My life - London

I got away with my husband!!  Thanks to our village of friends and family it is all possible.  It was the best trip of my life - I am SO grateful to my husband for suggesting we do this.  I was very hesitant....it took a lot of planning and effort from SO many to make it happen.  But with the recent loss of our dear friend, I have been reminded how short life is and planning to do things in the future are not definite.  We must live dreams now.  We must.

I am going to just share some sights and some meals we had in London.  We were in London for 5 days and then Paris for 2 days, 1 night.  I will put those in a separate entry.  We stayed in the Wimbledon area of London, with our co-worker and his wonderful family (Hi Simon Family!!!).  They were SO generous and kind.  We felt right at home in their home - this ability is a special gift.

We all went to high tea at Canizaro Manor in Wimbledon, London.  What a treat!!!  Scones, finger sandwiches and sweets.  The sandwiches included ham and tomato (sliced super thin), cucumber and cream cheese and smoked salmon.  All delicate yet filling.  Then for the scones....much lighter than scones at home.  And it had raisins in it also.  They were warm and served with clotted cream (kind of like butter) and strawberry jam.  WOW!!!!  And the desserts included greek yogurt in a thin glass topped with charred meringue, eclairs, and little chocolate cakes with strawberry mouse.

We had dinner at the Simon's house. We taught them how to make sushi. And Loretta put out some antipasti - grilled, marinated artichokes, various olives, and something that I thought I would never try, but LOVED - sweet peppers stuffed with goat cheese.  Ok, confession here - I usually HATE peppers but these were tangy and sweet, kind of like a tomato.  I must find these at home!!

They enjoyed learning how to make sushi. It turned out delicious.  Such a easy and fun thing to do at home!  Everyone should try it!

Another night Loretta make supper....and it was SO simple and delicious.  She is from an Italian family - and this supper was (to me) the quintessential Italian meal.

Grilled steak on a bed of lettuce with olives, tomatoes and shaved pieces of cheese.....how simple and absolutely delicious!!  She served with the potatoes and green beans (see them on the top of the picture?)

I did some research on Time Out London website and set up reservations to one of the top "gastropubs" and to one of the top Indian restaurants.

First of all the gastropub.  Gastropubs are the English culinary world's response to the common thought that all English food is bland and gross.  They are local pubs with high end food. We went to Harwood Arms - and let me tell you.....it was TRULY amazing!!!

 This was the bread they put on the table.  The darker bread was a soda bread they made there.  It was so amazing that we bought a loaf to bring back to the Simons.  The other bread was a potato bread.  The bread was served in a little sack.  And you can see the pat of butter served on a piece of slate.

 This is what my husband ordered.  It was garlic soup with bacon cream, crisps, and mushrooms on bread.  This soup was one of the best soups I have ever had.  I am going to write them and see if they would share the recipe with me.  And you can see in the next picture of tiny these crisps were. So delicate and crunchy!! All  dishes are served on plank of natural wood.  So pretty and simple.

 This dish was rabbit shoulder with St. George mushrooms with tarragon mustard.  WOW!

 This was my dish.  It was a special of the day.....here is the exact description from the chalkboard = Grilled haunch of Berkshire Roe Deer with tarragon mustard, crispy garlic potatoes and field mushrooms.  There are two pieces of meat here - the "sirloin" was on the left with the mushrooms on it and the cube was shredded venison rolled in breadcrumbs and fried, a little green salad and the potatoes.  The potatoes were first parboiled, then fried then roasted.  What looks so simple was really more complicated that I ever thought.

This was the dessert special of the day = Mint Ice Cream with Harwood Arms Boubon Biscuits.  See the chocolate cream between the biscuits.  Putting the biscuit and the ice cream in your mouth at the same time was oral nirvana.

I am going to jump from food to sights.  Don't worry....I'll get back to the food......

This was the beautiful rainbow we were greeted with when we got to the Simon's house.

This super steep escalator was at one of the many Tube stops in London.  What an amazing system!! 

This was a food spot in Camden.  What a funky place.  It was booth after booth of stuff of sale.  A lot of the booths had the exact same stuff.....tshirts, jewlery, bags.  See the seats in the background.  Those were the seats and back wheels of scooters.  They were all set into long tables along the locks.

I love this giant horse head.  To understand the proportion - look at the person walking by it on the left.  This too was in the Camden Lock area - in the horse stable market.

This was taken at the British Museum.  It is the Rosetta Stone.  It is incredible to see something you have learned about  just right in front of you.

Yes, I walked up and down these stairs.  It was in one of the Tube stops.  Instead of waiting for a "lift" (elevator) we took these stairs.  As you can imagine, going up these was very tough.  I ending up walking with a bunch of ladies, laughing and huffing our way to the top.  PHEW!!!

Ok.....back to food......

We went to Moti Mahal 45 Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AA.  Here are the descriptions from the menu - with my own comments added.

This is what our meal started with.  On this wooden platter, there was lettuce, whole tomatoes, onions, and lemons.  Also there was a little bottle of olive oil and curry powder and course sea salt and pepper.  It was AMAZING.  You just put what you wanted on your plate and it was incredible.

DAL MAKHANI ~ Delhi

Black lentils slow cooked overnight on charcoal

This black lentil speciality is slow cooked for several hours, on charcoal.  

Creamy and earthy, this dal is a delicious accompaniment to tandoori dishes

This was the best dal we have ever had!!  Deep and rich.

MURGH MAKHANI ~ Moti Mahal, Delhi              

Chicken tikka simmered in a creamy tomato sauce

This butter chicken recipe was created by a chef at the first Moti Mahal restaurant 

in New Delhi. Here, we faithfully recreate our namesake’s recipe

This was fantastic - so many flavors in one bowl.

GUCCHI AUR KHUMBI KOFTEY ~ Lucknow

Wild Mushroom ‘Kofta’ and stuffed morels in a yoghurt saffron sauce

The Nawabs of Lucknow used to throw full moon parties adding  class to the evening with music and 

the delicate tinkle of trinkets  from the dancing girls feet  and exotic food- Originating from Lucknow, 

this dish of morels is a rare and expensive delicacy and royal  cooks use to spend hours deliberating 

the composition of this curry

This was some strange and wonderful!  See that piece of what looks like tin foil.  It was silver and you ate it with the dish. Creamy with the texture of the morel mushrooms.  I have never ate something like this, but I would again!!

 Here's a mushroom close up!!  I wish I could eat this right now.....

BHALLA PAPDI CHAAT ~ Old Delhi

Crisp fried pastry and lentil dumplings with creamy yoghurt, tamarind and mint chutney

A tea time favourite for all North Indians, this dish finds its roots in the Gallis ‘streets’ of Old Delhi

This one surprised me the most....it was a cold dish.  And the yogurt was sweet.  I can't even tell you every taste in it.....it was SO complex and different.


WOW......I think this all summarizes our London experience pretty well.  Lots of wonderful walking and lots of wonderful people in such a great place.  Memories of a lifetime.......

My Life - Brisket = My Nemisis

My husband's aunt read about my brisket issue.  She sent me this recipe and I thought I would share it with you.  It was from my husband's grandma, Mimi.


So here is Mimi's recipe as sent to me by his Aunt Elaine -

3-5 lb brisket with some fat on it (this is what tenderizes the meat)
2-3 onions sliced
Lemon pepper seasoning
Garlic powder
Lowry's seasoned salt
1/2 cup red wine (optional, but tasty)
Tight fitting covered pan

Slice onions into bottom of pan. Season heavily with above. Season both sides of meat HEAVILY. Place fat side  down. And place in preheated 350* oven for 20 minutes uncovered. Turn meat over so fat side is  up. 20 more minutes uncovered. Gently pour wine over and around meat, cover, turn temp to 325*. Bake for two hours or so. If you want to put in carrots and potatoes do it at this point. Season vegetables lightly, and baste with pan juices. Recover and bake another hour or hour and a half. Voila! Let cool slightly and slice across the grain.

Long slow cooking is key. Check the moisture while cooking. Don't let it go dry. Add water by half cupfuls. But if lid fits properly, this won't be problem.

Moisture comes from the bed of onions, retained in meat by layer of fat which also has a tenderizing effect. Trim away fat when you serve.


OK....so I know I haven't tasted this yet, but Mimi was never wrong and neither is Aunt Elaine, so this must be delicious. I vow to try this recipe sometime.  Just not right now.  My delicate foodie ego can't handle another brisket disaster.

Dinner - Soup

Here is the soup I made with the broth from the fondue.  WOW....amazing!!!  I browned italian sausage, cut up zucchini and carrots.  I also added a can of diced tomatoes and frozen lima beans.  I also added chicken stock to dilute the fondue broth.  It was SOOOOOO tasty!!  I had some extra steak and chicken from the fondue that I put into the soup.

Dinner - Coq Au Vin Fondue

One of our favorite places to eat is Melting Pot....but boy can that add up!!  We like their fondue that uses broth - Coq Au Vin - to cook the meats and vegetables.  We also like the chocolate fondue - the half dark chocolate, half white chocolate one.  Here's pictures from a Melting Pot we went to on our trip to Memphis.

So, for Hannukah, my husband bought me two Cuisinart electric fondue pots. I looked on line for a recipe for the Coq Au Vin fondue they use at Melting Pot.  I didn't try the chocolate fondue - this time.

Here is the recipe for the broth -
3 1/2 cp vegetable broth
3/4 cp burgandy wine
1T crushed garlic
1 cube of Knorr vegetable bullion
some salt and pepper

That's it.  I doubled it (to use both pots) and cooked it initially on the stove top.  Once we were ready to eat, I put it into the pots and heated them to a boil right there on the table.  WOW!!!

I cut up steak, chicken, peeled shrimp, cut up broccoli and carrots and also put out mushrooms.

I also put three sauces on the table.  You can use whatever you like.....blue cheese dressing, horseradish sauce, bbq sauce.....whatever.  I put out mustard sauce from Sunset, sugar free teriyaki by Seal Sama,   and an amazing new sauce I found at work....Bronco Bob's Smoked Bacon Chipotle sauce.

We just put the vegis just right into the pots and poked them out with our forks as we wanted to eat them.  We used the fondue forks for our meats.  What an incredible, healthy supper we had!  We will FOR SURE be making this again.

The broth was SO amazing, even more so now that meats and vegetables has been cooked in it, that I saved it to make soup out of the next day.  You'll see that soon.....yum!

Dinner - stir fry

Nothing takes the place of the family sitting down together to eat supper.  I just love all eating together and laughing and talking.  Our kids are amazing and I just marvel in our family all the time. Ok - maybe not all the time....but a lot of the time.  Sometimes I forget to marvel - shame on me.

Here's a dinner I like to make - very simple stir fry.  I cut everything pretty chunky so that people can easily avoid vegis that don't like.  This dish changes a bit every time - depending on what I buy that day which also depends on what is on sale.  I cook the vegetables separately (starting with the "hardest" moving to the softest/thinnest.  Hard ones take longer to cook - such as carrots, broccoli ending with pea pods, sprouts), then cook the meats.  I put them together at the end when I add the soy sauce, garlic, some kind of sweetener (agave, honey, brown sugar - whatever I feel like at the time), some rice wine vinegar and finally just a bit of sesame oil.  I believe this is the ingredient that make all my stir frys rock.  It just brings that special chinese restaurant smell to the dish.

This one has carrots, broccoli, onions, and pea pods with chicken.

Restaurant review - Thai Noddles Cafe Libertyville, IL

I found this restaurant on Yelp.  It was fantastic.  The service was nice. The restaurant was bright and cheery.  One nit-picky thing....the vents had layers of dust on them....yuck.

Everyone liked their dishes - 3 of the 5 of us got chicken pad see-ewe.  Wonderful noodles and nice amount of chicken and broccoli.  Our middle one had....one guess for my regular readers....you're right.....fried rice.  She said it was good....not the best....but very good.  Means a lot coming from her - for sure!!

I had a GREAT dish.....Woonsen Tom Yom Soup.....SOOOOOOOO tasty!!  I will definitely be going back.  The broth soup was sweet and spicy. With this dish it's all about the broth.  Chicken - nice amount, but bit more would have been nice, glass noodle - yum, sprouts - crunchy, ground peanuts - peanutty, but the broth.....oh the broth.  Perfection.  If I could make something like this....I would be SO happy.  Someday......

Dinner - Passover

Passover is now over.....bread anyone?  I thought I would share with you some recipes.  What I find interesting about Judaism is the fact that the culture (language/slang, food, humor, etc.) is so entwined with the religion that a lot of people consider the culture to be the religion.  But enough about that delicate subject....onto the food......

I have my "signature" Passover dish is charoset.  Charoset is made to symbolize the mortar used to bind together the blocks of the pyramids the Jews built for the Egyptians.  I use half red delicious apples and half granny smith.  I peel the apples, but like to leave on about 25% of the peel.  This gives a nice color and texture to it.  I had a total of about 30 people eating this and had left over - I used 11 of each type of apple. The cut them up and grate them in my food processor.  Then I grind up walnuts....to about a sand texture. I add the ground walnuts to the grated apples, add some cinnamon, some Mogan David concord grape wine and for the secret ingredient that I will share with you (as symbol of my gratitude for you reading my blog).  The honey from Kurt's bees.  Our friend in Madison, WI - Kurt (and hi Rita!!) - keeps bees and harvests the honey around the start of September.  We have been there before to help in the processing of the honey.  His honey is processed with love and he keeps his bees with love...and it comes through with the honey.  Sure....any honey would be fine....but I believe this is what puts my charoset over the top.

 This is carrot souffle I buy from Dorfler's  - a butcher in our area.  Sweet with a crunchy top. Yum!!!  They just make the most delicious carrot dish that there is no need to try to even duplicate it.....if it ain't broke.....

 This is kishke.  Oh dear kishke....kishke, kishke, kishke.....how I love you.  Can't even find the words to decribe kishke.  If you have some, please add them as a comment.  I don't know how to make it but this is a "log" made mostly of vegis.  We buy it from Elegance In Meat, in Northbrook, IL.  Again....if it ain't broke.  No need to learn how to make this one either.....

Ok....this is my passover nemesis. BRISKET!  It's so easy - I hear that from all my customers at Sunset.  Each person has their own version.  This is my mom's.  I will write about my own brisket adventures lower down here....but let me share this one with you....so you see what works.

Her recipes was based on "Divorce Settlement Brisket".  I kid you not.....she told me that name, I goggled it, and here it was.  OK....here's the recipe, but with her changes......

1 brisket, 7 pounds

3 cloves garlic, sliced in slivers

salt

Freshly ground pepper

Paprika

1 3/4 cup chili sauce

1 c honey

1 envelope onion soup mix

1 T soy sauce

2 pounds potatoes (Russet, Yukon Gold) peeled, halved

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Trim some fat from the brisket. Make small slits with a sharp paring knife all over the brisket; insert the garlic slivers. Season all over with salt, pepper and paprika to taste. Place in a roasting pan.

Heat chili sauce, honey, soup mix, and soy sauce in a saucepan over medium heat. Pour over brisket in the roasting pan. Seal tightly with aluminum foil.

Cook 4 hours. Add potatoes for last hour;remove foil for last 30 minutes.

So here was my brisket....tough as shoe leather my family said.  What I did.....

2.75 pound brisket

5 cubes of garlic (the frozen Dorat kind I like) - pressing into slits on the meat

All these next ones sprinkled on top of the meat -

1 packet of dried onion soup

1/4 cp brown sugar

10 shakes of Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup of ketchup

In the pan....1/2 cup water

yukon gold potatoes - whole

cut up sweet potatoes

Sealed with tin foil and baked at 350 degrees for 2 hours....and AWFUL.  Sure the potatoes were delicious....but that's it.

And now time for full confession - this was my second attempt.  My first attempt to make brisket got SO burnt that if I broke (yes broke) it apart, I probably would have found a diamond in there.

Conclusion....I was not meant to make brisket. Period. End of story.