Cooking with Commandaria

Lately I’ve been determined to come up with a gourmet snack that can be eaten in cafes. After a few failed attempts of popping light fluffy popcorn with my old faithful pot, I decided to go out and buy a new one. Unfortunately, this was on the same day I had to study for my sanitation test, make a meal for my nephew and so on. I decided to stop at a boutique neighborhood liquor store named “Lush”. At first, I was determined on purchasing one of my favorite rums to cook with, and then I stumbled across a dessert wine that in my opinion has a sweet deep rich almost smoky flavor.



From what I was told Commandaria St. Barnabas is an amber-colored dessert wine made from the indigenous Mavro and Xynistery varieties of red grapes. It is supposedly the world's oldest named wine still in production. And it is beautiful to cook with. I love the hints of smokiness and oak tones that it has.



I figured it would compliment the caramel I was making perfectly. After two attempts of making vanilla apple caramel, I started to get it down. Fortunately, I have a thermometer that reads up to 250 degrees fahrenheit (which happens to be the hardball cooking stage, which makes caramel firm) Any thing around 300 to 310 would make nothing more than candy for lollipops. In order to ensure that my caramel was thick I cooked it longer than usual and carefully watched the temperature.



As far as ingredients went I used organic expelled apple juice, boiled it down until it was syrupy, added brown sugar, corn syrup (I’ll use an alternative next time) butter and Bourbon Madagascar vanilla. I added a bit of organic powered milk to give it a bit of creaminess. I added about two tablespoons of the Commandaria wine during the last stage.

UPDATE

I replaced corn syrup with Organic Brown rice syrup, which tastes great!





I added pecans and heated for good measure and rotated the popcorn for a half an hour

Spicy Vegetarian Jerk Chicken sandwich with Mango Garlic Aoli spread, smoked Gouda & Crispy lettuce with Crispy fried Tempura onions made with Guiness

Here's something that you can do. Make a meatless vegetarian dish and tell the person that your making it for that your dish has loads of meat in it. After they try it, they'll probably mutter things like “I didn’t know vegetarian dishes could taste this good” And “wow, I’ve never tasted anything like this” blah blah blah. I happen to be a meat eater and I contest that most places are made for people who eat meat. Most restaurants who do carry vegetarian dishes limit them to lettuce, a few tomatoes and maybe a veggie burger. Its pretty much one level below the kiddie meal (which usually consist of chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, french fries and a hot dog) which is totally uncreative. What I've found is that the restaurants that specialize in Gluten free, Vegan or vegetarian dishes cost more than your average restaurant (do to inventory prices and the fact that they know “you need them”)

I decided to make something that I would eat. After wet rubbing my meatless chicken strips with a very spicy jerk sauce. I let the meat marinate for a day. Since meatless chicken breast is usually skinless, I added olive oil to it to help give it depth an a bit more flavor. I even added some smoke flavor to the jerk marinade. The chicken strips were extremely spicy so I whipped up some Mango aoli using Mango Puree, garlic and real mayonnaise (no not Hellman's) I should have real crushed mangos as well but I was too tired to run to the store. I melted the smoked gouda over the chicken breast strips. The Semi sweet cool tasting mango aioli worked well with the hot jerk flavor. I was tempted to add onions to this batch by creating a tempura batter made with Guinness beer which adds a great crunch. It worked out well and will probably be a creation that I will keep. I still had to stay up until 1 a.m. studying.

Downtime

Ok, I finally caught up with my friend Elandra and we did our usual venting along with trying out different snacks, coffee, etc. This is what I usually do during my downtime when I’ve scraped up enough change. We stopped at Molly’s Cupcakes on Clark and I had a cookee monster (which is becoming my usually) . Its a beautifully stuffed cupcake filled with chocolate cream and topped with vanilla cream.





A portion of Molly’s cupcake profits are donated to schools in the community, so it’s a good excuse to eat something sweet. I’ve been going to them for a few years and their product has been consistently good. One of the few places that specializes in stuffed cupcakes. They also have a great baker. Oh on another note it was extremely cold outside that day.




Checkout Elandra’s face after trying out the Cheesecake Cupcake

Pre Valentines Day Motion

Wow. Yes, yes I know its been a hell of a long time since I’ve updated my blog. Don’t you hate when people start a blog like that? Your probably thinking why in the hell have a blog, if you can’t update it. And I agree, but I have a hell of an excuse.

I’ve been busy planning things out, organizing and getting my incorporation papers ironed out (if you’ve ever been to my house you know it was needed). Ok, so I’ve decided to start catering again to get my brand out but this time the focus will be on public schools, businesses, cafes, and who ever else accepts me (Whole “cough” Foods), rest assured I’ll be still delivering the same organic, sustainable free range quality as much as I can. The problem is when you go into this racket and try to serve foods that are not packed with junk you end up turning into some sort of underground purchaser where your forced to talked to multiple distributors who are usually far out of your area and don’t deliver much. Another pet peeve I have is that quality organic products don't get into the areas that really need it. There are some lower economic areas that are on the South, West, and Far North side that would highly benefit from having good quality products that are sustainably produced without preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, High Fructose Corn Syrup, etc. Some of these areas are mostly food deserts. I felt like I was preaching to the choir about benefits of organic sandwiches and baked goods that use REAL ingredients, so it was pretty much time for me to think about how I could reach a different audience and provide them with food that some of us take for granted.


To get things started I found a commercial kitchen space near downtown that I fell in love with and after talking to the manager it seemed like a good fit. So if all goes well I can prepare Red Pandora sandwiches and other food products there. I’m about halfway there.

The plan is to get a new sanitation license, retail license, insurance and to organize it so that the Health Inspectors visit the kitchen facility in a timely manner so that I can begin my work. Sooooo, with all that said I’d like to leave you with an early Valentines day picture. The cookies were baked by the good people at Alliance Bakery. They make a damn good cup of coffee too.

Interactive Tasting Experiment

Bonjour! Konmen to yê?





Ummm, yeah since I just start getting into my newly found Creole roots (and if you know me you’ve probably heard me mention this 500 times already and want me to shut up about it) I figured I would start utilizing the dying Creole language and ask you how you were doing, but I just couldn’t push myself to say “Bonjou” (Hello) in Creole. Sounds too much like slang, and you guys would probably think I had a typo so I used the traditional French “Bonjour”

The Creole Language is one of the very few Latin / French Romantic, West African Languages spoken World wide.

Spoken in Louisiana’s Martin Parish, Jefferson Parish, Natchitoches Parish, St. Landry Parish and Lafayette Parish, Illinois and a small community in East Texas, and Northern California

You also have other Creole languages spoken in Haiti, Guadeloupe, Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and various islands

Ok, with that said, I just had to place this beautiful photo of the Crawfish. Let me just put it this way. His life wasn’t taken in vain


Too bad all we got out of one crawfish was a tiny piece of meat. So small, yet so good.




All photography on this site was taken by the very talented Kymberly Janisch. You can see more of her work at:

http://www.flickr.com/people/kymberlyanne/

http://kymberlyjanisch.blogspot.com/

If you need photos for an event. She's the person to talk to. I was amazed at how professional and affordable she was. And keep in mind that she's shot for Newspapers and her work has been featured on NPR. Now where can you get all of that?


Ok, so here’s the deal. I decided to have an interactive experimental tasting based off of the ingredients that I picked up from the market. I pretty much decided to cook and build around a specific theme of ingredients
The ingredients were

Grass Fed Beef
Smoked Free Range Turkey
Wild Tuna Fillets
Wild Shrimp
Crawfish
Organic Russet Potatoes
Organic Yams
So my project was in the spirit of Iron Chef. Except my version wasn't timed, didn't have a million dollar budget, and there wasn’t a battle in the end (well, a few people argued that we needed more beer ;-) )

Melissa and I came up with some tasty solutions based off of our ingredients. The goal was to make the tasting as interactive as possible by having our guest taste, sauces, cheeses, ect. While educating them about the ingredients and cooking new concepts on the fly. What started out as a tasting turned into a full fledge party I just felt like I wasn’t invited, because I was too busy cooking




Dill and Chive Aoli Spread




Grass Fed Burger, with Sharp Cheddar, Dill Aoli, Organic Tomatoes and Lettuce on a Brioche bun




Spicy Chipotle Spread









Another Favorite




Prawns (our secret ingredient)




"Pandora Poboy"(Crispy Fried Shrimp and Battered Crawfish with lettuce on Brioche bun and Spicy Chipolte Spread)




Everyones favorite!! Double Fried French Fries (Pommess Frites) served with the following sauces: Spicy Wasabi Aoli, Organic Spicy Garlic Jalapeño Ketchup and Horseradish Mayo




A few people getting ready to dig in













Preparing Fresh Dill




Johari chilling out




The Delicious "Ignorant Burger" This Burger is so wrong. But yet right.
One half Pound of Grass Fed Beef, Sharp Cheddar with Dill and Chive Aoli, Organic Tomatoes and Lettuce on a Pretzel bun!




Preparing fresh wild Tuna for a new sandwich creation.




"Sorry Charlie" (My spin on a tuna fish sandwich)
Wild Grilled Tuna with Lemon and Dill, topped with melted Harvari Cheese, a spicy Wasabi Aoli spread, and crispy Red cabbage.




It may not look like much but I bought a lot of beef. Beautiful. A bit pricey but worth it.




In the kitchen enjoying the moment



This is pretty much what it boils down to. If your guest actually like the food. I was relieved that they enjoyed it, but the best thing about it was that everyone was pretty honest in their opinion, which is crucial when preparing a dish for your guest at home or in a professional establishment.



He was very cool.





"....and why is the food taking so long". I'm sure Erin was Happy once she got a chance to eat.

Zingerman's Delicatessen

Make no mistake that what I speak is the truth. Zingerman's Delicatessen is one of the best Deli’s I’ve ever been to in my life. This is coming from someone who lives in Chicago, owned a café/deli, ate at multiple Deli's in New York and San Francisco. Sure Chicago, New York and San Fran have excellent deli’s in their own right but Zingerman has mastered the art of making a sandwich. All in the friendly town of Ann Arbor Michigan



I’m not sure why, but it could be because of the delicious meat they use, or the fresh baked bread that’s made on site, or the flawless service, or the specialty items they sell. Or it could be due to the large array of vegetarian sandwiches they have, or the fresh cheese that they make (Yes they actually make some of the cheese they use in their sandwiches). You get the point




They also have a great coffee shop.



What's left of my sandwich.




Melissa loved the sandwich so much she tried to eat the basket.


While we were there we got a chance to try a $238 bottle of vinegar. Acetaia Del Cristo Balsamic Vinegar from Italy which tastes phenomenal. A rich, thick smoky drop of goodness that I will not be purchasing anytime soon unless I strike it rich. $238! Wow!

Michigan Beer

Umm, Michigan has great deals on beer. So we took advantage of this little known fact. Also that mark on my wrist is not the mark of the beast. They stamped me upon arrival. Cheers!!