Sometimes my best ideas come out of pure desperation.  Last week, I went out to a fabulous dinner at Orinoco in Brookline Village.  The restaurant serves delectable Venezuelan dishes that range from simple arepas and empanadas to slow-braised beef loin and an amazing heart of palms salad.  I ordered the Pollo Adobo, a chicken slow-roasted in spices and oregano oil served with gnocchi-like dumplings in a truffle cream sauce.  Absolutely incredible.  In an uncharacteristic bout of foresight, I decided to wrap half my dinner up to take home.

Lo and behold, Friday night I arrived home late from work, exhausted.  Completely lacking the energy to grocery shop, I found the to-go container full of chicken.  After a brief victory dance, I then plowed around in the fridge trying to figure out what to pair with it.  And this is what I came up with:

Chicken, Peach, and Romaine Salad in an Ahi Pepper Vinaigrette:

For the salad…

One roasted chicken breast (make your own Oregano Chicken)

One medium peach

2 cups romaine lettuce

1/2 bell pepper (I used 1/4 red and 1/4 orange)

1/2 cup grape tomatoes

1/2 cup white mushrooms

1/4 vidalia onion

Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

For the vinaigrette…

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp ahi pepper puree

1/4 tsp dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Shred the chicken and mix up the vinaigrette.  In a frying pan, add a little bit of olive oil and saute chopped onion and mushrooms.  Place on salad when caramelized.  Chop remaining veggies and peach, put the salad together and serve.  Add crumbled feta on top, if you so choose.  Serve with bread and cheese (like I did!) if you ultimately decide to leave out the feta.

Mmmmm, garlic.  On nights where I’m not particularly worried about who (or is it whom?) I’ll be getting up-close-and-personal with, garlic is my go-to spice/condiment/deliciousness of choice.  It adds such a punch to any meal– though I do feel that many people use garlic improperly.  They add just a touch to get a hint of garlic flavor in a dish.  Wrong.  Case in point: garlic is not meant to be a meek ingredient.  It is not an afterthought, it is not an additive, it is something that is essential to the flavor of whatever dish you are preparing.  If you’re going to use garlic, use garlic.  Embrace the fact that it tends to have an overwhelmingly potent flavor.  Don’t add other random ingredients to tone it down; treat it with honor: roast it, brown it, marinate it.  Let the juices of each bulb seep out and into your dish.  If you’re going to have garlic, then have garlic!

Rant over.  So today, I arrived home after a particularly (though unintentionally) long bike ride, absolutely famished and craving garlic.  Remembering my pledge to cook more, I pushed aside the box of instant risotto and instead made a marinade of olive oil, salt, ahi (yellow pepper) puree, and (of course) roasted garlic to soak some chicken in for about half an hour.  

hullo, deliciousness

Meanwhile, I made myself a Caesar salad and a hunk of foccacia from Clear Flour Bread with some Castello cheese.  It was enough to satiate the post-ride hunger, as well as prepare my palette for the taste of garlic.  Castello cheese is richly pungent, and I believe that introducing a strong flavor in preparation for the garlic gets the glands revved up.  This is not, mind you, scientifically tested, but I would certainly be a willing subject!

So, after an episode (or two) of Made… I mean, the History Channel… I slathered my chicken in a bit more garlic and ahi, and set it on the grill over a medium-high flame; enough to cook the chicken through, crisp the skin, but leave it juicy.  What resulted was a meal that was satisfying, nutritious, and garlicky good.  The spice of the ahi complimented the pungency of the garlic nicely.  It gave the chicken a bit of a kick, but still allowed the flavor of the roasted garlic to take center stage.

et voila

First of all, a very Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there (aka my mom, because I know she reads this thing religiously and probably accounts for about half the site views).

Mother’s Day has always been a special holiday for my family.  When we were kids, my brother and I would treat my mother to breakfast in bed.  We’d waltz in with her tray and omelet-sized grins on our faces.  Then, instead of leaving her to eat her breakfast in peace, we’d sit at the end of her bed and stare as she cut through her (overcooked) scrambled eggs and (relatively burnt) toast.  Yet, she’d smile and “mmmmm” and compliment us on our culinary feat, making us feel like top-rate chefs that had just presented her with a perfect cushion of souffle and truffle-topped frittata.  And we’d perch there and watch, entirely satisfied with ourselves for accomplishing the grand task of breakfast.

I used to wonder why we never took Mom out to a fancy, special Mother’s Day brunch like my friends used to do for their moms.  You know, treat her to a three-course prix fixe with Belgian waffles covered in fig compote and slow-churn butter, sausage links made from acorn-fed pigs and tarragon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice mimosas.  When I asked her about this, my mother gave the classic mom-answer, “I wouldn’t trade a single one of your homemade breakfasts for a million fancy ones.”  See, that is what being a mom is all about: it’s about finding the pleasure in eating even the most inedible of pancakes just because the little hands that made it and the little eyes that watch you eat it have poured more love into that Bisquick batter than any four-star chef ever could.

Obviously, things have changed a bit now.  Both my brother and I no longer live at home, so those Mother’s Day breakfasts-in-bed are a thing of the past.  And even if I had wanted to surprise her with a morning breakfast today, my perpetual lateness made me sleep through my alarm and I was flying down the Mass Pike a full hour-and-a-half later than I had planned.  So, instead, I offered to spearhead tonight’s dinner in celebration of my mother and grandmother.  The meal was simple: salad, barbecue chicken, crispy yams, rice and orzo pilaf, and green beans with almonds.  For the BBQ sauce, I combined Annie’s Organic Original and Smokey Maple sauces, honey, garlic salt, and salt and pepper.  On top of the yams, that I thinly-sliced and placed on a baking sheet, I drizzled extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled on a mixture of salt, pepper, garlic salt, and sugar.  The chicken was so gloriously sticky with just a touch of sweetness that reminded me of summer barbecues on our back porch.  And the yams were a crowd favorite.  In fact, I think my grandfather ate half the plate before it even reached my side of the table.

Thankfully, my culinary skills have improved significantly since I first began bringing Mom those breakfasts-in-bed.  But, no matter how old I get, I still find myself watching her, waiting for some sort of confirmation to escape her lips that says, yes, I have pleased her and, yes, what I’ve cooked for her is delicious.  Every time, I am back to being that 6-year-old, precariously perched at the end of her bed, in my Sleeping Beauty pajamas and fuzzy pink slippers, waiting for her to go, “Mmmmm.”

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

image by jeepeenyc via flickr

It’s official!  This June, I will take my first trip with a handful of friends to the paradise known as Costa Rica.  On the menu: rainforests, surfing, potentially camping in an RV, dancing on the beach, and, of course, sampling a lot of the local flavor.

As soon as the trip was booked– and I mean, literally within 16 minutes of confirming my flight– I started looking up articles on Costa Rican cuisine.  It’s basically what one would “typically” expect from the region: a lot of rice, beans, beef, and yucca.  Pretty standard fare, and the dishes are generally kept simple, with little spice-enhancement.  Arroz con Pollo and Papas con Chorizo (potatoes and pork sausage) are perhaps the most common/familiar dishes, but there are also neat little oddities like refrescos which are energizing fruit drinks sometimes made with pinolillo (roasted corn flour).

I am so excited for my trip, it’s ridiculous!  I’ve never been to Central/South America, and my only stints outside of the US have involved Canada and Europe.  This was just one adventure I couldn’t pass up!  Seven days of being out in nature and away from the pollution of the city is going to be incredible.  Am I nervous?  Not really.  I mean, I’m trying to crunch in a few Spanish lessons so I’m not a complete mute while I’m there.  I’m not really worried about what to do once we get there, I’ve done the whole backpacking thing before.  I’ve started a physical training program that will hopefully get me in shape for surfing.  Also, I’ve started a different sort of physical training the past few weeks: I’m re-teaching my body to process red meat and pork.  It’s something I’ve talked about doing for a while, and I’m finally committing to it.  So far, so good, with a little bite of hamburger here, some bacon/chorizo there.  It’s a slow process and I probably won’t be able to down a vat of pork stew in Costa, but it’s a start.  I am just anticipating a wonderful experience.