A Culinary Tour of President Obama’s Life, Part IV: Salad

Charlotte and I enjoy the northern European custom of serving a small salad, often with cheese, after the main entree. We were struggling a bit to get President Obama’s college years into the dinner theme and found several angles with this plate:

A Culinary Tour of President Obama’s Life: Part III Entree

We followed the trade winds to Hawaii for the main event – a pan fried fish fillet served on top of some coconut sweet potatoes and finished with a lemongrass sauce. You can find the starting recipe at http://www.seawatchrestaurant.com/recipes.html.

A Culinary Tour of President Obama’s Life Part 2: 1st Coarse

This is a continuation of the dinner that we did recently that traced President Obama’s life through foods of the different places he has lived. There was some thought to mixing Hawaii and Indonesia for the first coarse but the main dish was Hawaiian so we went with a duo of Indonesian dishes.

A Culinary Tour of President Obama’s Life Part 1: Apps

As mentioned in the polenta post we’ve been working on a dinner that follows President Obama’s life chronologically (for the most part). The dinner was last Saturday and was tremendous fun. I’ll be commenting on each coarse. Pictures will, unfortunately, have to wait as the batteries were dead on our camera and we didn’t want to take the time to put them on the charger while we had guests.

Polenta, From B Cups to C Cups to A Cups

We’re doing a dinner party this Saturday that is a culinary tour of Barack Obama’s life. One of the appetizers will integrate elements of common foods from the shoreline of Lake Victoria where his father was raised. Ugali (cornmeal mush) is the base for a lot of meals. Sukuma Wiki is a stew of greens and tomatoes and a simple fish preparation with lime juice and hot peppers are both common. To turn this into an appetizer I needed to make cornmeal cups to fill with the greens and top with the fish.

Boquerones, Little Fishies from the Coast of Spain

Hang with me on this one. Think the title song for Oklahoma, but with a big ol’ BOOOOOO (breath) ka-ronies, yah dah yah dah yadda yaddya ya…. I’ve had these things on special order for about 5 months. They are white anchovies from the Bay of Biscay that are cleaned and pressed under weights (traditionally stones) to enhance their meatiness and then packed in a light vinegar brine.

Pizza & Wine Refined

It had been a difficult day. Charlotte attended a memorial service for the husband of a friend and Rob & I had been at the store early to prepare for a “Know Your Knives” class. The twins were with a sitter because of the memorial service and we took advantage of that to head over to the 56 Degree Wine Bar (part of Truffles) after the store closed.

Spring Wine Festival

Every spring we look forward to the Spring Wine Festival sponsered by Big Red Liquors. They set up two rooms, the main room of the convention center with over 300 wines from fighting varietals to some surprisingly good bottles and a reserve room where the prices start around $30/bottle.

Party Paella

Our spring break trip took us in a swing through Texas with the first stop being Dallas. A lot of the original Winos have moved on, but Mike & Brynne are there along with several 2nd Wave Winos. Mike & I decided on paella for the Friday dinner party before we left Bloomington so I packed along some Bomba rice, Spanish-style chorizo and sweet paprika. Also in the back of the van were my normal 15″ paella pan and a monster 21″ pan that I’d gotten for outdoor cooking and never used.

Spring Break Que Qwest

Being small business owners, we vowed to patronize family owned restaurants as much as possible during our recent swing through Texas during the twins’ spring break. We left Bloomington after school on March 12 with Lebanon, MO as our destination. I wanted to get through St. Louis before stopping for dinner so TripAdvisor’ed Eureka, MO near Six Flags. Their top recommendation was Super Smoker’s BBQ.