My latest contribution for the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board. This dish came about by taking something familiar like the Louisiana Crab Cake and taking those flavors and turning them into an entree course.
For the Recipe you can go to the LSP&MB’s Facebook page or their website. Enjoy.
For Sunday night dinners I prefer to make some sort of pasta based dish. Something that can be somewhat easy,slow cooked and usually able too have enough left over for additional meals throughout the week.
This past Sunday I wanted to do a bolognese sauce and because we have been so busy lately and I just wanted to relax,I was going to use store bought linguine instead of the usual pappardelle noodles I make. After getting the sauce started, my wife Ann inquired about the pasta. I told her what I was planning and she offered to make the pasta herself with the help of our son Ethan.
Here is how they did it :
Since this was a last minute decision, we found out we did not have an AP flour in the house….only bread flour. I wasn’t sure this was going to work but it turned out pretty good. All she to do was add in an extra egg to bring the dough together.
The only misstep in this recipe was my bolognese sauce. I added a bit too much tomato pasta so the end product resembled more of a Ragu than a Bolognese sauce. Still quite tasty though. 
This year for thanksgiving we celebrated with 3 other families that are friends of ours. We all decided beforehand who would bring certain dishes and I think all of us added a dish or two to what we originally signed up for.
We ended up having three different preparations of the turkey : Fried Breast,Smoked and regular old roasted/baked turkey. Since only the breast was fried, Ann asked if we could fry up some drumsticks as well. When buying the drumsticks I also decided to add some wings as well. I marinated these in beer,garlic, herbs and some canola oil. In addition to these I also made Cranberry sauce, Bacon Rolls, Carrots roasted in Hay, Spinach,Feta and Cranberry Salad and Pumpkin Pie. I made a butternut squash soup but I ended up accidentally leaving it at home. Everything tuned out pretty well except for the carrots, I do not think I will use this technique again – it was a very weird smell. I don’t know maybe I am just not used to it yet.
For the kids Ann made Macaroni & Cheese cupcakes which turned out really well. And just in case you are wondering from the pics below,yes those are tacos. I made these the night before when were prepping all the other dishes. They consist of Corn Tortillas, Cabbage slaw,Radishes and Pressure Cooked Pork with an Asian Red Chile sauce.
I think my camera is dying a slow death because a lot of the pictures just did not turn out that well.
I have been putting this off for awhile now. Between getting the coffee shop ready to open back in September and the daily grind of it (HAHA) I have not had much time for blogging,let alone putting together a video. With today being Veterans Day,the Air Force was off for the day and therefore 90% of my sales were on vacation so I had the day off as well. This video shows pretty much the whole evening of the ArtSpace dinner and should give you a pretty good idea of how the night went. This was such a great experience and I was fortunate that they gave me a shot at doing it. The night went pretty well but as always there was room for improvement.
Some of the things I would have done differently/changed/or added:
- Printed menus with my logo to hand out to the guests to take home
- Have an additional cheese to add to the cheese course
- A “surprise” course not on the menu – just did not have enough time for this
- The dessert : because of the heat and humidity it did not set up and became almost impossible to plate. Everyone said they enjoyed it though.
- Goodie bags for the guests to take home – I had some really good ideas just messed up the timing therefore they were shelved.
- Logo’ed t-shirts for myself and my crew.
All in all it was really fun and went by extremely fast. I had originally signed up to do one of these dinners again in early 2011 but ArtSpace has gone through some changes and is in the process of revamping this program. I let the director know my continued interest in this as well as any other culinary programs they might do in the future so I will keep you updated when I find out anything.
I have to give thanks to everyone who made this night possible : ArtSpace, Michael Chisum, my lovely wife Ann, Connor “mini-me” O’Boyle, Liz Beattie,Robin Rice and Jaimee “Pony Thief” Rice and of course all my guests who dined with us that night…….it truly was special.
The audio in the beginning when the Culinary Director (Michael Chisum at the time) is speaking is kind of low so you may have to turn your speakers up but after that watch the volume because the rest is okay.
ArtSpace – Someone’s in the Kitchen Dinner 8-10-2010 from Michael O'Boyle on Vimeo.
This dish was kind of thrown together for a somewhat quick Friday Night meal while we just hung out with a friend of ours and tried winding down from a busy week over some ice cold beers.
I had some Green Chile sauce in the fridge and just added some chopped fresh cilantro, garlic,honey and lime juice to it. I softened the corn tortillas, which I always have in the fridge, and added some quickly grilled chili rubbed sirloin and some monterey jack cheese. I then rolled these up and set aside while I brushed the bottom of a baking dish with some of the sauce. I placed the enchiladas in the dish and then brushed each one with a generous amount of the green chile sauce and sprinkled some more jack cheese on top. I baked them for about 15 minutes which allowed the cheese to melt as well as “cook” the green chile sauce into the corn tortillas. Not traditional by any means but damn tasty and quick
For the cheese course I had originally wanted to have an assortment of cheeses and preparations but as usual with the scope of the whole dinner and what all I was trying to accomplish I had to trim down the “wants” of each of my courses. When we went shopping for the meal in addition to the Brie I purchased some Gran Padano a Parmesan like cheese. I meant for this crumbly type cheese to be served alongside the brie with a few sprinkles of freshly ground black pepper. If I were on Bravo’s Top Chef the camera would have shown this cheese sitting on the shelf of my fridge while I walked out of the house 
For the Brie,I just let it soften then tossed it in a standmixer and whipped it till it was the consistency of a soft butter. The popcorn cracker was made by placing popcorn in a food processor and finely chopping it,picked out the hard shell pieces and added to a basic cracker recipe. The balsamic was just balsamic vinegar reduced down to a syrup like consistency.
As for the fig, you would think “hey,we are in Louisiana,it’s August – we have to have figs” well yes and no,try finding a fresh black mission fig around North Louisiana and it is near impossible. This little beauty was bought in Dallas,TX.
In addition to adding more cheese with different preparations for the next time I do a dinner I will also attempt to make my own Slate Cheese Boards. Awhile back my FBF ( food blog friend) David of Eat Foo did a post on how to make these at home,check it out HERE when you get a chance
Tons of possibilities with this. Since I received it on Thursday I have pressure cooked Chicken Thighs,Peanuts and Tomato sauce.
This course halfway turned out like I originally envisioned it. The pork belly turned out perfect, the bbq sauce I can make in my sleep nowadays,onion sprouts – well not much to screw up there. The corn and ricotta gnocchi is where things veered off course a bit.
My original idea was to have an all ricotta gnocchi, no eggs, no flour. I had read on Ideas in Food that they used a binding agent called Activa YG which is specifically for dairy applications. I contacted the supplier and they graciously supplied me with a few samples. I made a test batch a few weeks before the dinner using 1% Activa YG and 99% drained whole milk ricotta. These worked out pretty good so I felt fairly confident about the ones I would make for the dinner. Well about an hour before the dinner was supposed to start I decided to test a few of the gnocchi. As soon as I put them in the water they basically just fell apart and I was left with a pot of ricotta water. They just would not hold their shape, they were super delicate. Not that I wanted to, but Iended up adding some flour and egg yolks to bind them together. I cooked these then tossed them in a saute pan to lightly brown on one side. They were tasty just not what I had originally envisioned.
The rest of the course consisted of my Ancho Bacon BBQ sauce, Beer Braised Pork Belly, a Corn sauce to top the gnocchi and finally some onion sprouts. I had brought along some corn nuts that I ground up to add texture to the dish but in the haste of plating for the crowd they were forgotten about.
If I could have done anything different I would have liked to change the gnocchi to be smaller and more uniform in size as well as lighten up the corn sauce and clean up/tighten the plating. Also we had a whole tray of pieces of Pork Belly that I had trimmed off the ones we served. My whole crew used this as snacks throughout the dinner, some more than others
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