Weekend Wrap-Up (August 21-22)

Fried Bananas

The weather wasn't so great in NYC on Sunday, so Tom was a little more prolific in the kitchen. He made a lot of stuff, I took a lot of photos. So let's just get down to it, shall we?

Potato Zucchini Pizza

A few years ago, I had potato pizza from Sullivan Street Bakery (they sell it at Dean & Deluca), and I loved it. It was the marriage of two of my favorite starches- bread and potatoes! I finally got Tom to try it, and now he's gotten quite good at it. This pizza was a mix of potatoes and green zucchini, and it was drizzed with olive oil. I want a piece of this right now!

Bloody Mary

These were Tom's weekend breakfast beverages: coffee and a Bloody Mary. Tom would drink a Bloody Mary with every breakfast if he could. (Note that the coffee here is mine, Tom would never drink it with as much creamer as I use!) I can't attest to the flavor of the Bloody Mary (since I hate them- they combine three things I dislike the most: tomatoes, celery and spicy) but Tom seemed happy with it. He made it with some of the tomatoes from the CSA (see below).

Buttermilk Pancakes with Raspberry Maple Syrup

Tom's really into making pancakes these days. He used to have a hard time with them, but he's figured it out, and now he enjoys making them. This recipe was good, it was fluffy and light, which is always nice. The raspberry maple syrup was good too (at least the sauce part was, I don't eat raspberries).

Frying Bananas

Tom doesn't like to make just 'plain' ice cream, it has to be inventive or interesting (see past posts for examples). We usually go back and forth with ideas, and I said 'you never see banana ice cream.' Ironically, Tom had recently seen a recipe for banana pudding ice cream, so he went with that (he actually combined a few recipes from what he told me). Bananas are my favorite fruit, I eat them every day. Fried bananas? Even better. Combined with ice cream and crushed nilla wafters to make banana pudding ice cream- WIN.

Roasted Tomatoes

We got like 5 lbs of tomatoes last week from our CSA share. What to do with all these tomatoes? Confit!

Jars of Tomato Confit

We went to a demonstration last year where Tom Colicchio made confits, and one of them was tomatoes. I am sure I'll end up eating this in a dish Tom creates, but in the meantime, I'm sure Tom will be eating it on his own too, since we have a lot of it.

Chicken Necks floating in Chicken Stock

Since it was rainy on Sunday, and we had a freezer full of bones and other gross stuff, Tom made both chicken stock and beef stock. I tend to avoid the kitchen when there are chicken feet around, but Tom asked me to take a photo, so here we are. Hungry yet? I will say food does taste better when you use stock instead of water. Once I got over my initial discomfort of knowing what was in the stock, the food was good!

Oxtails

This is just what the name implies- oxtails. In the package it formed more of a tail shape, which was slightly off-putting. Tom made these in the pressure cooker in some beer, and then scooped out the meat which he made into ravioli.

Oxtail Ravioli with Corn/Swiss Chard

This dish was really good. Tom, of course, had all sorts of criticisms of his work: "the meat is too salty," "the pasta is too thick," but I really enjoyed it. When Tom showed me the ball of gelantinous meat he was going to put into the ravioli, I was slightly grossed out by it (it looked like a wad of canned cat food!) but it was delicious! The chard was a little undercooked so I whined about not liking it, but overall, it was really good.