Gourmet foil dinners

I have this fantasy of owning a yuppy foil dinner restaurant where people sit by a man-made fire and order bundles of leek and turnip hash, foil foie gras or pickled herring and kohlrabi date salad, wrapped in foil. I think I'd call it The Tin House, or for a Shakespearean twist, Foil. (Or if it was close to Berkeley, it could be called FOIL'ed)

I've never been much for camping, but there's just something about a hot cowboy coffee and a slop of fire roasted food that makes me want to appreciate nature. (Almost!)

These are my vegetables, courtesy of the Grand Lake Farmers Market: where hippies, yuppies and hipsters combine to form a triad of social consciousness.

I put in all kinds of turnips, little yellow carrots, kale, spinach, shallots and romanesco (an Italian cauliflower), with generous amounts of salt and pepper and some leftover mint I had laying around. If you're not using meat, a healthy dose of olive oil is pivotal to keeping the vegetables moist. Mansten didn't use any in his dinner, and it came out dry as a driad.



Make sure you rub some butter on the inside of the foil so it doesn't stick. Put it in the oven at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour...



And presto! A beautiful plate of steamed vegetables, probably nothing like the ones grampa Bubkis used to fire up with his marshmallows, but wonderful nevertheless. It was probably the healthiest thing I've eaten in recent memory. (But I won't quibble if you add some beef.) I felt so good after eating it, I almost considered taking a walk outside!

Huevos: Three Ways

It's easy to be gourmet with egg! Cheap, diverse, fast, multicultural, easily paired... This is what I done.




Leftover pasta inspired me to improvise off a Jessica Seinfeld recipe, leaving out the obligatory vegetable puree. (I can't imagine Jerry eating that stuff. He's so picky.) I just fried up the pasta in olive oil until it was crunchy and then made some holes to drop the yolks in. It turned out well, but extremely filling. Don't make this one before you go climbing the peaks of Puchin and Damblesdorph.




I made this one for breakfast today. Just some scrambled eggs with arugula. I accidentally poured too much milk in the mixture before I put it on the stove, but it worked out. The eggs were super fluffy.

Just make sure you sprinkle some olive oil and salt and pepper on the top. Dress those greens!





In a chicken embryo collection, this would be my prime specimen. It's a frittata with thinly-sliced radishes and parmesan cheese, mixed in with some basil. (I had all these ingredients in the fridge beforehand. Never go out and buy shit just to make eggs, for godssakes.) A made it up just like an omelet, but put it under the broiler for a minute instead of folding it over. I put some basil in the egg itself, and then sprinkled the radish and basil mixture on top next to the cheese.

This one's definitely a winner: The flavors contrast and play against each other so well. The freshness of the radishes and basil, earthiness from the egg and a pungent strike of the cheese. It tastes even better when you fry the egg in olive oil instead of butter. Tastes I-Talian!

What I made tonight...

My boyfriend Mansten hasn't received his Spring 2012 loan check yet, so that leaves us with chicken thighs, leftover vegetables and some prunes I bought at a farmer's stand outside a Shell gas station. No matter!

Building off of Thomas Keller's bling recipe for braised thicken thighs, I feigned my way into a ?healthy? winter dish that looks pretty profesh: crispy chicken thighs with winter greens, prunes and cherry tomatoes.

The key to this dish is a three part cooking process: searing the chicken for a couple minutes in hot oil, roasting in the oven for 20 minutes, and then a couple minutes in the broiler to crisp up the skin. It's the cheapest, most flavorful, perfect cut of meat I can think of.

For the side, I just sauteed some left-over shallots, onions, kale and spinach I had, then threw in some cherry tomatoes I bought from the store. Oh, and the prunes added a sweetness and made it way more filling.

The only problem with this dish is that the left-over chicken broth and oil in the pan combine to make a potent and all-too-tempting brew. It tasted like chicken soup, and I couldn't resist pouring it into a bowl and drinking it straight. I felt real crappy afterwards...

Thomas Keller's chicken recipe, courtesy of TasteSpotting. (Thanks guyz!)
Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs

The Wonderful World of Mint!!!!

Confession: I absolutely HATE supermarket herbs, the pathetic packages of tasteless overpriced mildew waiting to happen. But during a recent trip to Lee Lee Oriental Supermart, 1990 W Orange Grove Rd, I spotted a giant bunch of glistening fresh mint for less than 70 cents. (According to my scientific calculations, about a tenth of the price you'd pay for the packaged crap.) It's been in my fridge for about two weeks now and still hasn't rotted!

But what do you do with mint? It's actually surprisingly versatile, and can be supplemented for basil in savory dinners. It's great in Thai food, but as I found below, adds some pep to Italian as well.

*above: I took two chicken breasts, which were also extremely cheap at Lee Lee's, and coated them with A Taste of Thai spicy peanut bake (can be found in most supermarkets) and topped with mint. The herbs really brought out the freshness of the chicken, and helped me forget I was eating from already-made packaged marinade. I also threw some mint into my curried green beans, sauteed in coconut milk, soy sauce and shallots. It was really simple, and delish!



I also threw some mint into this orecchiette pasta to brighten the flavors, since my sauce was basically olive oil. I took some cheap prosciutto and fried it up (can't tell the difference that way) with pine nuts, garlic and broccolini. It was very simple and flavorful.

Good luck!

To begin...

Hello! Welcome to My Dinner With Andi, a philosophical take on the stuff we put in our mouths. Look for recipes, reviews, insights and experiments with ethnic products like sambal.