Posts

Showing posts from October 5, 2014

Pavlova with Almond Cream and Berries

Image
Last September while in Europe, we stayed at a good friends house just outside of London. It was a beautiful, old farm house. I fell in love as soon as we stepped in the door.  The house belonged to Andrew and his roommate Murray. Murray made us a wonderful roast Lamb dinner and a Pavlova for dessert.  We had never had Pavlova, nor had I ever even hard of it. But you know what? I fell in love with it even more than I loved the house!! What Murray had made was an amazing and prefect dessert for me. I rarely eat dessert because I am usually too full. I am way more a savory person, not a sweets kind of guy, so I tend to have seconds at dinner and leave no room for dessert. A Pavlova however is a light and airy meringue  that seems to usually be covered in whipped cream and fruit. Most people seem to think it was invented in New Zealand, so I think Kiwi is a popular choice for the fruit. Murray went with berries, and so did I. It took me a year to attempt this because I was af

Salmon Wrapped Asparagus

Image
In the late 90's I moved to LA for a short time. I just needed to get out of Connecticut, where I grew up, and learn to be my own person. I was 20, and a little lost. Luckily for me, I had a friend from home who also planned to be there for the summer to study art at UCLA. She planned to be there for 2 months, but to my happiness, she never left! So for the year that I lived there I had my friend Nicole with me for when I needed a friend. Once when I needed her, she came through with a crazy easy, crazy cheap, and crazy good recipe for a cocktail party I somehow found myself hosting. She showed me how to make these crunchy bite sized pieces of Asparagus wrapped in soft, saltily, and sweet pieces of Salmon. They were a total hit, and the few times after that, that I made them, they were a hit too. Now fast forward about 15 years later.. I missed them. I wanted them, and I had a great opportunity to make them. The thing was I needed to figure out how to jazz them up a bit. I