Friday Favorites

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

The chilaquiles at Cafe Brazil are one of our favorite weekend breakfasts.  There are many different variations and recipes for chilaquiles (we should know, we’ve researched recipes to attempt to make them at home), but Cafe Brazil makes theirs with scrambled eggs, tomatillo sauce, onions, jack cheese, tortilla chips and your choice of freshly pulled chicken, chorizo or sliced smoked turkey (we usually get chicken.)  Simple, savory Mexican comfort food.

We tried out a new steak salad recipe:  pan-seared strip steaks with sauteed portobello mushrooms and red onion, gorgonzola and arugula.  The recipe didn’t call for it, but we added some tomatoes from our garden.  All the flavors came together really well, and with the saute and steak juices, no dressing was necessary for the arugula.

Some days call for a special bottle of wine.  We raided our wine fridge one night this week and enjoyed a nice bottle of pinot noir from the Frank Family Vineyard, which we visited last year during our trip to Napa.

The pan-seared strip steak made a second appearance, dressed up a little differently:  combined with fresh red onion slivers, sliced shiitake mushrooms, spinach and arugula and tossed with a variation of the Asian-style dressing from this spinach and shrimp salad recipe.

Speaking of spinach, we’ve been adding a handful of spinach leaves to our smoothies lately.  Although it turns the smoothie green and makes it look like it would taste vegetable-y, you can’t taste the spinach at all.  I know, I didn’t believe it either, until I tasted it.  Seriously — if the smoothie wasn’t green, you would have no idea there was any spinach in there.  Our current favorite smoothie is made with almond milk, banana, peaches (or nectarines), pineapple (and/or mango if we have it), chia seeds and spinach.

Grilled Fruit Salad

Summer is an excellent time for grilling experiments.  Although we previously had nearly zero experience grilling fruit at home, we ate grilled grapes once at Ad Hoc (which is one of our all-time favorite restaurants.  We live halfway across the country from that place, but Dan still occasionally, wistfully stalks their Facebook page to find out what they are serving that night for dinner.)  Inspired by those grapes and a pineapple and jalapeno salsa that we recently served over grilled pork, we created a side salad with grilled fruit, and added chopped fresh jalapeno, crumbled goat cheese and a drizzle of balsamic reduction to balance out the sweetness of the fruit.  The outcome of our little experiment?  Successfully delicious!

Continue reading “Grilled Fruit Salad”

Friday Favorites

We debated whether to post any favorites today, in light of a very sad occurrence this week — our friend’s dad passed away unexpectedly.  It seemed insensitive to post our silly little photos of food and other stuff we like when our friend and his family are hurting through such a difficult time.  But the experience is a reminder that life is so very short, and we take the photos throughout our week as a way to remind ourselves to stop and appreciate the good things in our lives.  So we share the photos and the hope that others will also take a little time to be grateful for their own favorites.

Roasting a chicken is easy, makes your kitchen smell amazing, and provides great leftovers.

Seeing a comedian at a comedy club is a fun date night.  Even the waiters were funny — the guy who sat us (right beside the stage) said “if you guys were sitting any closer, you’d have to tell some jokes.”

Eating the grilled hamachi kama (yellowtail collar) at Sushi Sake is almost a religious experience for Dan, he loves it so much.

Remembering how good the lamb is at Ziziki’s when we were craving a gyro, but found out the place where we originally wanted to go was closed, saved our Sunday lunch.

Finding and executing an amazing recipe for kimchi fried rice resulted in the best meal of the week.