Tangerine Soba Noodles ....

with roasted veggies! Light, refreshing & delicious! Had a butter lettuce salad with a wasabi dressing with hit. Served it with a nice 2005 Shiraz. Dessert ............ a big bowl of luscious fresh strawberries!

Eggplant Parmesan

(Friday Night) Made a Fantastic Eggplant Parmesan - fantastic, really!!!! It had a slightly spicy tomato base sauce. I used some dry farmed tomatoes I had frozen from last winter - very very flavorable . Then we moved to a grilled Niman Ranch Chili Marinated Beef Bavette, which I found when I picked up the lamb sausage. This cut was incredibly tender & juicy with excellend flavor - one of our new summer time favorite cuts for the grill! Really tasty! We had a salad course next. Baby butter lettuce with some chopped up baby red onions and fennel. I made a balsamic goat cheese dressing & sprinkled the crazy black salt flakes, I found last week, over the top - yum! For dessert I whipped up some Vanilla Bean ice cream!

Dessert for Dinner?

We felt like the naughty kids in the kitchen & were wondering when we would get caught! We were out late buying a new TV, so I had to put the wonderful Eggplant Parmesan that I was going to make, on hold. It was too late to cook, too late for take-out, so we had left over Plum & Apricot Clafouti, some fresh blueberries & cream and a couple glasses of wine for dinner.

Lamb Sausage

I am a sucker for great packaging. I don't like fluff. I like somewhat rustic & simple - to really let you know how great the food is going to be. After all, I am going to eat the food not the packages! I saw these at one of my favorite neighborhood markets, Bi-Rite Market. The sausage is actually made by Neiman Ranch. They are a lamb sausage and the piece of fresh Rosemary really sold me! Start up the barbie .....

Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes

One of my favorite stand-by tomato sauces served with an assortment of pasta that I have left over and I tossed some little pearl size mozzarellas over it - I LOVED how they found their way into some of the orrichette pasta! Next we had a butter-leaf lettuce salad served with a simple vinaigrette and sprinkled with a black flake salt I found at Whole Foods and a loaf of bread. Dessert was a plum and apricot clafouti - I used this pear clafouti recipe but I substituted 1/2 of the cream for half and half and instead of brandy I used some Portuguese Passion Fruit Liquor.

Green Lentil Salad

Made a green lentil salad with shallots, cherry tomatoes, fresh mint and feta cheese - tossed with a classic vinaigrette that I make. I served it with a baguette, first of the season figs, goat cheese and a very nice white Bordeaux.

Monday

We dined out a lot this past weekend - no new stuff to show! As well, we are going to revamp this blog abit & add some new fun things! Keep checking back for some tasty dining treats!