Resurrecting this Blog

JotSpot is no longer, so we're reverting back to this blog to track winekitchen culinary conquests.

New WineKitchen Site

Check out winekitchen.jotspot.com.

Low Carb Dinner Ideas

Tom & Debbie's "Back on the Low-Carb Bandwagon" dinner ideas...

• Spicy Beef with Asparagus


• Chicken Breast with garlic aioli and Broccoli


• Chickaguacacado: chicken with avocado mole


• Omelettes with Ranchera Sauce & Crema


• Tapas: Shrimp salad, Chorizo/Catalunia, Mushrooms/chicken/green beans al ajillo


• Kale & Bratwurst


• Cobb Salad


• Grilled Rib-eye with Asparagus


• Rajas Poblanas
• 
  
• Eggs Benedict with crab and green chile hollandaise


• BBQ Salmon with Jalapeno Tartar Sauce


• Chicken Parmigiana


• Bunless Burgers on the Barbie


• Tom's Thai Beef


• Burgundy Beef

Burgundy Beef

Slight variation from past process, but same basic ingredients:

1. Dice 1 onion, 2 medium carrots, and 2 cloves garlic.


2. Slice 1+ lb Tri Tip (~3/4" thick) and season with salt & pepper.


3. Marinate vegetables, beef, and fresh thyme in burgundy/pinot noir. (Marinate for at least 1 hour, 12 hours is ideal.)


4. Halve ~1 lb button mushrooms


5. Dice 1 strip thick-cut bacon


6. Remove beef from marinade, pat dry, season with salt and pepper, and dust with flour.


7. Brown bacon in pressure cooker.


8. Add beef & brown. The flour should form a crust on the beef.


9. Add mushrooms.


10. Whisk dijon mustard into reserved marinade and add to pot, along with 1 bay leaf.


11. Pressure cook for ~30 minutes


12. Reduce to desired consistency, season to taste with salt & pepper.

Happy Hour

Citrus Nukes
This is one of our favorite cocktails. It's super-simple--just a few really good ingredients:

• 2 oz Hangar One Mandarin Blossom vodka


• 1 oz Meyer Lemon Juice


• 1 dash orange bitters


• 2 tsp splenda or extra-fine sugar


• Crushed ice

Shake and serve straight up in a martini glass with your choice of garnish.

The Hangar One infused vodkas put all the other "flavored" vodkas to shame. We're particularly fond of the mandarin blossom, but they're all good.

Margaritas Originale
After lots of experimentation, we've come up with a blended margarita recipe that's hard to beat. The better your blender, the better the result, though. Our Waring "Mega Pro" commercial blender is one of the best investments we've made. Its 1 hp motor powers through even the most brutal blending jobs & you can let it run long enough to get a smooth, even blend without worrying about burning out the motor.

• 3/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (Meyer lemons are best if you have them!)


• 1 cup tequila (Sauza Tequila Blanco works well, Cazadores is over-qualified, but also yummy)


• 1/2 cup Triple Sec


• 1/3 cup sugar


• Ice to fill the blender

Fill the blender and blend until smooth. It takes longer than you think. You might need to adjust the lemon juice/sugar ratio depending on the acidity of your lemon juice. In our 48 oz blender, we can use up to 1 cup of juice without ending up with runny 'ritas.

Low-Carb Margaritas
Splenda works great to sweeten most cocktails and margaritas are no exception. You can replace the sugar with splenda one for one. If you can find splenda syrups, substitute 1/4 cup orange syrup and 1/4 cup tequila for the triple sec. If you don't have the orange syrup available, up the amount of splenda a bit and add 3-5 dashes of orange bitters and an extra 1/4 cup tequila. Orange-infused vodka also works nicely.

Fruit Margaritas
Probably the best margarita I've ever been served was a giant pineapple margarita at a bar in Cabo San Lucas. As it turns out, it's a bit tricky to introduce fresh fruits to a margarita--it's easy to throw off the balance of liquid and acidity. You really need to puree the fruit separately first--you can't just dump the fruit into the blender with everything else. Pineapple, in particular, gets really foamy when you blend it--you need to let it settle and skim off the foam.

Most fruits aren't acidic enough on their own to make a good margarita--you need to mix lemon juice with the fruit puree. 2 parts fruit puree to one part lemon juice usually works pretty well, but it really depends on the fruit. When I'm making fruit margaritas, I tend to use a full cup of the juice mixture and keep the sweetener at 1/3 cup. Make sure you use enough ice, though--if you have a smaller blender, stick with 3/4 cup of juice and a little less sweetener.

You can also use frozen fruits in blended drinks--strawberries and blueberries, in particular, seem to work well. Substitute the frozen fruit for part of the ice with the regular recipe, you don't need to puree it first.

Roasting Coffee

Bought an I-Roast 2 and some green coffee from Sweet Marias. Way cool. The machine's presets basically suck, but Sweet Marias instructions rock. Really need to roast by sight--when it looks right, it's done.

BBQ Tri-Tip

Over-cooked at 40 mins indirect heat on the Weber. Had 1.5+ lb tri-tip roasts--30 mins probably would have been perfect.

1. Tri-tip roast (1.5 lb plus), seasoned with salt, pepper, and chimayo

Served with a salad of cherry tomatoes, basil, mini-mozarella balls with olive oil, cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and ground mustard.

Thai Beef

Tom's Thai beef invention, served with "dry fried" haricots verts tossed with salt & pepper.

Thai beef ingredients:

• Top sirloin, freshly "chopped" in the cuisinart


• Onion, minced


• Carrot, minced


• Ginger, minced


• Garlic, chopped


• Basil, chiffonade-ed


• Sriracha sauce

Stir-fry the onion, garlic, ginger & carrots, and add the beef. Season well with black pepper & keep the beef moving so you don't end up with a blob of beef. Add the basil & mix in. Add the Sriracha, season to taste, and serve.