Venison, Ribs, and Potatoes. Nothing short of a dream come true. Well Played, Sir!

When Terry and I were home (Portland and Vancouver respectively) visiting our parents for the Christmas holiday we were invited over to have dinner at my dad's house. He had recently gone on a hunting trip with some of his friends and wanted to cook up some of the venison that they brought back. I love venison, and fresh game meat in general, so this sounded delicious. We headed over and joined them while they started to prepare the meal. Upon arriving we discovered that the venison would be accompanied by ribs that were shipped in from my dad's favorite spot in Memphis, greens, and good'ol mashed potatoes (with plenty of butter at my urging)....

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Cheese!!! A New Way to Make Ball Park Style Cheese Sauce

It was Sunday night, and the last football game of the weekend had come and gone so I decided to take a look at some of the other food blogs that I like to read. I paid a visit to one of my favorites, serious eats, to see what they had going on. I almost immediately came upon an article that I had to read being that I am a cheese lover. It was an article in which Kenji (the author) was trying to figure out how to make a cheese sauce that resembles the sauce that you get with nachos at a sporting event. The problem being that if you take some real cheddar and simply melt it you get an oily, and far from runny result, which is fine for those of...

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First Dinner of 2011

So I was sitting around last night (I've been doing a lot of that since I had knee surgery on Monday), and I was thinking that I wanted to cook something. I have been doing a lot of reading and writing about food lately, but had not cooked in a while. So I went off to the store, and saw some good steaks. I picked up some mushrooms and filets, and decided to cook some of the meal I had last posted about. This way I get to enjoy the food, and give you a more visual break down of my process. There won't be any scalloped potatoes (I went with baked potatoes instead), and I also made a salad and not asparagus.  So here is a detailed breakdown...

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Filet Mignon and Scalloped Potatoes

Up to this point my posts have revolved around experiences that I have had, and the food that I encountered during those experiences. Today will be my first post that focuses on something that I have made rather than something that I have been served. I am going to mix in posts about what I cook, and what I enjoy to make. I will start with the dish shown above, one of my go to dishes. It is a steak dish, filet mignon with a three mushroom red wine sauce to be exact. I serve it with scalloped potatoes, asparagus, and an olive ciabatta bread. Lets start off with the scalloped potatoes because they can be done in steps and also take the longest...

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Fontana's

Terry took me out to dinner one night. She found the restaurant and kept it as a surprise until we arrived. She choose Fontana's Italian Restaurant in Cupertino. It was nice inside, and we were seated right away. We brought our own bottle of wine so we never took a look at the wine list. We looked over the menu and picked out two starters. They were both dishes that we had had the month previous in Rome. The dish above was the Arancini di Riso. They are lightly fired risotto balls. Inside is a mixture of risotto and cheese, and it was served in a creamy tomato sauce. We had similar rice balls when we were in Rome, but they did not have the cheese...

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