Fathers Day Dinner

I see my dad very frequently. We typically go to lunch together almost every week. It's our time to hang out and talk. We've been doing these lunch dates ever since I started college and haven't stopped since (Even now, when I work in Conshohocken, he stays home from work to have lunch with me). I believe that my dad loves food almost as much as I do. We love to go out to new restaurants together and try new things. Food is definitely something that we connect on.

My dad embraces my passion for food. When I was younger, my dad and I would go to Wegmans and spend the whole entire afternoon perusing through the isles and looking at all of the products. My dad would patiently wait for me while I explored and got lost in all of the ingredients. I still love to go to Wegmans and walk around and explore (I'm the girl who takes hours at the grocery store). Also when I was younger, he would come home from work with special cheeses and olives from Di Bruno Brothers for me. It would always make me feel special. I know these things might sound strange to anyone but these are the special memories that I have with my father when I was growing up.

I never get the chance to cook for dad though. Typically when I see him, we go out to eat or my mom cooks, but he always asks me to cook for him. (He is also my editor for this blog and he always wants me to make the recipes that I blog about for him). Tonight since it is Father Day I told him I was going to make him a special dinner.

Since it's the summer, I decided to make a White Gazpacho as our starter. White Gazpacho is different from regular Gazpacho because it is made with grapes instead of tomatoes. My dad loves crabs so I decided to make him Crab Cakes as our entree. I paired the crab cakes with an Apple Slaw and placed it over a bed of whipped dijon and horseradish sweet potatoes.

Here is how I did it:

Crab Cakes with Dijon & Horseradish 

Whipped Sweet Potatoes and Apple Slaw

White Gazapacho: 
- 1 pounds of green grapes
- 1 large cucumber (Peel and discard the seeds)
- 1 bunch of cilantro
- 1/2 Marcona Almonds
- 3 tbs red wine vinegar
- 1 clove of garlic
- 3 tbs olive oil
- 1 lime
- 1/4 tsp hot pepper
- Salt and pepper to taste

Crab Cakes: 
- 1 pound jumbo lump crab meat
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1/4 cup chopped red pepper
- 1 celery stalk chopped
- 1 tbs scallion
- 1 tbs chives
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup egg whites
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp lemon pepper
- 2 tbs dijon horseradish mustard
- 1/2 juice of a lemon
- 1 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp pepper
-1 cup panko bread crumbs

Dijon & Horseradish Whipped Sweet potatoes 

- 2 sweet potatoes

- 1/2 cup almond milk 

- 2 tbs dijon & horseradish mustard 

- Salt and pepper to taste 

Apple Slaw
- 1 small granny smith apple
- 3 cups chopped green cabbage
- 1 cup chopped red cabbage
- 3 tbs red wine vinegar
- 2 tbs dijon horseradish mustard
- 2 tbs honey
- Salt and pepper to taste

For the gazpacho, wash and take of the stems of the grapes. Peel and discard the seeds of your cucumber. Chop the cucumber in large pieces so you can easily blend in a blender. Place the grapes, cucumber, and the rest of the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. 

Serve chilled with a piece of toasted bread to dip in. 

For the crab cakes, place finely chopped onions, pepper, celery, scallion, chives and garlic in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients besides the panko bread crumbs and crab meat. Once the ingredients are mixed, fold in 1/2 cup of panko and the crab meat. I used jumbo lump crab meat from the store. 

Place the other 1/2 cup of panko bread crumbs in a shallow bowl to dip in once you have formed your crab cakes. You should be able to make 6 large crab cakes out of this mixture. Once you have formed the crab cakes and dipped them in the bread crumbs, place on a baking dish. Bake at 450 for 12-15 minutes until they are lightly brown. 

For the whipped sweet potatoes, Peel and boil your potatoes in salted water until they are tender. Drain and place in a bowl. Add the other ingredients and whip with a beater or mash with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste. Place under the crab cakes. 

For the slaw, peel and dice your apple lengthwise and add them to the 4 cups of chopped cabbage. Mix the vinegar, mustard and honey in a separate bowl and pour over the slaw. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over the crab cakes.   

My dad loved everything I made for him tonight. The gazpacho was probably one of the tastiest soups I have ever made and it was so refreshing to eat on a summer night. The crab cakes were light and delicious and was the perfect dish to serve as our entree. 

By the way, like the new dishes that I got from IKEA?? They are from the new Stockholm collection, they'll be in stores in August! I'm in love with them! 

Anne 

This post is dedicated to my Father. Thank you dad for everything that you've done for me. Words can't describe how appreciative and thankful I am to have you in my life. You have always been there to support me in all of aspirations and are always the person I go to for advice. I love you daddy.

Summer Grilling

Last night after a long day of work, I went to my friend Taylor's house to lay by the pool and do some grilling. Taylor has the perfect house to grill and entertain. Last year during the summer, she hosted a pool party with all of our friends and we spent all afternoon swimming, grilling and hanging out. We even made a gigantic slip and slide and acted like 5 year olds. We covered ourselves in soap and slipped all the way down her lawn. It was one of my favorite memories from last summer.

Yesterday was just a casual night. Taylor is leaving for Europe to study abroad at the end of the month and her brother Steve just celebrated a birthday so we all wanted to get together to grill and hang out. It was such a fun and relaxing night and we all cooked!!

Grilling is the best on a summer night when your with a bunch of people. It makes cooking fun and carefree. When I talk about grilling, I'm not talking about grilling burgers and hot dogs. I'm talking about making fresh and healthy meals on the grill. Last night we started off with a fresh brown tomato and mozzarella salad with a simple garlic and balsamic vinaigrette. I spotted the brown tomatoes at Trader Joe's and was curious to see what they tasted like. I'm glad I tried them because they were probably one of the best tomatoes that I've ever had before. They were perfectly sweet and delicious.

Our main course was not something that normally comes to mind when your thinking of grilling. Pizza. Grilled pizza is 10X better than making pizza in a oven. Of course if you have a pizza oven then you clearly have the advantage but for people with only a regular oven, I would recommend ditching the oven and grilling your pizza from now on! It is so easy.

We grilled a variety of vegetables that are in season for our pizza toppings. We grilled eggplant, zucchini, peppers and fennel. We also grilled whole tomatoes and whole cloves of garlic wrapped in foil to make homemade pizza sauce.

For the vegetables, before you place them on the grill, marinate in olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano and chili flakes. Place the tomatoes like you see in the picture above so that you don't burn them. Grill all of your vegetables and place on a dish when each piece is done. 

For the tomato sauce, take the grilled tomatoes and grilled garlic cloves and place in a bowl. To extract the garlic, unwrap the foil and squeeze out the garlic from its shell. Add salt, pepper and oregano and add a few tbs of tomato pasta. Blend until smooth. Keep tasting your sauce to see if you need more seasoning or more tomato paste. 

Once your tomato sauce and vegetables are done, roll out your pizza dough. You can either make or buy your pizza dough. We bought our dough from Trader Joe's to save time. 

Roll out the dough and place it on a pizza dish to prevent the dough from burning on the grill. Before you place it on the grill, drizzle olive oil over the dough. Grill for 5 minutes without any toppings and then add the sauce, goat cheese and vegetables. Grill for another 5-10 minutes until your crust is perfectly crispy and your sauce is bubbling. Take it off the grill and garnish with chopped basil and olive oil. 

This meal is the perfect meal to make on a summer night. It is easy and perfect for sharing. We ended our night with Taylor's delicious berries and rhubarb crumble. It was fantastic! 

This crumble had all the elements of a flawless dessert. The sweet berries contrasted so well with the tart rhubarb and the crumble topping added that extra crunch. But we couldn't forget the most important part, ice cream. French Vanilla ice cream to be exact :) Perfect end to a perfect meal! 

I didn't provide an exact recipe for this menu because it is really up to you with what you want to grill and put on your pizza. The sky's the limit!! 

Anne 

City Food Tour: Ethnic Eats

Yesterday the Marketing department at IKEA went on its annual department outing. For our outing, we got to choose from a variety of different options such as going on a scavenger hunt to doing a food tour around Philly. Of course I chose the food tour and so did the majority of my other coworkers because the food tour won.

To start, we all had to meet on Washington Ave at this Vietnamese shopping mall. I hadn't heard of any of the locations before so I didn't know what to expect. The first location where we met was a Vietnamese specialty food store and restaurant called Pho Cafe: Viet Huong. When you first walk in, you are immediately surrounded by prepared specialty foods such as Vietnamese desserts, dried meats, dried chilies, bubble tea.. The list goes on and on. In the back, there is a full restaurant where you can get authentic Vietnamese food. This is where our food tour began.

After our introduction to our food guides (the most entertaining people I've met in a while) we took our order for our first meal. Since it was a tour, we already knew what we were getting to eat but we could moderate our order depending if we had food allergies or didn't eat some of the ingredients in the dishes. For our first stop we had roasted pork Banh Mi and a crispy spring roll. We had the option to replace the pork with tofu if we wanted. I don't eat pork very often but I told myself that I was going to get the Banh Mi the way it's supposed to be made. I made the right decision. 

Banh Mi is a Vietnamese term for bread and is typically made with baguette. When you think of Vietnamese food and baguette, your probably are like "that isn't authentic Vietnamese food, that's French food". Well the baguette was actually introduced to the Vietnamese by the French during its Colonial period and they adopted it in their cuisine. They do however use rice flour in the baguette to make it lighter and crispier than the French baguette. 

Our Banh Mi was filled with roasted pork and typical Vietnamese ingredients like cilantro, pickled carrots, cucumber and chili pepper. It was absolutely amazing! The ingredients were so fresh and crisp and the bread was perfectly light and airy. It had the perfect amount of heat and I felt like I was eating something healthy because all of the ingredients were fresh. 

For our second stop, we went to a Thai restaurant. I love Thai food. There are plenty of vegetarian options with a ton of heat and flavor. They also use coconut milk in a lot of their dishes which I am a huge fan of. For our meal, we got to try three authentic Thai appetizers. 

The first appetizer we tried was Tom Som which is a Thai Green Papaya salad. The salad is made with shredded unripe papaya with lime, chili, fish sauce, palm oil and peanuts. When you think of Papaya, you typically think it's sweet but since the papaya is unripe in this dish, it tastes more like a vegetable and it so delicious! I could eat this salad every day. 

The other two appetizers were fried tofu with a peanut satay sauce and corn fritters. I didn't know that the Thai used corn in their cuisine because I have never seen it in any dish before. The corn fritters were delicious though and I definitely am going to copy the recipe and make it for myself in the future. 

After eating all of this food, we got to take a little break and go to an Asian supermarket. I literally almost started hyperventilating when I walked into the supermarket because of how excited I was. All of the foods that I love were right in front of me and everything was so cheap!!!!!! They had all sorts of fruits and vegetables that I haven't even heard of before and rice and noodles to last a life time! I already know that I am going back there to go grocery shopping. I could literally spend an entire afternoon in that supermarket exploring. 

Our final stop for our food tour was a Mexican Restaurant. I like Mexican food but I don't eat it that often because it is typically heavy and I don't crave foods like rice, beans and a lot of meat that often. I do love salsa and guacamole though but not the main meat dishes that much. We got to try the Tacos at this restaurant. I don't eat red meat so I got the vegetarian option which had rice, beans and some queso fresco which is a Mexican cheese. The taco was made with a corn tortilla. I really enjoyed the tacos, the corn tortilla was my favorite part, they were so soft and sweet and definitely tasted like they were made on the spot. 

To end our meal at the Mexican Restaurant, we had Flan. I am used to eating crème caramel which is French flan. Mexican flan is different than crème caramel; it is much thicker and is made almost entirely out of caramelized condensed milk where as crème caramel is made with whole milk, heavy cream and eggs. I really enjoyed the Mexican flan. I actually prefer the texture of Mexican flan over French flan. 

By the end of the food tour I was pleasantly full and excited about all of the places that I had been. City Food Tour has other tours besides Ethnic food. They have beer and cheese, beer and chocolate, taste of Philly and much more. Its a perfect activity to do as a date or as a gift. I definitely want to do more of the tours! Here is a link to their website: City Food Tours. 

Anne