Some homecooked meals

Now that I'm home and unemployed in Chicago, living in a house with a nice and newly renovated kitchen, I've been pretty inspired to cook and experiment a bit. Whether on my own or as my dad's sous chef (my dad is the cook in this house), I've built up my repertoire more in the last week than I did in my last 3 months in New York.

The surprising thing about Chicago is that you can find cheaper and fresher fish here than you can in New York. Maybe my mom just knows where to look here and I don't know where to look in New York, but we've been getting lots of very fresh halibut and Chilean sea bass for about $10/lb more or less.


This is some halibut I made last week. I made about 2 pounds worth for dinner. As you know, I don't like measuring stuff when I cook. I kinda just go with it. Ingredients included maybe 4-5 cloves of garlic, tomatoes, shallots, about 3/4-1 cup of white wine, salt and pepper for seasoning, and fresh basil to garnish at the end. Oh, I also added a few threads of saffron from a little jar I had bought in Corfu last year. I added this while the white wine was reducing. Just a few threads REALLY made the saffron taste noticeable. Overall, the fish was pretty good though maybe could have used more salt and pepper.


Another day, my dad and I cooked fresh scallops in a similar manner, but added a bunch of oyster mushrooms. Instead of using white wine, we used red. The flavor was really good, but my dad definitely overcooked the scallops - they ended up being a bit rubbery, which I hate, but since it tasted good, I was able to deal. I wasn't sure if the oyster mushrooms would be good with the scallops, but they actually were!

He and I have made other seafood dishes in the last week, but they're really all pretty similar. It's pretty much always either red or white wine reduction, tomatoes, shallots, sometimes green onions, sometimes either oyster or enoki mushrooms, and always always always some garlic.

My sister is having a graduation party this coming Saturday, so I'm hoping to experiment with other party-appropriate dishes for that too...

Stay tuned!

Mussels Mariniere

For one of our nights in Chicago, we just decided to cook at my house. We made that pasta which I wrote about in one of my earlier posts which you can find under the "recipes" tag. People said that it was better than the last time I made it, so that's good! Gabe and I made mussels mariniere which we've made in the past. It's seriously one of the easiest things to make.

My mom bought 5 pounds of live mussels at Costco. We didn't really do any measurements, but here's what we did:

1. Heat 4tbs of butter in a large saucepan
2. Add a bunch of minced garlic (maybe 6-8 cloves worth?)
3. Add a bunch of chopped shallots (maybe 1-2 hands full?)
4. Add about 2 cups of dry white wine (we may have added more than that)
5. Once the alcohol is cooked off, add the mussels, and cover the pan
6. Mix once in awhile so all the mussels are getting some sauce and heat
7. It's finished once the shells are all open (this should only take 5 minutes or so)!
8. Add chopped fresh parsley to garnish

This was definitely a big hit with my family/relatives. 5 pounds of mussels only cost $9 at Costco. Mussels are so cheap, so this is something I have to make more often. If only we had some frites to go with it.

Aquagrill

For one of my graduation dinners in May 2007, my parents, Gabe, and I went to Aquagrill, a seafood restaurant bordering Tribeca and SoHo. It was a pretty solid place - not too casual, not too elegant, and overall, really great seafood and good service. It was a good place to celebrate a non-romantic special occasion and definitely a good place to take parents and/or out of towners.

I didn't take pictures of everything that was on the table. In fact, I just took pictures of what I ate. My dad got the Bouillabaisse, which looked really interesting and appetizing. My mom got grilled Australian Barramundi, which I believe was a special of the day. I'm sure both dishes were good and very fresh.

Both Gabe and I ordered the Truffle-Crusted Chatham Cod. I know it's not good for there to be duplicates of any dish on the table, but neither of us good resist this dish. It came with wild mushroom ravioli, roasted hen of the woods mushrooms, creamed spinach, and a truffle mushroom sauce. There was absolutely nothing faulty about this dish. Everything went together really well, and the cod was perfectly cooked.

For dessert, we got the Coconut Panna Cotta that came in a mango, papaya, and pineapple sauce - very refreshing. We also got an assortment of ice cream that came with cute star cookies.

I totally recommend this place for fresh seafood in a casual yet sophisticated atmosphere.

Aquagrill
210 Spring St
New York, NY 10012