His favorite meal in the whole world is "green pasta" (i.e., basil pesto with TONS of garlic) with fried fish and tartar sauce. Last summer when basil was practically free at the farmer's market we made and froze about a dozen small jars of it. His idea of good pesto is about 1:1 basil:garlic (on a volume basis) with just enough olive oil to hold it all together. This is some spicy, intense stuff! I prefer to add a handful of hard cheese to the mix, too, like pecorino romano or parmesan. His family usually just salted their individual servings of pasta rather than add salt or salty cheese ahead of time. Cookbooks warn against freezing pesto with the cheese already added; I don't know why because I've done it and it tastes fine to me. I couldn't tell if there was already cheese in the pesto last night after it defrosted, so I added another handful...for good measure. (How can you got wrong with extra cheese in anything?)
The fried fish was some cod that we caught and cleaned ourselves last summer with Dave's dad. The one day we went fishing on his dad's small aluminum dingy wasn't a good day for fishing at all. The wind picked up after only 30 minutes, which put all of us only a heave away from barfing over the side of the boat. By the time we decided to head back to the beach we had only brought in like 5 fish. On calm days when the ocean is mirror-flat we've been known to catch 18 huge fish in only two hours (that's the limit for three adults). I dried the fish on paper towels, dunked it in egg wash, dredged it in peppery flour mixture and pan friend it until it was brown. YUM.
Dave's oldest brother, Larry, makes the best tartar sauce ever. I don't know what proportions he uses (he probably doesn't either...you just guess as you go) but these are the components:- Mayonnaise
- Yellow mustard
- Dill pickle relish
- Garlic powder
- Lemon juice
- Black pepper
- Dried dill
For his birthday cake I made a delicious dark chocolate cake, which I made into an "espresso" chocolate cake. I got the recipe from AllRecipes.com (I love this website and I even registered for it. My name on there is "Jewissa."). A pastry chef commented on this particular cake recipe, saying that it was really good and could be improved/altered by using any flavor of juice or coffee instead of the boiling water that is mixed with the cocoa powder to melt it. I used double concentrated instant coffee instead of plain water. It turned out soooooooooo good.Because this was a triple layer cake, I decided to quadruple the chocolate buttercream frosting recipe that I have. Good thing, too, because I ended up using almost all of it! The texture of the cake was fabulous, slightly moist but not soggy or sticky. The frosting was pleasantly sweet, but not too buttery and you could definitely taste the chocolate-y-ness. I should have used two white chocolate bars to make the "curls" (more like flakes...) instead of one; I didn't have enough to cover the sides of the cake, which was my intention. I decided to just sprinkle them on top instead.
These pictures don't flatter the cake at all; you can see the edges of the individual cake layers here. I was worried the the frosting would be too dry to spread well and I may have overcompensated by adding too much extra milk. Next time I'll make it slightly drier so it will stay in the crevices better so the sides of the cake are straight. At least even ugly cakes can still taste good!
Okay, I should get to lab so I can start an experiment before my food chemistry class. More on that class later. Thanks for reading and have a fantabulous day!
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