CREATE-A-PLATE - Roasted Dover Sole with Spiced Potatoes

Please welcome today's guest writer - Rob Luchow to the blog. He'll fill us in on a delicious dinner we recently enjoyed at La Jolla with Jessie and John.


Things your should know about Rob include: 


1. Should you need an apartment painted (not one, two but THREE coats) he will happily oblige AND bring Tito's Taco's along too. 


2. His Thanksgiving advice is better than the Butterball Turkey Call Center. 


3. He is very concerned about Jessie's current eye problem (Rob interjects - "Jessie have you made an appointment with the eye doctor yet?").


Since John, Jessie and I all have our own blogs, Rob was feeling a bit left out. He recently pitched us a spin-off of Jessie's Popular 20-nothings.com blog called 20-Everythings. The only rule on his blog would be that posts cannot exceed 5 sentences, exactly. In order to get some on-the-blog training, I thought I'd give him a trial run here on 99-pLAtes, so...take it away Rob!


Hi, I'm Rob. Here is my blog post. 


Our appetizers are: Manchego Cheese with a Rosemary, an Olive Oil Loaf from La Brea Bakery, Almonds and Olives with Butter Beans.

I made Asparagus wrapped in Prosciutto, it was really good.

Mike made Roasted Potatoes in Chili Powder and....

 Lemon Roasted Dover Sole with Green Onions, looks yummy!

Jessie and I made a salad with Arugula, Shaved Manchego, Onions, Pear, Candied Pecans and topped it off with a light vinaigrette. It also tasted good.

Here is a finished look at our pLAte, 

good, yum!

The aftermath...

The End.

Well, ummmmm.....THANKS Rob for a terrific, well-documented blog post!


I think you definitely have a future...in Children's Picture Books.

CREATE-A-PLATE – Pappardelle with Scallops

It's funny how you fall into routines with new roommates. For us at La Jolla, Mondays has become karaoke night (Jordan led us in an amazing rendition of “We Are the World” last week). Wednesday night is trivia - GUT FEELING rules! By Thursday we are in full on weekend mode, so that leaves Tuesday as La Jolla Cooking night.

Previously on CREATE-A-PLATE…I tackled Lynn Rosetto Kasper’s American Apple pie, and by tackle I mean the recipe blitzed and sacked me. In Round 2, I’ll take on the grandmommy of all the splendors of slaving over the stove – Martha Stewart.

Martha and I have become BFF's every since I added her Everyday Food App to my iPhone. At around 12:40pm (right around the time when my stomach is like “WTF is for lunch?”) I get a push notification of Martha’s Dinner Tonight Recipe Suggestion.

Pappardelle with Scallops….20 minutes prep and serve. “Done and Done” I said to myself as I cruised on down to Ralphs after work to pick up the ingredients. Check out the full recipe and glamour shots of Big Momma Martha here at her website:

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pappardelle-with-scallops

Ten minutes passed and I was in-and-out of Ralphs (where I heard not one, but two middle-aged adults singing along with Whitney to “I’m Every Woman”….okay fine, make it three – I was humming along too) and on my way home to get cooking.

 

 With some Christmas music to set the mood (I can see you rolling your eyes…it’s not my fault, you can blame Time Warner’s ‘Sounds of the Season’ channel) I got to work on getting dinner on the stove. In between burning the first batch of bread crumbs…

…and correctly browning the second batch, Jessie arrived home and John followed a few minutes later – each with their own bottle of white. A steadfast rule of cooking at La Jolla is that the proportion of wine bottles must be exactly equal to the number of people eating dinner…if the food sucks, at least we’ll be toasted.

While I got busy searing scallops, boiling pasta, reducing a butter/thyme/lemon sauce and sautéing spinach (my own little addition to the recipe)….

John and Jessie were busy…eating hors devours. Don’t break a sweat you two.

Twenty minutes after beginning we were about halfway through the water boiling for the pasta…thirty minutes in and the scallops were browned…at forty minutes in (and one bottle of wine down) dinner was served. 

 

Thumbs up from around the table. The breadcrumbs gave the pasta a nice crunch, while the scallops didn’t overpower with a fishy taste.

I imagine it's just the same way Martha intended us to to enjoy it....surrounded by friends, sipping our second (or was it third?) bottle of wine and listening to Mariah Carey belt "All I Want for Christmas is You".


It is, indeed, a Good Thing.


http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pappardelle-with-scallops

CREATE-A-PLATE – American Apple Pie

In an effort to bring more variety to my posts here on 99pLAtes (and to give my dining out slush fund a rest!!) I’ve decided to incorporate a do-it-yourself section to the blog. CREATE-A-PLATE entries will give me the chance to try out some inspiring recipes I’ve come across and it will give you a chance to laugh at my utter despair as I schlep my way through the kitchen.

Lucky for you (and me) I’m going to start with the basics (besides the pitch for my male version of Julie and Julia hasn’t gotten very far). So the Thomas Keller and Julia Child cookbooks will be left for another day. On the first episode of CREATE-A-PLATE we’ll be tackling a pLAte as American as Sam the Eagle: Old Fashioned Apple Pie.

Chief among the various weekly podcasts I listen to on my way to work is the NPR smash hit “The Splendid Table” featuring Lynne Rossetto Kasper. 


Things you need to know about Lynne – she has sort of a lisp, she uses adjectives like ‘stupendous’ and ‘astounding’ to describe things like pumpkin bread and she exudes more Minnesota "don't cha know" charm than her rivals over on "The Delicious Dish".

Love her (John Kazlauskas and grandmothers everywhere) or hate her (Sean Jennings and everyone in the 18-49 demo), Lynne is going to be our guide for this American Adventure.

For the complete recipe, I’ll direct you to Lynne’s website where she apparently lifted the recipe from The Pie and Pastry Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Around 5:15 on Saturday afternoon, I took a quick trip to Target (they sell groceries now) to pick up the supplies. I planned on making two pies, one for dinner with Jessie, John and our friend Brian that night and another for a dinner party on Sunday. I also committed to making my own dough, which in retrospect, is crazy. “$27.48” said the nice cashier in a Blanche Devereaux-inspired shoulder padded red top. Seriously $30 bucks? I wonder how much apple pie goes for at the House of Pies…

Back at the house, I got to work peeling, blending, rolling and waiting and waiting and waiting…the dough needed to “relax and chill”…seriously Lynne…meanwhile John was gearing up for the cooking by creating some “Creepy Cocktails” from his Martha Stewart Everyday Food. Rum + Simple Syrup + Lime Juice + Pomegranite Juice = Stupendous

What follows below is a pictorial account of perhaps the most difficult culinary clusterf*ck I have ever endured. A brief timeline:

6:35p – Peeling apples is fun!


6:38p - After 3.5 minutes, peeling apples...not as fun 

7:10p – 6 pounds of apples is a lot of apples….

7:15p - There is a critical difference between baking soda and baking powder. Back to Target.

8:10p - Trying to decipher this step. “Holding both ends of the bag opening with your fingers, knead the mixture by alternately pressing it from the outside of the bag with the knuckles and heels of your hands until the mixture holds together in one piece and feels slightly stretchy when pulled.” It might as well be written in Klingon.

8:45p - Learning that wine bottles make fantastic rolling pins.

9:05p – Four hours in and a new revelation. Brian is vegan. Pie has butter. No pie for Brian.

9:15p – Dinner Break.  17 is the number of Minutes it took Jessie to make dinner and also happens to be the number of steps left in this recipe.

9:40p – Pies are in the oven…ETA for my mouth is another 55 minutes.

Alas, the pie project that began at 5:15 was finally enjoyed around 10:45. I will say, the pie accompanied by a scoop of TJ’s vanilla bean tasted delicious. However, at this point in the night I was about six Creepy Cocktails in…so honestly I could have been eating a Hostess Fruit Pie and it would have tasted the same.

The moral of this first CREATE-A-PLATE is that “Easy as pie” is perhaps the most ridiculous cliché I have ever heard. Next time replace “Easy as pie” with “Easy as buying pie”.

BTDubs...I called and an Apple Pie at the House of Pies goes for 10 bucks.