Glutenfreedelicacy

Fish, fennel and saffron stew with lemon aioli

We just love spending a weekend afternoon exploring different markets in search of ingredients for dinner. This weekend our first stop was the San Francisco Herb Company, a small little shop in the Mission that sells all sorts of herbs at wholesale prices. Our basket was stuffed with a variety of 8-16 oz bags plus a small tube of saffron, and the best part was we only spent 30 bucks!

Next, we headed to the mexican markets for veggies, the seafood market for fresh fish, and finally the liquor store for Pernod, all of which was needed for our dish. Pernod is an anise-favored liqueur from France, often sipped mixed with water as an aperitif. With all of our ingredients on hand, we couldn't wait to make this Adam Ried recipe, from our Williams-Sonoma New Flavors for Soups cookbook.

For our fish we used sea bass, and for the aioli, we cut the oil down to a tablespoon, and used approx. 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast as a thickener, and pureed the ingredients together.

With tender chunks of succulent fish swimming in a wonderful blend of slightly sweet, citrusy and aromatic flavors – this dish was absolutely exquisite, and tasted like it came from a fine dining restaurant. And the aioli-topped croutons were the perfect compliment for sopping up that oh so tasty broth. If you are craving a light and robust seafood stew, you'll love this dish!

Kale and Butternut Squash Soup with Sausage

Tis the season to get your soup on, and that’s just what we did last night with this tasty Adam Reid recipe, right out of our William Sonoma New Flavors for Soups book. We used butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes, 3 links of smoked andouille sausage instead of lamb, and spiced it up with Trader Joe’s South African Smoke Seasoning Blend. We love that stuff and add it to just about everything!

Wow – with the perfect blend of smoky, spicy, savory and sweet harmonizing with all that lovely texture and complexity, our taste buds were singing with joy as we happily slurped away on this tasty bowl of hearty goodness.

Make yourself a pot of this wonderful winter weather warmer tonight.

A horrorty bowl of swampy-licsousness!

Every halloween we just love to get our spook on while watching all kinds of scary movies. Cult horror, campy, creepy, slasher, zombie, vampire, supernatural  — you name it we love them all! And what better way to enhance the eeriness with a big bowl of swampy-looking soup!

Using this Swamp Chile recipe from Food & Wine magazine as our base, we left out the meatballs and pork, and grilled two boneless chicken breasts in our cast iron skillet, then cut into strips. For a mexican flavor boost, we added our own morbid mix of 12 roasted and quartered tomatillos, a tablespoon of chipotle chile powder, a teaspoon achiote powder, and the juice from two limes.

Our version tasted like a combination of our mexican chicken and pozole soups, loaded with great texture and robust flavors. Each bite was terrorifically tasty, and just what we needed to help ward off our Netflix evil spirits and muffle our screams!

Pan Seared Tuna with Ginger, Miso and Cilantro Sauce

As much as we love ahi tuna, the only time we eat it is when we’re dining out, so we thought we’d break the habit by trying our hand at this tasty sounding Epicurious recipe, served with a side of rice pilaf.

With each bite, our tastebuds were tantalized by the harmonious balance of taste and texture. The exotic ginger sparked a forbidden romantic triangle with the lemon and orange, only to be pleasantly chased by the puckering vinegar. The lightly seared beautifully pink tuna reminding us of a love story that fades into the setting sun...... definitely love at first bite and a sad ending after we devoured our last one.

A sweet bowl of summertime bliss

It’s nice to know we’re almost through the month of July and we haven’t had to break out our winter wear much. The weather has been pleasantly mild for San Francisco, so to celebrate the warmth we decided to make a summertime classic — gazpacho soup. We found this Melon Gazpacho with Prosciutto recipe in Cooking Light magazine that sounded so unique and different, we just had to try it.

The recipe calls for melons and peaches instead of vegetables, with grilled prosciutto crumbled on top, and it was super easy to make. Each bite was packed with a refreshing burst of sweet, crispy, minty goodness, and a perfect blend of texture and flavors. Even though it was light, it was very filling to us. We served it as a starter dish along with a pork and fig sauce. Even though the meal was a bit heavy on the sweet side for us, it was very delicious indeed. Next time we’ll enjoy this tasty soup with a salad or not so sweet entree.

Hearty Chicken Verde Stew with Hominy

While flipping through our stack of Cooking Light magazine’s wondering what to make for dinner, we came across this Chicken Verde Stew with Hominy recipe — and since we absolutely love tomatillos and can’t seem to get enough of them — this is what we were gonna make.

While our tamatillos and anaheim chiles were beautifully blackening in the broiler, we got everything else ready so we could start cooking pronto. When it was done we topped each bowl with a squeeze of fresh lime, a sprinkle of chipotle pepper and chopped cilantro. Each hearty bite was loaded with wonderful texture, tangy, smoky flavors with a hint of sweetness and spice. A dynamite dish that left our tastebuds dancing in perfect 'hominy' over this heaping delight!

Blissful Seafood Extravaganza

We had a friend from Maine for dinner over the weekend, fresh off the east coast. He took a hot bath and headed straight to the dinner table, literally! Yes, we finally did it, we always thought about cooking a live Maine lobster but just never got around to it. He weighed about 1 1/3 pounds and as he rode home with us, we were hoping we had a big enough pot. Turned out our Le Creuset French Oven worked just fine.

We decided to keep it simple and let our crustacean friend do the flavor talking, served with a side of melted butter lemon dipping sauce and garnished with fresh dill. The texture was firm and the meat had a light sweetness made lustrous from the velvety citrus glaze. 

Also on stage was a heaping bowl of Mussels and Clams soaked in a saffron-infused white wine broth. We followed this Epicurious recipe and tweaked it by adding clams and substituting light coconut milk for the cream. 

The marriage of flavors proved to be divine, elegant, smooth and creamy. The mussels and clams were cooked to perfection, and the alluring coconut saffron broth radiated exoticness found only in a far away land. 

This dynamic dinner duo made our taste buds raise the white flag with gusto, surrendering to this powerful force of lusciousness.

Mango Ceviche and Spiced Tilapia Seafoodsational

It’s been awhile since we’ve made ceviche, and after reading great reviews about Sun Fat Seafood Co, a market in the mission known for it's fresh seafood at wholesale prices, we decided to buy the star ingredient there. Once inside we realized the prices really were too good to pass up, so we bought generous size portions of salmon and tilapia along with stripe bass for our ceviche. As we left we were kicking ourselves for not discovering this place sooner!

With all this great seafood on hand we couldn’t wait to start prepping our seafood supper — Mango Ceviche and Spiced Tilapia with Roasted Pepper Tomatillo Sauce. The ceviche recipe called for halibut, and since Sun Fat didn’t have any they recommended stripe bass.

Let us just say this was a standout meal we will never forget. It tasted like it came from a high end restaurant. The ceviche was wonderfully textured, the firmness of the fish and crunchiness of the red onion was in a tasty tug-o-war with the smokey chipotle and the fresh parsley/cilantro blend. The tilapia was perfectly moist and flaky with a punch of zestful tomatillo zing. The ying and yang characteristics between the rice vinegar and honey rounded out the sweet and velvety swim across the strait of seafoodliciousness to our eagerly awaiting taste buds. Needless to say our taste buds were slapped silly with sensational goodness — an unforgettable meal we look forward to eating again very soon!

Spicy Kiwi Cucumber Margaritas

Craving mexican but feeling lazy — we made our own salsa to go along with chicken soft tacos, and washed it all down with a dang good margarita. A perfect blend of muddled kiwi and cucumber with a dash of jalapeno spice — ummm umm delicious!

Adventures in the city!

What a great weekend we had! The weather was nice, so we decided to kick off Saturday with a hike up in Mount Tamalpais, where we enjoyed wonderful views of the bay as we hustled our muscles to The West Point Inn, which was our turn around spot. The inn is simple and rustic with panoramic views of the bay, and from April - October they have monthly Sunday pancake breakfasts, which can be a nice treat after a hike or bike ride on the many trails through the mountain.

Afterwards we had lunch at The Mountain Home Inn, another charming inn located in Mt. Tam with sweeping bay views.

Unfortunately for us there was no outside dining available without a long wait, so we sat at the bar and had ourselves an overpriced, barely mediocre lunch. We'd go back for drinks and the view, but that would probably be it.  

 

Saturday night we had dinner reservations at Garibaldi's for our early valentine's dinner celebration. We've heard so many great things about this Presidio Heights gem, and since we've never eaten there before, we thought it would be the perfect spot for a nice, romantic dinner. And boy were we right! The atmosphere was lively, stylish and sophisticated and the food was absolutely wonderful! We loved every bite — from the risotto croquettes, pickled baby beets, roasted brussel sprouts with apples, pan roasted loch duart salmon and incredible lamb tenderloin — our tastebuds will be fantasizing about those dishes for a long time to come. A very memorable and romantic dinner we look forward to enjoying again!