I love to cook. Be it alone, where I find an afternoon of solo chopping to be quite therapeutic, or tackling major menus with friends, there’s nothing better than wielding the knife with some music blasting (dub-step was a popular cooking choice of mine this year) and a cold beer next to the cutting board. I’ve learned much more, but have so far to go. I mean, I’ve never done a souffle! Or a standing rib roast! I want to learn Indian cuisine, and how to clean and filet fish, and charcuterie, and…the list goes on. For now, here are a few of my favorite cooking lessons from 2011.

Pasta dishes like aglio e olio, cacio e pepe, and carbonara made many appearances this year. Simple enough in design, to obtain the perfect texture and sauce consistency requires experiential timing and touch. I finally feel like I can make a proper pasta. Beautiful fresh pasta nests like these definitely help.

My favorite pasta all year was a quick pan sauce of salty pasta water and ‘nduja, a hot Calabrian spreadable salami I obtained from Jason at Cured Meats. I must have made that dish four times that week. I did spare a little to make a stunning grilled cheese with basil.

Cooler sous vide – I finally got my pastured pork at that exact right temperature.

Flannery beef. Still the reigning champ of steak in my book. So expensive. But so good. Look at the marbling on this strip!

Lasagna. My ultimate comfort food. I made many in 2011, including a few vegetarian versions so Katie could enjoy it along with me. But my heart belongs to Bologna. I made the bechamel (which I’ve finally nailed) and meat ragu version a couple of times, including once with calf livers, which made it extra funky and interesting. Lasagna for breakfast (with an espresso, in this one photo) is the best. Marone!

Soups. I’m making them quite regularly these days. They used to intimidate me for whatever silly reason, but now I know I can dig around my fridge and pantry and make SOME sort of soup. The Vitamix helps (understatement). This soup below is a mix of frozen peas and water and herbs. Nothing more.

Over the last week I’ve knocked out cheese sauces. I had a mac and cheese break (greasy, grainy) a few weeks ago, so I spent some time researching why this happens, then played around with a few variations of recipes. I wanted a cheese sauce that could take a real sharp cheese, melt smoothly, and hold up even when reheated. I’ve found my easy, no cream method – bechamel held with xantham gum. Mix in small quantities of grated cheese over very low heat.

The veggie plate. Chili oil marinated squash. Gently simmered pink eye peas. Yuzo kosho mashed cauliflower. Tomatoes with chives. No recipes, just preparing things simply and properly and seasoning in a way that makes sense.

Homemade biscuits. Buttery (but not soggy), flaky, crusty on the outside, made with buttermilk and frozen butter. Maybe not the prettiest, but I nailed the texture. It made my day.

Porchetta. Or a version thereof. This one was a picnic pork shoulder, with herbs, roasted for hours, the skin finished under the broiler.

2011 was the year I broke the oven in my kitchen. I began cooking my pizzas at 800F+ on the clean cycle, which is a process that requires some trial and error. I became a little more familiar with making, aging, and working with doughs, though I still need lots of practice there.

Moving on to other people’s food – my brother made some extremely impressive gougères. Better than the last time I tried the French Laundry recipe, and better than any I’ve tried outside of my meal at Per Se.

My friend Brad and I tackled a Momofuku meal. While I wasn’t overly impressed with the dishes, it was once again a great learning experience. This time we got to break down a whole pig’s head, debone chickens, and assemble this dish with meat glue.

And while I learn a lot by trying to follow complicated recipes word for word, my friend Rowdy continues to rock it in the kitchen and be an inspiration with his freewheeling style. I still can’t touch his hot chicken. How did he know that dish of cured, but uncooked bacon with a thyme dressing would be brilliant at 1:30 in the morning? I don’t think he did. But he just gets in the kitchen and experiments, and more and more I think that’s the way to do it.

While in Barcelona we hit up Pez Vela, a relatively new paella restaurant at the base of the W Hotel, right on the beach. Ever since, I can’t stop thinking about paella. Has anyone ever had one that was good in Atlanta?

Doing it at home is probably the best option. I have a paella pan I’ve never used, and some recently acquired bomba rice, so a paella party is in my near future.

The fixed paella menu began with the ubiquitous tomato bread, lightly toasted, with flake salt and fruity olive oil that should put Italians to shame.

It’s tough to beat a big, crunchy salad. The olives are so good in Spain. There were many white asparagus appearances too.

We also sampled a potato tapa, I believe they called it patatas calientes. The more common patatas bravas is often served with aioli and/or romesco sauce, but this was paired with something more like a spicy onion soubise, basically a chopped up/melted caramelized onion sauce with some chili oil. This was UNREAL.

The pièce de résistance – squid, shrimp, and clam paella.

The seafood was of course fresh and salty and perfect. But the rice! Oh, the rice! Short, firm, toothsome (did I really just say that?), each grain was a slick explosion of salty ocean flavor. And the thin layer meant almost every bite had a dose of the lustful socarrat, the fought over caramelized and crunchy flavor bits that form on the bottom and edge of the pan. Recalling it now…I think it just moved.

Katie likes dessert. :)

What a view, huh? These old Spanish gentlemen cracked me up. Taking a jog down the beach one morning, I saw a lot of scantily clad men close-talking and helping each other out with sunblock, also many tables of shirtless seniors playing dominos and drinking Dewar’s at about 9:30 AM. The Mediterranean diet, indeed.

How can you not love a place called Chicken & Beer? Even if it’s really just the subtext for the actual name of the Korean chain – BBQ Chicken. Whenever I’m driving home from Greenville (which is often), I make a point to stop in Duluth for some grub. I usually check out Chow Down and Blissful Glutton’s sites for the must-visit places and make lists of where I want to go, this being one of them.

Which reminds me, I really want to write an iPhone app that is similar to Yelp, except it’s only for viewing (no feedback) and the only content is from bloggers, allowing you to filter by blogger and search geographically. So if I’m in Duluth I could check out a map and see pin points of all the places Chow Down recommends, maybe a 1-2 sentence summary, address/phone, and a link to her full blog post to view in Safari.

The whole problem with Yelp is credibility. As I mentioned yesterday, part of following a single blogger is you can develop a level of trust between blogger and reader. I keep whole lists of restaurants that Gene (Eat Drink Man) recommends, because I generally enjoy the style of food he cooks and the type of restaurant where he dines. It’s much more valuable to me than a bunch of aggregated data from random “Elites” or people with very different tastes. One day. If anyone wants to help, let me know.

Back to the chicken, which was really good. The olive oil fried surface is as crunchy as it gets, with more than a little spice and plenty of seasoning. I dug the flavor from the oil, which they must cook at a lower temp to avoid a bitter, singed crust. Olive oil burns somewhere around 320F. It’s not perfect as the chicken was overdone and not moist enough, but I’d rather more flavor and a super great crust than have a particularly great bird on the inside (LeRoy’s). Recommended for shizzle. It’s right next door to Honey Pig in a newer strip mall. Free Wi-Fi.

I also wanted noodles so I hit up Dan Moo Ji, where I feel about as old and boring as a white guy can feel in Duluth. They’re chock full of young and good looking Korean youngsters, sucking down noodles, and watching Biebs videos on the television. And apparently writing cutesy stuff on the walls. Tee hee hee!

Gratis pickled radish and broth (good even on a hot day) to start.

I started with kimchi gimbap, which is reminiscent of a maki roll. They aren’t mind blowing, but it’s a nice way to get your kimchi and rice fix in bite size form. They’re cheap too.

I also ordered the cold noodles with vegetables and spicy sauce, jjolmyeon. I had not read Jen’s post since last year, and I was definitely put off for a moment when the petite waitress asked me if she could mix up my bowl.

Though I was confused as to why she thought I couldn’t mix my noodles up with my chopsticks, I said sure, and she proceeded to put on a plastic glove and dove her hand into the bowl. As she man-handled my noodles, she gazed at me and asked, “How do you know about this place?”

To which I replied, “the internet.”

“Ah”, she said, as if that made perfect sense.

Just like that my first, and best, handle noodle mixing job was over. I hope it was good for her too.

The noodles were great, super chewy and a bunch of sauce ended up on my shirt as I had difficulty snapping the strands with each bite. Appropriate spice level, I think. Plenty leftover to take home too.

After all that fried chicken and carbs I made a veggie plate for dinner. Tomatoes with chive and balsamic. Pink eye peas with pimienton and a shot of good sherry vinegar. Mandoline sliced squash quickly marinaded in chili oil. And yuzu kosho dosed cauliflower mash (sort of a play on the old horseradish mashed potatoes of twenty years ago). Katie and I were quite pleased with this impromptu and quickly produced meal. Summer vegetable season is a great one.

I’ve been doing the best I can to find time to cook, despite a busier than usual schedule. Weekends used to be my go-to cooking time, but Ironman training has kicked into high gear, and after a six hour workout I don’t feel much like standing on my feet in the kitchen. Most of my post workout time is spent icing my thighs and recording mental notes of which body part I missed with the Body Glide.

That said, I’ve been determined to use some tomatoes before the season ends. One time I bought a bunch of tomatoes at Whole Foods (I can never get to the weekend farmer’s markets by noon anymore) and made a tomato jam. The recipe was inspired by this post from Hunter Angler, probably my favorite food blog (I’m not alone, Hank is a James Beard nominee). I didn’t really buy enough tomatoes to make a large amount of sauce, so I just kept stirring and reducing, and reducing, and reducing…until it was just a few tablespoons of dense, bright, and salty tomato “jam”.

I decided to use it as a condiment for Ad Hoc meatball sliders. Keller’s meatballs are stuffed with mozzarella. The cheese tends to explode out of them in the oven, but worse things have happened. The bread I used may or may not be cheap hot dog buns sliced up into squares.

Good stuff, the jam really tied the room together.

I’ve also got back into pizza making recently, which began when I started a sourdough culture, using a starter from sourdo.com. The bread flavor is better than in prior experiements, but the texture is still lacking. I need more heat.

The toppings I’ve used for the last two pies have been great though – cherry tomatoes from The Local Farmstand (next to Star Provisions), ricotta, mozzarella, olive oil, basil, and homemade pancetta. I also topped the pie below with an egg.

Here’s some side boob of the slice that got most of the egg. Salty, acidic, aromatic, and creamy all in one bite. No complaints at all.

Well ok, maybe one complaint. The end crust texture is ok, but I really wish it would blow up. You can see the tiny air pockets, which if I had proper* heat, would explode into a cavernous wonder of crunchy pizza dough greatness. Instead it’s slightly gummy.

This pizza was cooked in my oven, the stone was on the second highest rack position at 550F for one hour, then I turned the broiler on high, slid the pizza in, and left the door slightly open so the element would stay on. It cooked in four minutes.

*proper = 800F+, if you are a pizza fanatic

Forgive the awful 3G iPhone photo (not even 3Gs, get with it Jimmy!), but I have to mention my meal at Aria last night. It was the type of meal where I woke up excited because I thought I had leftovers, only to realize I had dreamt that I had leftovers. Some people have wild sex dreams, I have leftover veal schnitzel dreams.

But oh what a preparation of veal it was. The so called “summer” veal schnitzel was prepared very much like veal milanese; a thin cutlet of crunchy pan fried veal topped with arugula, soft and amazing room temperature heirloom tomatoes, and parmesan shavings. Not complicated, but executed with precision. Which really could have been the theme of the whole meal. Every dish I tried wasn’t over thought, but was excellent. Lemon ricotta ravioli was firm and vibrant, bursting with fresh lemon flavor. The beet salad presentation was impecable, the flavors deftly balanced by the small slices of orange.

In addition, or server Mario provided some of the best and adaptive service I can recall.

I’ll be back. Just as soon as my credit card cools down a bit.

I visited The Shed recently a Thursday evening, which is their “Harvest Night”, featuring your selection of four vegetables (from roughly ten options) for $10. I’ve never attended slider night, because I’m in South Carolina every Wednesday, but on Thursday’s I am often driving back to Atlanta on I-20, so I pass right by The Shed and it’s easy to stop in. My house is probably only twenty minutes from The Shed, but it’s funny how proximity can play such a large part in my dining selection. The difference between ten and twenty minutes can be a major deciding factor.

Now with my third Thursday night visit under my belt, I actually look forward to the drive home from Columbia, so I can justify the need to stop; “…well I’m right here, I pretty much have to stop in for some dinner…”.

A few of the sliders are on the regular menu now, so I’ve had a couple of those, but the vegetable plate is the heat. No matter what the selection, they are always very well prepared. Mushy canned vegetables these ain’t. The selections available list a few expected mainstays, but there are always a handful of rotating items that make things interesting.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to even put up this post because my vegetarian girlfriend may smite me because I haven’t taken her for harvest night. Well, see you next Thursday.

After downing a few gin, tequila, and moonshine based cocktails, in my mind’s eye I was Federico Fellini with the camera, but I really didn’t get as many good photos (especially of food) as I thought. I shot some footage so I decided to slap this video together.

Hope everyone that attended had as great of a time as I did!

Many thanks to Georgia Organics, Ford Fry, JCT, Westside Provisions District, Melissa Libby & Associates, the Spazmatics, the volunteers, and of course the chefs and mixologists for putting on such a top notch event.

Yay for summer tomatoes. And gazpacho.

I’ve been browsing a lot of gazpacho recipes, and I decided to make this one. I like gazpacho when it doesn’t taste like bloody mary mix. Some aspect of it needs to say “soup” to me.

Before

After

I served it with a cucumber granita. It was really good. Everyone seemed to like it a lot. Creamy, with loads of basil flavor.

Dinner was chorizo, bacon, jowl, and clams with linguine. The hog pen meats the sea.

Dessert was grilled peaches over local honey, Rainier cherry and grape granita, sliced cherry. Really good.

Grilling peaches is a great way to use peaches if you have some that aren’t quite ripe and don’t have time to wait (like me, who was going out of town for a few days).

I put this picture up on my aMinus3 photoblog website, which I post to roughly every other day. Sometimes photos from EIA posts end up there, but mostly they are photos that I like and don’t belong to a full post.

This pasta was the result of my watching the No Reservations Techniques episode last weekend. It was really easy, but different than how I usually prepare a quick pasta with tomato sauce.

• confit garlic in olive oil with thyme, basil, red pepper – 30 to 40 minutes on as low as heat as possible
• hand crush a can of Roma tomatoes (remove stems and seeds and excess liquid), add a fat pinch of salt or two
• saute the tomatoes with some of the reserved liquid, ensure it doesn’t get too dry by adding liquid as needed
• cook pasta – I used bucatini from toscano & sons (westside ATL) – don’t cook the pasta all the way
• add some of the infused olive oil, garlic confit, a little slab of butter to the sauce, and a few splashes of the pasta cooking liquid to the sauce
• add bucatini in the pan, flip a few times to finish cooking and distribute sauce

Simple, rich, satisfying.

After being on the road for 8 days, I’m finally back in Atlanta. The trip was mostly work, though I did participate in a triathlon on Jekyll Island on Saturday (5th in my age group!) and hung out on the beach the rest of the day. Not too awful.

I had lots of good food on the trip. I ate at Noble Fare in SAV on Friday night. Savannah food is sort of a mystery to me. There’s lots of the touristy overpriced garbage, decent and plain seafood, but not much in the way of intriguing, off-beat meals. I think Noble Fare is the best I’ve had in Savannah to date. The tasting menu was missing a little umph, and a few dishes were just a notch or two from being very memorable. But I enjoyed it and recommend it.

My evenings in Charleston on Monday/Tuesday were another matter. McCrady’s Monday night, FIG on Tuesday night. The tasting menu at McCrady’s was my favorite meal there there to date. It’s not cheap, but I felt the price was fair for such a perfectly executed and creative experience. The range of dishes touch so many ingredients and techniques, it was so much fun to see what would come next.

The FIG meal was a little more low key, but equally delicious. A much more comforting meal to me. The largest lump crab I’ve ever seen and English peas in a light creamy broth. Veal agnolotti. Pan sauteed soft shell crab with bitter greens. Warm blueberry and strawberry crisp with a glass of botrytis semillon. I don’t know if it’s a “grass is greener” syndrome, but the meals were more memorable than what I’ve had in ATL lately.

If you’re ever in North Charleston, I highly recommend EVO for pizza. The “pork trifecta” pizza of locally made bacon, homemade sausage/pepperoni was really good. Cool place too.

In related news, check out Besha’s foodie guide to Charleston.

First order of business back in the A; date night at our happy place – Dynamic Dish.

After a week of guilty eating, DD is always delicious and gut friendly. Check out the patty pan’s below!

Tomato/scallion/avocado – so simple

Lentil burger with crispy potatoes, really tasty!

Repast for dessert – ice cream and sorbet. Carrot cake on the right was my jam.

Chocolate terrine, sea salt, olive oil, pistachio

I’m really interested to see how Repast and Watershed develop when Joe heads to Watershed on June 1. I think it could work out very well for both restaurants. The staff I spoke to at Repast last night seemed to be invigorated when I inquired about the change.