Mr. Solo - Tomato Tatare and Green Beans

The next guest is the one and only Mr. Solo. If you don't know who I am talking about, trust me.... you know!!!! Good thing setdinnerhereveg has a executive board of only ONE, because if we put this to a vote, I might lose my head chef/blogger status... replaced by Mr. Solo.

He contributed two courses of a fantastic meal that he cooked for fellow friends and forwarded the pictures and description. Here is part one.

I guess [Mr. gorgeous] wasn't kidding about having a guest month on his blog! SO without further ado...a little bit of background on this I'm a pretty voracious meat eater, but with an increasing cadre of vegetarian friends. In the interests of being able to have people over for dinner every once in a while without thrusting steaks on unwilling palettes I've been forced to explore their strange and unfamiliar world. Fennelwhatnow?

Being a meat eater at heart, the first dish is actually a riff off of raw steak tartare, the idea being that you could use tomatoes instead and approximate the same color and texture as uncooked beef. I've been referencing the French Laundry cookbook, a recent Bible of mine, so I definitely can't take credit for the concept. There's two main techniques you need for this dish, quick blanching and slow roasting. Basically you take some vine-on tomatoes, dunk them in boiling water for about a minute, and then immediately shock them in ice cold water. What this lets you do is remove the skins really easily. Then you quarter the skinned tomatoes, remove and discard the pulp, add some olive oil, salt, and thyme, and slow roast the remaining tomato pieces in the oven at 250°F for about 2 hours. What you get is super concentrated tomato with a somewhat more solid texture, that you can rough chop, add chopped shallots and toss in a ring mold. Tartare: done. The salad on top is green beans in a mixture of heavy cream and red wine vinegar (with a pinch of salt), and then the sauce is the oil drippings from the roasted tomatoes.

More Plum Pictures

Plums by Ms. Pumpkin

Greetings readers! Ms. Pumpkin here, blogging from the great state of Missouri. Recently I had the joy of spending a weekend in our nation's capital with Mr. and Mrs. gorgeous. We had a fabulous weekend of cooking, eating, drinking and other drinking related activities. Such fun!

A Sunday trip to the Dupont farmers' market left us with an abundance of over-ripe plums that had to be used immediately. We decided to finish that night's dinner with a couple of plum-based desserts: kuchen and sorbet.

Kuchen, German for “cake” can come in many forms. As the state dessert of South Dakota (http://www.state.sd.us/state/sdsym.htm), it's made with a yeasty crust and a custard filling that is enjoyed while wearing olde-tyme German garb. In contrast, our plum kuchen was based on a dense cake flavored with ample amounts of lemon zest and white sugar. We topped it with halved, pitted plums covered in more sugar and some cinnamon. After nearly quarter of an hour baking in the hot oven, the tiny kitchen was filled with the aroma of lemons, plums and cinnamon. The golden cake had plumped up around the fruit, which had softened under the melting sugar and cinnamon. Once it was cooled, the cake easily slipped out of the Gorgeous's nifty spring form pan. Thank God for wedding registries.

We planned to serve a plum sorbet along side our kuchen. The ingredients were simple: plums, water and sugar. The recipe had me blanch and peel the plums before blending them. After scalding my delicate fingers a few times, I gave up on these two steps and just tossed the pitted plums into the Magic Bullet. You can leave the peel on without affecting the taste, but don't leave in the pits. I don't think the Magic Bullet would be very happy. Alone, the sorbet was nothing spectacular, but it paired nicely with the heavy kuchen.

All in all, the dessert was a sweet finish to a wonderful weekend. Happy cooking!

GUEST MONTH!!!!!

October is guest month. Get ready for delicious vegetarian recipes prepared by friends and readers of Mr. gorgeous. The first guest is the one and only Ms. Pumpkin.

Baked Orzo

Made this dish last night from a recipe in the NYT. When I began cooking it, the recipe seemed like it was going to be a breeze. Cut up the vegetables and throw them with the orzo, bake and you have the meal. Well it was a little bit more complicated than that because most of the vegetables needed to be cooked beforehand. So the prep took quite a while, about forty minutes. I think we then shortchanged the baking a little bit because it was getting late and Mrs. gorgeous and I were hungry.

The orzo had a lot of flavor especially with all the cooked vegetables, which is a necessary though lengthy process. Frying the vegetables in a small amount of oil beforehand softens them up and brings out there flavor that mixes in with the orzo well. I also think that baking it slightly longer would have been good. The orzo was cooked beforehand in water, and I thought baking would have added a little crunch but I do not think we had quite gotten there yet.

Another note: I think if I were to cook it again I would double the recipe so that there were more leftovers. Only going to get about four plates total out of the recipe (though NYT says serves six) and it would be nice for the effort put in to get a little more return. Mr. and Ms. duke/environmental science, check out that baking pan.

Leftover Mash-up and Fry Dough

I had a lot of leftover vegetables and decided to make a sort of mash-up dish. I cut up all the remaining vegetables (potatoes, broccoli, leeks, carrots, can't remember what else but it was a clearing the refrigerator job). I stir fried the vegetables and then added in coconut milk, turmeric, and cumin (No curry powder). The sauce was sweet and delicious and the vegetables mixed in really well.

The fry bread was from a packet that my dad purchased in North Carolina. You mix up the dough with water and then fry them in a small amount of oil. They puff up like the you can see above.

Overall food was great. Easy, fast, and used up all the various vegetables that remained in the fridge before they went bad.

Sorry for the long absence, trying to get back into this writing thing.

Pizza

Every once in a while Ms. gorgeous and I make pizza at the house. With our wedding coming up, we have gotten some sweet gear to cook the pizza on (pizza stone, pizza board, rolling pin, and pizza cutter). We have yet to make our own dough out of laziness, timing issues, and we have a great spot down the street to buy dough (Vace - as Supertaster says, best pizza in DC), plus having a food processor will make life much easier.

We also bought the different sauces for the Pizza (Pesto and Tomato), but can easily make these in the future when we have a better garden. The nice part of Pizza is the community and creativity aspects. Everybody can customize their own (so everyone is happy) and you get inspirations and taste ideas from those around you that are making their pizza. If you are lucky you they will give you a slice of their creation.

A topping that I really enjoy is butternut squash that has been peeled and fried in olive oil and salt and pepper. Though the season for squash has ended, make sure you try it when the time becomes right again.