other recipes and what I had in the fridge. Ryan says its "very fall". Anyway it's really tasty and pretty filling with just veggies but you could add tofu or meat if you like. Oh and it SERVES 4 so you can half the recipe or just invite some friends over...

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 1 diced onion
• 1 cup chopped carrot
• 1 cup diced red pepper
• 4 cups chicken or veggie stock
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 TBSP curry powder or paste (to taste)
• 2 cups chopped kale (or another hearty green)
• 2 large acorn squash, halved and seeded
• optional - tofu, chicken or shrimp

Directions

Squash Bowls:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Place squash in a shallow baking pan, cut side down.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until tender.
4. Turn cut side up; season with salt and pepper, bake another 20 minutes.

Coconut Curry Soup:

1. In a large pot saute onion, carrot and pepper in vegetable oil over medium heat (add meat/tofu too if you want it). Cook until tender, about 10 minutes.
2. Add stock, coconut milk, kale and curry powder or paste; simmer over low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Serve into hot squash bowls and eat!

Baked Squash Bowls

Filled with soup...

TA-DA!

-Erin

Iron Chef Morimoto's in Napa!

I apologize for the exclamation in the title of this post, but man oh man were we excited to eat here. I took Erin on a secret Napa getaway for the weekend for our 7th, yes 7th, anniversary and I think this restaurant was the highlight of the trip (sorry, wineries!). I mean, I know we like food, and I know you know we like food, but we especially like sushi and this was like winning the sushi lotto.

We stayed at the Silverado Resort thanks to Living Social. The resort sort of has a country club feel to it, which I think is in part to it being a country club as well. The main building is pretty nice but the actual lodging doesn't look like this.

When we were planning on where to eat for that night, I remembered Morimoto has recently opened a restaurant in Napa. Wondering what our chances were of getting a same night reservation there, we crossed our fingers and tried to get an Open Table through my Yelp iPhone app. 9:30 for two, boom!

We were able to snag a seat at the sushi bar and ordered omakase (chef's choice). We were a little disappointed to find out that the chefs in front of us weren't the ones making each dish for us, which was why we chose to sit at the sushi bar in the first place, but the eight course meal MORE than made up for that. First up, water! Wait wait wait, let me backtrack a second...

We showed up to Morimoto early to see if we could catch any cancellations. Since there weren't any and the bar was pretty packed, we walked over to Downtown Joe's to catch a drink. Yes, A drink. But of course we didn't have just A drink:

Oops! And THEN water was next. I got a little artsy with the camera. :)

The next thing we got were, of course, real drinks. I'm a fan of Hitachino, but I wasn't aware they made a cask ale using sake barrels. Were you?

Our ACTUAL first course, the one with food, was a toro tartare. The presentation was bee-yoo-tee-ful awesome! As I was eating it though, I found myself wishing I could just skip the presentation and have a bowl of it. One big giant bowl of toro tararte all to myself. The condiments on the side that I can remember were wasabi, green onions, sesame, sour cream, guacamole, and I believe a nori puree, but I could be wrong. I'm wrong a lot. 
Next up was seared amberjack. I think from here on out I'm going to let the pictures do the talking for me.

After the amberjack, we were served a small bowl of miso paste in a garlic and anchovy oil. The plate was littered with planty things called "vegetables", some pickled and some not. It was sort of a fondue-style dish, where you spear your veggies with a toothpick and dip it. I thought the spearing was very non-Japanese but hey, it's fusion!

Foie gras chawan mushi! Back in the day I used to call Erin chawan mushi because a) I had no idea what it meant, and b) I liked the way it sounded. Well I finally had chawan mushi, which is (like?) an egg custard, and this one topped with seared duck breast with a sweet soy sauce and green onions. That little green dot that looks like a pea is wasabi. I could've used more.

For the intermezzo, we had a cucumber sorbet with a wasabi tapioca. I'm not really a fan of sweets, but this was pretty dang good.
We finally got to the nigiri, which could be the best nigiri I've ever had in my life. I'm one of those people that says "meh" to tuna, but the tuna nigiri was the shiznittle bang snip snap sack. From top right to bottom left we had the amberjack, salmon, hamachi, tuna, and aji (spanish mackerel):

You see all those little garnishes on the nigiri? Well the chef in front of us did that all night. That's all he did. Garnish plate after plate after plate of nigiri. He's the Iron Garnisher!

Next was the peak of the meal, the most entree-ish part of our courses. On a single plate we had a spicy roasted lobster with lemon creme fraiche, seared wagyu beef, and a ten hour pork belly served on rice congee and soy-scallion jus. Rad.

And last but not least (well, maybe last. Again, I'm not a sweets guy and the other food was amazing), we had a super duper beyond moist carrot cake topped with lemon sorbet.

Erin couldn't finish her pork belly, so we ended up getting a giant box in a giant bag to take home our tiny little pork belly block. Whatever, it was amazing for breakfast too. This is me in the aftermath/basking in the afterglow:

Don't try this at home, kids! Actually, if you can cook like this at home, then please try this at home, kids!

 

-Ryan

Happy St. Patty's!

Being a huge whiskey fan, St. Patty's is one of my favorite holidays to go out and get rowdy. Unfortunately this year I'm sick, so I'm slow-cooking a nice semi-traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage Stew to console myself.

Here's what I bought from Trader Joe's:

One hunk (3.5 lbs) Corned Beef, Round Flat Uncured

One package (1 lb) Fingerling Potatoes

One package (10 oz) shredded green cabbage

One 6 pack of Guinness (hey, I'm sick not dead!)

From my fridge:

1/2 package baby carrots

One bunch collard greens

One large yellow onion

I decided to add collard greens into my stew because i have them in the fridge and I think it will be a nice twist on the classic.

Step 1: Too Salty?

Corned beef is often too salty, even for me - and I love salt! Here's a trick to help reduce the sodium intake. Bring the Corned beef to boil in a large pot of water and then turn off the heat. Dump water and meat into a strainer, rinse off corned beef before you place in the slow cooker. Don't worry you can always add salt back later if you need more.

Step 2: Slow Cookin'

Set Crock Pot for 6 hours and add meat, potatoes, carrots and coarsely diced onion. Then add just enough water to cover the ingredients. Set your kitchen timer for 5 hours, then sit back and drink some Guinness :) Save one for the stew!

Step 3: Beer & Greens 

After 5 hours it's time to add a bottle/can of Guinness, the cabbage and collard greens and taste your broth for seasoning. When cutting up the collard greens, keep in mind that the stem or rib of the leaf is pretty tough. I cut along either side of the rib and throw it away, cutting just the green leafy parts into strips for the stew. My broth tastes pretty good as is because that Trader Joe's corned beef comes soaked with salt, peppercorns, cardamom and bay leaves. It is a tiny bit watery though so will add 2 Trader Joe's concentrated veggie broth packets to give it a bit of extra flavor.

Step 4: Mangia!

The meat is nice and tender and just perfectly salted for me. The collard greens are a bit bitter on their own but if you eat them in a bite with the other ingredients I like it! Be careful to not put too much water in the pot - I think I added a little too much and that caused the slightly watery broth.

-Erin

 

 

 

We like food.

Welcome to F YEAH DINNER! We are two food-loving co-habitants of the San Francisco Bay Area, Erin & Ryan, and our 7 month old puppy Boogaloo. Our blog will rock harder than your average food blog for a few reasons.

1. We're not just copying recipes from other sites. Erin likes to invent recipes that Ryan claims are actually delicious! Plus we have some cool family recipes to share with you, like Ryan's mom's turkey enchiladas. Our cookbook collection ain't bad either, so we'll definitely post recipes from books you don't have. We love cocktails and mixology too so drink recipes and tastings will be involved.

2. We've lived, visited & eaten in some really amazing food places like Paris, Italy, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Chicago, Japan & New York. We travel a lot and will be posting many reviews. Care to find out what we thought of vegan food trucks in Austin? Or a French bistro in Washington DC? It's not all fancy food either - Ryan also loves fried chicken and Erin has a minor obsession with french fries - but some of it will be.

3. Our blog will be awesome because we are awesome. We know this because our food pics are taken with the Hipstamatic iPhone app, so yeah. It's gonna look good.