When All Else Fails... IMPROVISE

One thing that I learned early on with cooking is that not everything always comes out as you expect. I guess you could say that this is a lesson in life... One of the most important parts of dealing with this lesson is the capacity to deal with these changes. I guess you could say this is the capacity to stand up quickly after falling down. Dinner #27 definitely tested my capacity at both.

The dinner was going fantastic, except for one detail. From the get go, the dessert was not coming out. I had to make dulce de leche in order to create a delicious argentine dessert, alfajor. If any of you have ever tried or know how to make dulce de leche, it is a long and tiresome process. One that did not come out to well for me. Regardless, at the end we had some caramel-like substance that tasted good and could be used.  The problem began when creating the actual alfajor. What came out of the oven was a solid 11 x 7 slab of caramel and phylo dough. Least to say it was unpresentable. And so, dinner #27 seemed as it would have no dessert... or would it?

A quick trip to the fridge would confirm that we had no ice cream, no nothing other than a bag of recently bought grapes. Yes, we freeze our grapes because they are delicious. So I threw the grapes into the food processor, added a tiny bit of white wine and viola we had a delicious granita which I then covered with some of the remaining caramel. Dessert was indeed saved at the last moment and improvising saved that dish. The result was delicious.

The menu for the night was:
Appetizer
Causa with avocado and flash fried octopus with chipotle sauce

Entree
Turkey bacon wrapped scallops with cilantro pesto accompanied by a Colombian coconut rice

Dessert
Originally an Alfajor but instead a Grape Gratina with caramel

The causa is a very traditional Peruvian plate made of mashed golden potatoes layered with avocado and some fish, in this case an octopus. The potatoes includes the delicious flavor of the Peruvian aji amarillo.

The coconut rice is traditionally made with burnt coconut meat and milk, however in order to speed up the process, you can also cook the rice with a can of coconut milk and a can of coke! Yes coke, this is actually an ingredient that I use in some other "secret" recipes that I have.

And this was the final product of the dessert. It actually came out very tasty.

A very big and special Thanks to Tripfilms.com and AmyBlogsChow.com for joining us on this special Saturday edition of Worth Kitchen. As always it was a great pleasure!

A Preview of Last Weeks Dinner...

From a Challenge to a Feast...

Well, we proved after our dinner #11 that it is possible to unite the most picky eaters in one table. To say that this dinner was a challenge is a great understatement. Not that I don't mind the occasional challenge, I actually love them, but this one set the bar high. These were the limitations for the night:

• gluten free
• lactose free
• no shell fish or "anything that touched the ocean"

Now that i see it written up like this, I just realized I cooked my first kosher meal without even knowing it. Not 100% sure it would have been blessed by a rabbi, but nonetheless.

I cannot however, for all that is sacred in this blog, dedicate this post only to the food. It was an amazing dinner, delicious in all ways. But it was also a very special dinner due to the people that joined us. Not only did we have a very fun couple of Argentines (one who works with Tamy) but we also had my sister-in-law and cousin visiting from Mexico and Miami respectively. This would be the first of two consecutive dinner's where we would have family and friends visiting from far away (my sister-in-law will repeat two dinners since she is staying with us for a week). It is always a treat for us to have family join us on our dinners. I think it becomes very obvious for our readers that we are very close with our family, its part of who we are, and I think that translates to the experience.

Ok, so now back to the food! Full of challenges and all, Tamy and I set out to create an amazing dinner. Understanding all the requirements that we had, we set out to create the menu. We obviously struggled due to the fact that gluten, believe it or not, is very hard to avoid. It is in so many things that we eat on a daily basis, it has become a regular staple of our diet. So the menu we created after much contemplation and research (yes some twittering as well, thank you!) was the following:

Theme: Balsamic Vinegar

Appetizer

Goat cheese covered seared beet salad with arugula and pine nuts (for the lactose intolerant we removed the goat cheese of course)

Main Plate

Seared duck breast with balsamic reduction

Ying Yang Quinoa with wild mushrooms and asparagus

Dessert

Originally planned strawberries with balsamic reduction but finished with a Grape/Blueberry sorbet with balsamic reduction, garnished with peach slices

More on the dinner, the grocery shopping and the recipes shortly.