A passion for food

"Madame" has been after me to share what we do in the kitchen, so here goes! I have a passion for preparing and serving great food. I have a goal of getting a great meal on the table every evening in around 45 minutes - the time it takes when I get the phone call that "Madame" is leaving work until the time we eat. I look for fresh ingredients - in season, supplemented with herbs, peppers, and very occasional tomatoes from the garden.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Ripening peaches

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I cant claim to have come up with this myself. Nowever  this method  is so good that I just have to pass it on. Place a dish towel on a ra...
Sunday, July 4, 2010

Summer pudding

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This is in the tradition of English puddings using the bounty of the season. It is also a handy way of using left over bread! I make it in a...

dulce de leche

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This sinfully good milk caramel is the easiest thing in the world to make. That is going to be a problem. When something that good is too ea...
Sunday, June 27, 2010

Fun with eggs

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I have to stay entertained while madame is away. The easiest and most troublefree way is to play with my food. So this morning I took a coup...
Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Spanish tortilla redux

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In a previous posting, I talked about making a Spanish tortilla (that potato egg dish that is a staple of Spanish cooking). In previous inca...
Friday, April 30, 2010

Antipasti

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2 new ideas/techniques this week. Well new to me. The first was inspired by Mario Batali and discovered here , the second done out of necess...
2 comments:
Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Behmor 1600 Coffee Roaster

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Our old and trusty iRoast 2 coffee roaster has been ailing for a while. It wheezed to life only to stop half way through a roast resulting i...
Saturday, April 3, 2010

Naturally Slim

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I have noticed that my clothes are becoming a bit tight and that the lying scales are becomeing more mendacious by the day. The result being...
Friday, March 5, 2010

Duck egg omelette

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This started with a conversation with Dave Gilbert (he of many culinary adventures documented elsewhere in this blog and at Dave Gilbert...
3 comments:
Friday, January 29, 2010

Simple chicken soup

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I have been feeling under the weather - with a cough/cold/sore throat. Unimaginably grumpy - poor Madame. So I thought maybe some chicken so...
Monday, January 25, 2010

Brining boneless/skinless chicken breasts

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As we have heard on many occasions, brining chicken is a good way to keep the meat juicy - especially for parts that are naturally dry - lik...
1 comment:
Sunday, January 17, 2010

Mushroom Risotto

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At a conversation over dinner earlier in the week our friend Claudia was bemoaning the fact that risotto rather intimidated her, but she rea...
Thursday, January 14, 2010

Poached pear with Cashel blue cheese and pistachio brittle

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In the previous post I described pistachio brittle . This was for the pear/blue cheese dessert at this event .  We bought the cheese at Scar...

The Pistachio Brittle

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For the most recent underground dinner , we had a dessert involving poached pears, some blue cheese and pistachio brittle. Why pistachio bri...
Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Underground dining featuring Stellekaya wines

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It's been a busy week. On Thursday Dave Gilbert and I worked to deliver some appetizers at a charity wine event honoring Ntsiki Biyela ...
Friday, January 1, 2010

New Year's Eve

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It was a quiet evening - Madame is out of town :-(. Bryan was free and as usual had some wines to try. So I put together a quick dinner to s...
1 comment:
Monday, December 28, 2009

Boxing Day

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On those years when Madame and I are in the country over Christmas and December 26th is a weekend, we have a Boxing Day (day after Christmas...
2 comments:
Friday, December 25, 2009

This takes the cake

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To a Brit, having Christmas cake is an important part of the holiday season. It is a fruit cake - but doesn't (at least in my house) hav...
Friday, December 18, 2009

A Christmassy salad

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This is Christmassy because of the colors not the flavors. I had to stop to buy bread (too lazy to bake at the moment) on the way home from ...

Chicken in a pot

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It seems like most of the major culinary styles do some kind of one dish, chicken based thick stew or soup. Chicken in a pot is our generic ...
1 comment:
Sunday, December 13, 2009

A Tale of 2 Trifles

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We were invited to 2 parties on Saturday. Each one of course wanted us to bring something. We always bring something meatless to th...
Friday, December 11, 2009

3 people, 2lbs clams, 1lb linguine

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I needed a quick dinner for 3 of us last evening. Quick because I had didn't get out of a meeting until 7:15 and needed to drive home, c...
Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Seabirdskitchen joins the culinary underground

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Dave Gilber t and I met a few months back and just plain hit it off. We had promised ourselves a day together doing our favorite things. Su...
3 comments:
Monday, November 30, 2009

garlic, lemon, potatoes Oh My!

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This is another dish inspired by Cooks Illustrated . As u sual , I have taken a couple of liberties - but only out of necessity! The origina...
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Chris Bird
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