I have always been interested in the scientific elements of modern cooking, what many people would call “molecular gastronomy”, but I never thought I would do any of it myself. Recently after cheering for Richard in the latest top chef, and reading playing with fire and water a lot, I have had the itch. It was actually Mandi who pushed me over the edge to finally buy some of the stuff. One day she was bored at work and kept sending me cool pictures of different plates people had made. It was her who originally found playing with fire and water and she really wanted to start trying some stuff. Finally the packages came in the mail, methylcellulose, sodium alginate, and calcium chloride. A few new salts and a syringe. The first thing we were going to try was sphereification. This is kind of old news and sometimes considered a gimmick these days, but it is one of the easiest methods in this modern cooking world so I thought it would be a fun place to start. Also, even if it isn’t quite as cool in the food world anymore, I feel that it still has a place in the emerging “molecular mixology”.

This past weekend we had a fun BBQ at a pool. Amy is housesitting, and had a few people over to take advantage of the sweet pool area at the house. It has a cool bar and refrigerator and an outside bathroom so you don’t mess up the house! Unfortunately, I don’t have a ton of pictures of the prep that went on at the house. We were having too much fun, I forgot to take them! But there are links/explanations of all the recipes we used.

As many of my loyal readers know, it was Mandi’s birthday yesterday. Since she has made me some crazy cakes in the past, I decided to try my hand at making one for her. Luckily, I had the design team there to help me decorate it. The cake recipe is from Ina Garten, and can be seen here. The idea for the teddy grams came from a pool cake I had seen online.

At Mandi’s office, it is the tradition to bring in breakfast for everyone on your birthday. This seems backwards to me and that someone else should bring YOU breakfast, but that’s another story. Unsatisfied with the standard donuts and pastries that most people bring in, Mandi needs eggs to have a proper breakfast. So in addition to the massive amounts of planning for the crazy weekend we are about to have, shopping at multiple stores to get all the right ingredients, making cheesesteak filling and buffalo chicken for her pizza / birthday party tonight, me making her a cake, standing on the south east coast trying to literally blow the hurricane off course, and cleaning the apartment for the arrival of the design team(they are somewhere over the Atlantic at this moment), Mandi has to make quiche! Today, (just a few hours ago) Mandi woke at the crack of dawn to begin cooking. It isn’t an inconvenience for her, because she loves birthdays and wants to be awake for every hour of hers. This is based on a Paula Deen recipe you can get here. Click below for more!

Caprese salad is a simple and delicious summertime treat.  Traditionally it has only tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, salt, pepper and olive oil.  The key to this salad is having fresh tomatoes which is why I cant wait until mine jump off the vine into something awesome like this.  Over the years, we have changed the way we make it.  We first would do the traditional tomato and mozzarella, with a little red onion, cut them into rounds and line them up in a spiral like you sometimes get at restaurants.  I came to the conclusion that this looks kinda cool at first, but it is cheesy, annoying to do, and harder to eat!  Mandi also found that cucumber adds a great freshness to this salad and makes it even better for summer.  Here is what I like to call Mandi’s version of a Caprese salad.

Today’s post is an extremely exciting, scientific experiment. At Christmas this year we were lucky enough to receive my grandmother's gnocchi recipe. I have the fondest of memories growing up eating these little pillows of heaven. So you can imagine my surprise when we saw that her recipe calls for potato buds instead of normal potatoes! This really got us wondering and Mandi and I decided that it would be a good idea to put them in a head to head competition to see which tasted better, potato buds or the spud itself.  We had made Heidi's recipe before, so we planned to use that as a base recipe.  It started to get crazy when on the morning of the experiment we saw Tyler Florence make gnocchi. We wanted to try his recipe too! That got Mandi's brain going and she decided she wanted to make some colored versions of each recipe to see how that affected the flavor and texture. When it came down to it we couldn’t agree on a sauce. I prefer tomato sauce on my gnocchi, but she likes cream... well the whole thing really just continued to snowball and in the end we ended up making four types of gnocchi with two flavors and three sauces...

For all the different gnocchi's, we kept the flour / egg / potato ratio as similar as possible so that we could really judge the potato method. The comparison involved baked potatoes, steamed potatoes, boiled potatoes, and potato buds. Then we colored some of each kind with some spinach and roasted red peppers.  The three sauces were tomato, gorgonzola cream, and thyme butter. This made for a total of 36 possible combinations.  Our impressions on which were best and worst are at the bottom of the post.

This drink was inspired by a drink Mandi got at KO prime.  From the menu:

Grapes of Wrath
Grey Goose Poire Vodka, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, muddled cucumber & pineapple.

She continually said that this was the best part of her meal.  She wasn’t the biggest fan of her bone marrow app (I was), and she has had better pork belly.  We didn’t look up the actual drink last night when we attempted to re create it, but what we made was delicious and very similar.  On a side note, I hate muddling and did not muddle this drink.  I think you can get all the flavor from the fruits and mint without bruising and smashing them into a big mess.  This is a great article on mixing drinks and it totally captures my opinions on cocktails.  Be sure to watch the video too! Click below for the recipe for this drink.

When you last saw my plants, the situation was dismal. The tomatoes had leaf miners and were extremely infected. The cayenne pepper plant had holes in many of the leaves, clearly being eaten by some pest who doesn’t mind spicy food. After doing much research online, I decided my best bet was to strip all the leaves from the tomato plants and just hope they survived. I was heading out on vacation to Boston and I didn’t tell anyone to water them when I was gone. This was because I did not think they were going to survive anyways and was kind of upset about the whole situation. Just as I was getting into the cab to the airport, I looked over my plants and saw a new leaf on one of the tomatoes! I was shocked and kind of disappointed that they would be left to nature for water purposes for the next week and a half. Well when I got back, I was stunned to see large, green, leafy, and thriving plants in my walkway! My landlord had taken it upon himself to nurse my poor plants back to life! Before I had 4 tomato plants and 2 pepper plants, and now I have 2 tomatos and 1 pepper, so it wasn’t a 100% recovery, but it was still really great because I thought they all were goners. Click below for pictures and more.

I have always wanted to make cheese at home. But you know how those things go... it's just something that I talk about but keep putting off. Yesterday when I saw ricotta in our recipe I decided to stop putting it off and give it a try! Ricotta is a great intro to home cheesemaking because it is fairly simple. Now that we've tried it, I have the feeling we will start making it all the time because it was easy and so delicious! I have seen Mario make this before and planned to use his recipe, but we ended up using one from my new favorite food site - playing with fire and water. The only ingredients were milk, buttermilk, and salt! The main difference is the acid used to help the milk separate into curds and whey. In Mario’s recipe, lemon juice is the acid but in this recipe it is buttermilk.

Going away parties are always bittersweet events. You go and have a great time, but in the morning you have fewer friends. Todd and Joy are heading home to Canada tomorrow and had a beach party last night to say goodbye. I decided to take some pics to post here for 4 reasons. First, nothing I have on the site is simple, so sometimes people think I can’t eat normal food. Like I have to spend 2 hours cooking dinner or I won’t enjoy it. I think no matter how immersed you are in the food world, if you cant eat a hot dog, you’ve crossed the line into snob territory. Second reason, Mandi loves s’mores. So do I, but not as much as her. Last summer every time we lit the grill she would have a s’more appetizer. In my opinion, it is the best desert flavor combo. Whenever I ever see a s’more dessert at a restaurant I have to try it (and I usually don’t get dessert). We even tried to make a s’more ice-cream cake once and bought a mini blowtorch for it but it didn’t turn out that good. The third reason for me posting these pics is to say goodbye to Todd and Joy. I have worked with Todd, and Mandi has worked with Joy, for over a year and they will be missed in the office, at the work events, and of course, at the parties and bars. The final reason for this post is I’m wicked behind on cooking since our return and I had nothing else to put up! Click below to see the rest of the pics.

One of the many highlights of my trip home was the last day. Steph hosted a BBQ so I could see a bunch of people from the area that afternoon. Fun times were had by all. We ate cous cous salad, corn on the cob, jalepeno poppers, pancetta wrapped peaches, scallops, and of course, ribs! Recipes / links are at the bottom of the post.

Were back!  And what a great vacation it was!   Wanna hear about it?  Here goes.  Ribs 4 times, potato salad, peaches wrapped in bacon, pasta salad, scallops, taco dip, chicken wings, cheesesteaks, qdoba burrito, cheese fries, cheese fries, mcdonalds 4 times, steak egg and cheese bagel from there, sausage egg and cheese from dunks, finagled another bagel, 2x taco bell, (once drunk at 1:30 am with my family?) clam chowder, clam chowder, chili, fried fish sandwich, beef burros, boneless wings from petes (still good), soft pretzel, pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, spicy basil pad Thai, spring rolls, kobe flat iron, tuna tartare, sweetbreads, bone marrow, and about 400 or so beers.  I’m sure I missed stuff; we had about 4 meals a day.  And NOW it is time for a diet!  Starting off my diet today I have an iceberg wedge salad with a blue cheese dressing.  Blue cheese dressing!?!  You can’t have that if you are trying to be healthy!!!!!   Relax folks, we only used 4 oz. of blue cheese (<200 calories each) and made the dressing with low fat yogurt and buttermilk.  It was delicious!

Hello loyal readers of TFIMB.  I wanted to let everyone know that there will be a week and a half hiatus of posts because Mandi and I are off to Boston and Springfield for a week’s vacation that includes my cousin’s wedding.  I am sorry because I know you all will miss my daily musings on food and life in Bermuda, but I am really excited to get off the island for a bit!  Here is a list of restaurants and other food related places I am hoping to hit.  Some are old favorites from living and working in the city, others are new places I am pumped to try out.  If I hit most of these, I will come back a happy man.  Check out some of my old yelp reviews of the ones I’ve been to, and the websites of the ones I haven’t.

Strega
Otherside Café
Border Café
La Verdad
Qdoba / Flamers at the Pru food court.
KO Prime
Petes – old college wing place.  Is it still good?
Presto – Greasy Pizza like we cant get in Bermy

Then of course, there is my sisters apartment for one of her infamous NBA Finals grubfests.  A TFIMB sponsored BBQ in Springfield, and a dinner party with the design team.

If you are in Boston next week, CALL ME!   Or click that mail icon thing on the upper left and send me an email with your number and I will call you.  You know you're gonna eat well at least.

Last weekend was the 7^th annual Mexican party hosted by Amy and Cheryl.  Mandi and I were lucky enough to go last year, and this year TFIMB was the corporate sponsor (without actually giving any money).  A great time was had by all and I took some pictures of the festivities.  There will be no recipes today except for one vague one for the pork that everyone requested.

Dan:  hey you think i could get the pork recipe for the post today?   im not going to put up any recipes except that one cause it was such a big hit.

Amy: There wasn't a recipe actually.  I put a Mexican dry rub on it that I bought at Target (Archer Farms).  In the bottom of the pots, I put a mixture of orange juice, lime juice, garlic and oregano.  Roasted at 425 for about a half hour to brown a bit, then took it down to 300 for about 5 hours.  Each Boston Butt was about 5-6 lbs.  Oh my god, I'm hungry!

My sister has made the most heart attack inducing, cholesterol raising, trans-fatty incredible meal that she wanted to share with the world the only way she knew how, with a guest post on TFIMB!  She will take over for the rest of the post and I may have some comments in red.

Since the 1st Celtics playoff game vs. the Atlanta Hawks, there has been a feeding frenzy at my house.  One of our regular group, who has been there for every game, could easily take on Kobayashi in a hot dog eating contest. Since the beginning of the playoffs, he's been talking about the chili and cheese corn dog fries that he saw on Phantom Gourmet.  My promise was that they would happen when we made it to the finals.  Well, here we are, game 2: the C's vs. Lakers.  

Mandi always claims she hates burgers.  I think one of the reasons is that when I make them, they always end up huge and have no direction.  I put in whatever is in the fridge and they end up tasting more like meatloaf than cheeseburgers.  Now that grilling season has begun, I am trying to make more focused burgers and turn around Mandi’s opinion. My first attempt was a taco burger.  An obvious choice due to her love of tacos!

I think Beef Stroganoff is kind of a wintery meal for most people.  For Mandi, she craves it when she is sick.  I know in the afternoon when she isn’t feeling too well.  She says to me, “can you make me something yummy and eggy noodley tonight?”  I hadn’t made her stroganoff in awhile so I decided to go a different way with it which was a real risk because if Mandi is in the mood for something, it can be very specific.  I wanted to make a Jamie Oliver recipe I saw him make on the mushroom episode of Jamie at Home.  I usually make this sans mushrooms but I wanted to add some today.  I did not have the fresh mushrooms or venison he uses, but I was looking more for a method anyways.

(Note about the recipe.  It is really lame that this recipe is only available in the US.  It doesn’t even make sense to me.  I just had my friend who lives there get it and email it to me.  I was going to post it on here but I don’t want the food network or Jamie to get mad at me!!)

Ive been craving thai flavors every day for the past 2 weeks.  The problem is the thai place here is very limited.  It is so awesome, but there isn't a ton to choose from.  In a totally unrelated note, I've been seeing grilling on food network and on the blogs every day.  This time of year, grilling is the hot topic.  I love grilling, but I am always seeking out things that aren't the normal grilling fare.  I decided to marinate some steaks in a green curry paste, grill and serve them with a thai style basil fried rice.  Searching on google for basil fried rice, I found this awesome video of two women making a great fried rice exactly how I wanted.  We used the Jamie Oliver green curry recipe we usually use for thai recipes to marinate the steaks.  I had really wanted to use a flank steak for this meal, but apparently Bermuda was out of flanks steaks and I had to settle for the more expensive and, IMO, less delicious tenderloin.

I wasn’t sure what to call this really…  Quinoa salad?  Mexicany rice bowlish thing?  I settled on Black bean avocado bowl.  It came about when Mandi and I were brainstorming about quick easy healthy weeknight meals we could completely make AND eat in a half hour and run after.  This would actually be great as an alternative to pasta salad at a BBQ and would also travel really well, but we just had it as a quick and healthy weeknight dinner.

One of the most frequently asked questions here on TFIMB is “what is that delicious looking drink I see floating around in the background of the pictures, and how can I make it?”  I have decided to start putting up some drink recipes on here from time to time starting today with 2 margaritas.  First we have a frozen pina colada margarita, followed by a more basic margarita on the rocks.

Caesar Salad.  We have all had it countless times, but have you ever made Caesar dressing?  I finally did the other day and I was VERY happy with the results.

No recipe post today, just some comments and various things that are too small to make their own post.  2 site updates, plants, and brownies.

First off, I know fans of mandoline’s slice are probably pretty disappointed one hasn’t come out in awhile.  Well not to worry, there will be a few coming around soon.  Mandi was in LA for a week and then we had friends visiting so she hasn’t been able to get one finished.  There will be a post with wallpapers, and a mandoline slice, definitely coming next week and the week after.

Second.  I know we have been doing a ton of fatty, cheesy, fried deliciousness lately.  I’m sure people are looking for more of a light summery meal or salads because it is that time of year.  Well again – never fear cause TFIMB is here to help! Tomorrow I have a nice Caesar salad, and next week I will have a few healthy things up as well.

Next I have an update on my plants.  I am having mixed results with my herbs and tomato plants.  The herbs are doing great and we have already begun using them in meals!  More on the plants, and the brownie pics, after the jump.

We ate so bad this weekend… how bad did you eat?  We ate SOOO bad this weekend that we kept oil on the stove at all times in case we had the urge to fry!  And fry we did.  This particular fry session was around 12:30 on fry-day night (he he). 

Impulsive Purchases. We all have them. Most grocers put candy and gum by the register to promote impulsive purchases.  It works on Mandi; she always leaves the store with a candy bar.  I think they should put the meat section right at the registers because I would always leave with extra meat.  All of my impulse buys happen to be large chunks of meat!  My last one resulted in this.  This past Saturday I called Mandi from the store:

Me: Hey
Mandi: what’s up
Me: nothing.   Ummm   I just bought a brisket.  I don’t know why.
Mandi: uhhh  sweet?
Me How the hell do you cook a brisket
Mandi: I don’t know
Me: Go online and get me a recipe so I know what else to buy.
Mandi: Naa, Im gonna go back to watching friends half awake.  SEEYA!

Luckily, I had everything I needed at home!  Thanks to a loosely followed Paula Deen recipe, we were in business.

I have really wanted to sear tuna lately.  Why? I have no idea.  For some reason it has been one of those dishes that gets stuck in your head and you can’t stop thinking about it until you finally make it yourself!  But what would we do with this seared tuna?  I didn’t really want to put it in a salad.  The brainstorming began at 2:30ish between Mandi and I over email.  Mandi wanted avocado because Thursday is usually taco night and if she couldn’t have tacos, some avocado would at least ease the pain.  I thought mangos would be a nice compliment to the lightness of the tuna.  After looking for awhile online, I was reminded of a raw tuna nacho appetizer I had at Mesa Grill in New York.  I saw a recipe that included an avocado and a chipotle crema and decided to make these, wing a mango salsa, and put it all on a corn tortilla.  The results were delicious!

Calzones are the oft neglected brother of the pizza.  When faced with the option of calzone or pizza, most people I know would choose the pizza.  But what most people don’t realize is that at home it is 10 times easier to recreate a delicious takeout calzone then it is a takeout pizza.  And what’s better is you can do it with leftovers!  Last night we made these calzones because we had made pizza over the weekend and had pepperoni, peppers and onion leftover.  Mandi made some cheesesteaks for a work event and had a bunch of leftover cheesesteak filling.  These would also be good with a filling of leftover Buffalo wings, pasta, sausage, chicken parm, taco meat, or really anything you could think of!  My opinion is that the wackier the filling the better the calzone. (Disclaimer: this is the opinion of Dan only and not the opinion of Mandi. Also TFIMB is not responsible for your awful chicken parm-pad thai-taco-mozzarella stick calzone with orange flavored dipping sauce)

Because my last quiz was so popular, and also because I am a little behind in the cooking department, I have another one for you all today.  Today’s quiz asks you to guess the cereal name, and mascot name, for each of the cereal mascots below.  There are 20 pictures and therefore 40 available points for correctly naming the mascot shown and what cereal he sold.   Scroll down after the pictures to see the answers.  Some are very obscure and one is fictional so don’t feel bad if you miss some.  Feel free to post your score below if you think you are smart.  If you get above 30, lay off the sugar in the morning! Click below to start the quiz.

I haven’t put any breakfast posts up, but in my interview I mentioned that breakfast is my favorite meal to cook.  I think this is because it is very relaxing to me.  There are no cameras around, it is a weekend morning, and I am in relaxation mode making an omelet for Mandi or a few egg sandwiches before heading to the beach.  I decided to put some of my favorite breakfasts up here.  They are all very simple, nothing crazy or innovative, and most involve eggs.  Today we have the infamous “breakfast pile.”  I’m sure everyone has made this before. A big pan of scrambled eggs with any and everything breakfast related mixed in.  Make no mistakes; this meal is made for hangovers.  This is the perfect breakfast for when you don’t feel so good when you wake up, but you have plans for the day that need to be carried out.  The breakfast of champions.  It is also helpful to have a lot of leftovers in the fridge.

The most important thing when making the breakfast pile is that it's not a recipe, it is an order of operations.  Similar to the FOIL method when learning math (first, outer, inner, last), there is a breakfast pile method I like to call the VEMCH method (Veggies, Eggs, Meats (cooked), Cheeses, Herbs).  Once you own this method, you can put whatever you want in here.

Ever go to a BYOF BBQ?  Ya know, when your friend says “Hey man, come by tonight, we’re gonna fire up the grill and you can bring some meats or whatever you want to throw on there."  When this happens what do you end up bringing?  I bet the answer is a burger or hot dog.  Now not that those things aren’t delicious but I think it is much more fun to bring something like this.  This particular day we weren’t going to one of those BBQ’s, we were going to the beach, but this is a great recipe for one of those situations.

The last restaurant standing finale began with Raymond telling the final 2 couples that he would like to take them into his world. And believe me “it is a magical world”.  He explains that the first thing he ever cooked was a disaster.  He made Crêpe Suzette to try and impress his mom, but when he lit it on fire to flambé it, it exploded everywhere.  He now wants the contestants to try and impress his mom as well by opening their restaurants for one night only in a town in France where Raymond grew up and where all his family live.  He wants them to bring a little piece of Britain to France the way he brought France to Britain so long ago.

Click below to continue **Spoilers**