Catch Of The Day And A Little Plating Fun

No surf and turf here - this is all surf baby unless you count the potatoes and veggies as turf. Lately I have been experimenting with newer techniques to me and also trying to visualize plates differently than what is commonly seen. 

Experimenting with the techniques is the easy part but putting it on a plate is not.


I have a small assortment of fish here, I have a flounder roulade, a grilled salmon and a sesame crusted cod all cooked to their most juicy perfection.

My vegetables are green beans, a colorful carrot medley and both yukon gold and purple potatoes cooked in avocado oil with rosemary.

I plated everything up and garnished it with a little kiwi coulis and some sprigs of baby cilantro.


Simple foods cooked simply and plated elegantly can make all the difference in the world. Cooking With Color - I am certain it enhances the flavor.

Don't let winter give you the blues - hit back and cook with color

I don't know about the rest of you but most of us are getting a little tired of winter and here in New York its been the snowiest winter in a long, long time.

Time to get yourself out of that funk and get on the grill. There are plenty of bright and colorful vegetables available this time of year and nothing will make you feel better than a colorful plate. I have been saying it forever and I will say it again - I cook with color! This is a big fat grilled pork chop with some winter vegetables. I have a potato mash, a parsnip mash a little cabbage, apple and carrot slaw along with a little red pepper and some squash. It made my eyes dance and my tummy happy. I think you will agree that when you cook with color everybody wins.

Creative Cooking Crew: VEGAN

I was so pleased to be asked to participate with this fine group of distinguished bloggers in their Creative Cooking Crew  brought to us by Joan and Lazaro - but when the first challenge was VEGAN it made me do a quick little back pedal. Nothing wrong with vegan cooking but if you have been poaching things in fat and butter like I have I needed nothing short of an exorcism and a colonic just to be qualified. Vegans and vegetarians always seem to be the brunt of whats wrong with things nutritionally with their very head strong ideas about what the rest of us should and shouldn't be eating, and if you had as few choices as they have you would be charismatic about your food too.

I often have to make vegan and vegetarian dishes for some of my clients so the idea of it wasnt as scary as I pretend. Anything stacked is sure to make a happy diner so with that in mind I got busy. I made a Two Potato Tofu Napoleon. Purple potatoes, sweet potatoes (yams) firm tofu, and zucchini went into my layers. I simply boiled the potatoes and let them cool before I sliced them thin, the yams were sliced thin raw and sautéed in a hot pan with olive oil until they were soft. The zucchini was flash sautéed in olive oil with a garlic clove and the tofu was dusted with salt and pepper and corn starch and fried until it was a light golden brown

I put some red chile on the plate and made my stack then I drizzled the whole thing with cilantro oil and scattered some black beans, peas and some of the chopped up roasted garlic then I garnished the whole thing with water cress. 

I made a small one for my son and sliced the edges off of his so you could get a good clean look at the layers.

I made a big stack for me, extra layers of extra flavor and packed with nutrients. I love to cook with colors - I hope you try my Two Potato Tofu Napoleon - and dont forget the chile!

Oxtails as a tropical delight? Thats right! I made pasteles.

Pasteles are a big treat around here because they are so labor intensive to make, all the folding and tying and what not, not too mention the effort that goes into making the masa but I was challenged recently to do something with oxtail and I decided to do this tropical delight.



I wont bother you with all the details - instead you can watch this dark and out focus video to see how it all gets done.

Basically I put some oxtails in the pressure cooker.

I made some masa out of squash and yucca and green banana and yukon gold potatoes and folded and wrapped and tied a bunch of mini pasteles and simmered them until perfect.

Then I plated up some tasty mini pasteles with some spicy pineapple salsa a little kiwi lime sauce, yellow tomatoes, red tomatoes, some cucumber and some micro greens - and thats all she wrote.