On A Very Rare Occasion...

Some of you may know, and some may not, that my boyfriend is an incredible catch. One of the huge reasons I say that (one of many, really) is that he loves to cook, and I don't. So, at the end of most days, when he comes home from work, he still has no problem whipping up something delicious. He says it's relaxing for him, and he enjoys it, so it all works out great. On a rare occasion, though, I do take over the kitchen (or at least help out a little).

We've gone through most of the meals that we both just "know," so we've started going through some of his recipe books. Let me make a recommendation to you: it's Rocco's Real Life Recipes, Fast Flavor for Everyday, and it's phenomenal. Most of the recipes are very easy, can be done in about 15-30 minutes, and are delicious. The book also includes a lot of great tips for beginning cooks, like how to set up your kitchen, what things you should keep stored, advice on how to cook and prepare some standard foods, even tips on entertaining and wine! The recipes we've tried so far have been fantastic; both are very meat/cheese heavy, which is something both Ant and I enjoy.

A couple weeks ago, Ant got me in the kitchen to help make the most recent adventure from this book. It was Beef and Crispy Potatoes with Bleu Cheese, and the crispy potato pancakes were my charge. They took a little longer than we expected to fry, but I had fun pretending to make latkes for Hanukkah or something (which is something I've never done, as I'm not actually Jewish). Probably the most fun part of this task of the meal was the instruction to "squeeze [the grated potatoes] like a snowball to remove excess liquid" before frying. Who knew cooking could turn into a snowball fight? Ok, so there was no food/snowball fight, but we laughed about it for a while.


The rest of the dinner was pretty easy. Just sauté some strips of beef with onions after frying the potatoes, and mix a bunch of sour cream and bleu cheese together for the sauce! And it was DELICIOUS! Have I said that before? That these recipes are great? Well, they are. We actually had leftovers for several days, and we were both a little depressed when they were gone. Actually, a couple times I think we fought about who would get to eat the leftovers for lunch.

With the dinner we decided to try one of our new wines from the Temecula tour: the Sangiovese from Bella Vista. It's a pretty light, sweet red that's low on tannin, and we both really enjoyed the wine on its own. It went well with the dinner, but wasn't a stunning pair. Like I said before, we're still working on our wine and food pairing skills. But, it certainly wasn't bad, and we had fun with it.

Just this last week, I was in the kitchen cooking again and we made my Dad's "famous" kielbasa with potatoes and apples in a maple syrup sauce. That's pretty much all there is to the dish, but it is SUPER tasty. We tried it with one of the wines left over from our Fingerlakes (NY) wine tour. It's a riesling, but a little less sweet, and with some sour apple notes, so I thought it would go well with this particular dish. I think we would have been better off with a sweeter riesling, or maybe a blush wine, though. Oh well, live and learn!

Ok, I really have to stop writing now, because all this talk of tasty food is starting to make me REALLY hungry. I'm off to find something for my grumbling belly now...