For the next few months, my husband and I are lucky enough to have the chance to live in London. While there’s a great many restaurants and pubs to eat at, coming off of a 3 week vacation has me hankering for a bit of my own cooking. So one of the first nights here, I decided to whip up a simple pasta meal. Simple, because the place we are staying in had tea, sugar, and a bit of iodized salt, and I needn’t go broke procuring the staples I would need to make a meal. No longer did I have my 80+ spices at hand or condiments galore.

On my first pass through the grocery stores, I had noticed the brussels sprouts looked amazingly good, so I decided to make a simple saute of those with some pancetta and toss it with pasta. I was really craving a homemade pasta, and since the store didn’t have any, I decided just to pick up the flour and eggs and make it myself (plus, bonus, I could have scrambled eggs for breakfast).

All was well until I arrived back at our apartment and discovered there were absolutely no measuring utensils whatsoever. (more…)

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Dinner, Italian, Wine pairings by Courtney

A few weeks back, I decided to order some specialty meats from D’Artagnan to make a special meal for my husband. I have ordered specialty items in the past as Christmas presents for my hard-to-buy-for family members who love to cook, but it’s rare that I purchase these things for myself. So I went out on a limb and decided to try D’Artagnan, and I was really happy with their variety, shipping rates, and the overall service.

That’s how I came to have these two wild boar shanks sitting in my freezer. When ordering meats online, it seems that whatever fits into the cooler ships for (roughly) the same price. Since D’Artagnan was having a sale on their game meats, I decided to add a couple of wild boar shanks and some venison to my order, which shipped for the $20 my duck alone would have shipped for (well, okay, this is Madd Hatter math… $22 for the duck, $29 for adding wild boar and venison… all in all, we’re in the $20 range). While I’ve had wild boar often at Italian restaurants, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when cooking it. So I decided to go with a preparation similar to what I’d had in restaurants – a wild boar ragu, perfect for coating strands of pasta. (more…)

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Dairy free, Dinner, Italian, Sunday Suppers, Wine pairings by Courtney

If you’ve ever travelled to the Caribbean, hopefully you’ve taken the chance and tried one of their more unique meats – conch. I’ve had it in fritters in Key West, I’ve had it as a marinated piece of meat in St. Thomas, but until now, I had never tried conch chowder.

Now, I have no idea if canned conch is regularly stocked in stores, but quite a while back I noticed a local market had it stocked, so I picked up a can (I now know that Amazon carries it). And then it sat in my basement stores. For a while. So long, that just this past week I realized I had a few months left to eat it, otherwise, it would be headed for the trash. So peruse my cookbooks I did, and conch chowder I decided upon. (more…)

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Caribbean, Dinner, Soups, Wine pairings by Courtney

I’ve long wanted to make this recipe, which is in on of my favorite cookbooks, the Food of France. After my first dinner paired with La Fiorita’s Brunello di Montalcino, I decided this might be the perfect wine to accompany the dinner. After all, if I’m going to the trouble of locating venison here in the Bay area, I’m going to make this a special meal! Plus, the brunello has a somewhat fruity flavor, with more than a hint of berries that I wanted to see if I could coax out more by pairing with blackberries. (more…)

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Dinner, Gourmet, Sunday Suppers, Wine pairings by Courtney

While I made this meal over a month ago, I’m thinking my final fling with summer might have to be a repeat of the entire thing, beginning to end. Either way, I know the final bits of squash my garden yields would be well-served in this amazing gnocchi recipe that lets each ingredient shine, feeling light but oh-so-decadent at the same time.

The ingredients are simple – gnocchi, butter, squash & zucchini, a bit of corn, garlic, and goat cheese. (more…)

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Dinner, Italian, Vegetarian, Wine pairings by Courtney