Jen Caputo

‘Pin’spired cards

I’ve been pinning a lot of cards lately and I thought I’d share some that I made recently, ‘pin’spired by my pins. (There’s got to be a better way to say that)

The first card that inspired me is this one by Shari Carroll for heroarts.com

Source: heroarts.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

My experiments with this didn’t turn out too great so I’m going to need to play more but here are my versions so far:

 

 

My next card is a combination of two pins:

   

Source: leascupcakesandsunshine.blogspot.com via Jennifer on Pinterest  Source: mailebelles.blogspot.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

I made this:

I loved the simplicity of this card, in fact I love everything that Maile Belles does!

Source: mailebelles.blogspot.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

I made these:

 

 

And finally, here are a few cards that weren’t inspired by pinterest, but while I was working on the cards above I found these images that I’d stamped and colored years ago and figured it was finally time to make them into cards.

 

I made the backgrounds with alcohol inks. For the one on the left, I smeared alcohol inks on the back of a piece of vellum. For the card on the right, I lightly swirled a felt pad tabbed in alcohol ink on white glossy paper.

If you want to follow me on pinterest you can do so right here. Leave me your pinterest links in the comments so I can follow you too! Have you made anything you were ‘pin’spired by? I wanna see/hear about it!

Valentine’s Dinner

For Valentine’s Day we got home a little early so that we could make our favorite pasta dish, Fresh Ricotta and Egg Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter. (Who am I kidding, it’s one of our favorite dishes period! There’s really nothing like it.)

I paired it with a salad of shaved fennel, brussel sprouts, pea shoots, cranberry. and honeybell orange. And baked a baguette to mop up all the delicious brown butter and egg yolk.

 

Runny yolks get me every time!

For dessert, I made heart-shaped sous vide strawberries.

Cut a notch in the top of each strawberry.

Position the strawberry in an egg slicer as shown above.

Slice and repeat!

And you get a happy little strawberry heart family

They already look pretty perfect but we went a step further by putting them in a sous vide bag with a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter cup champagne, sealed ‘em up and then dropped them in the sous vide at 183F for 15 minutes.  Topped with a bit of freshly whipped cream (spiked with homemade vanilla sugar) and you have a lovely light romantic dessert!

Sous Vide Lobster w/Oyster Mushroom Barley Risotto and Asparagus

This is one of those things that I can’t believe I actually created myself.

It started last night. I ran into the Aldi across the street from work to pick up a few small things and on my way to checkout, I saw these lobster tails.

I know what you’re thinking, I was too… seafood? from Aldi? Are you sure you want to do that. Well I checked the ingredients list on the package. Maine Lobster Tail. That was it. And the price was right – $11 for both. What the heck. I threw ‘em in the cart.

When I got home, this package of dried mushrooms I ordered from Michael Ruhlman’s Open Sky store was sitting on the counter. Adam asked me what on earth I was going to do with them, so I accepted the challenge.

Before I went to bed, I opened the package of oyster mushrooms, poured some white wine(Sauvignon Blanc) over them, weighed ‘em down with pie weights to keep them submerged, and threw ‘em in the fridge to rehydrate overnight.

  

Tonight when I got home from work I pulled out some homemade chicken stock from the freezer and warmed it in a pan and drained the oyster mushrooms (reserving the soaking wine) and dried them on a paper towel.

 

I cut up an onion and removed the lobster meat from their shells. I threw half the onions in one saucepan with some butter and the lobster shells. This pan will be the sauce eventually.

 

I put the other half of the onions in a second pan with olive oil and butter. I chopped up the drained oyster mushrooms and added them to the sauce pan after the onions softened.

 

I measured out a half cup of pearl barley and added it to the onions. In the sauce pan, I sprinkled everything with a bit of flour.

 

I ladled in a half cup of the warmed chicken stock and added it to the pearl barley. I added the reserved wine soaking liquid from the mushrooms to the sauce pan. As the stock cooked down out of the barley pan, I added in another half cup. I repeated this process about 6-8 times until all of the stock was incorporated into the pearl barley ‘risotto’.

 

Meanwhile, I vacuum sealed the lobster tails with a half stick of butter, sliced up some spinach, and pre-heated the sous vide supreme to 59.5 degrees Celsius (about 140 F) Not pictured is Adam who snapped the ends off the asparagus, peeled them, tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and threw them in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes.

 

After the sauce reduced by about half, I pulled out the lobster shells, stirred in a squirt of tomato paste and some half and half. As you can see, the barley is plumping up nicely.

 

When I thought everything else was 15 minutes to being done, the lobster tails went for a bath in the Sous Vide Supreme. I took most of the mushrooms out of the sauce pan and transferred the rest of the sauce and mushrooms to a smaller pan, using my immersion blender to blend it to a sort of smooth, sort of chunky consistency.

 

The mushrooms I pulled out of the sauce got added to the risotto as did the spinach, just minutes before I was ready to plate.

 

I cut some slices of a sage compound butter that I had frozen this fall and stirred it, cube by cube, into the sauce. The butter poached lobster came out of the sous vide. We reserved the butter for another use (I’m thinking seafood bisque)

 

Then I plated (Two different ways, I was trying to be creative).

I didn’t plan this meal ahead of time, in fact, I wanted to make mashed potatoes with it but I didn’t have any potatoes in my cupboard. The barley was a last minute replacement. Everything came from the pantry or an earlier in the week grocery store trip. And it was so good! So much flavor. I didn’t provide a ‘recipe’ because I have no clue how much of anything I used… I know that 2/3 of the wine bottle was gone before we sat down to eat and I didn’t drink any while we were cooking… so there’s a lot of wine in this dish. I guess I won’t turn my nose up at Aldi seafood next time so long as it inspires creativity.

Dinner at EL ideas

It’s been a long time since I’ve lugged my camera to a restaurant to take pictures of my meal. But I was so excited that we managed to score reservations at EL ideas that I dusted her off and toted her along (also, I’d heard they were camera friendly).

Reservations are rough to get because there are only 14 chairs at EL. Not tables, chairs. When you make your reservations (and pre-pay by the way) you are emailed instructions.

• Don’t be late. Dinner service starts promptly for all guests, if you show up late, you get whatever course is currently being served.
• No dress code
• BYOB. No corkage fee. They send you pairing suggestions such as a sparkling wine for the first few courses, a medium bodied white for most of the rest. We also chose to bring several beers and a bottle of 12-year Calvados from France.
• They’re off the beaten path and cabs don’t come by so if you let them know you’ll need it, they will rent a towncar to drive you home.
• Food allergies/dietary preferences can not be catered too.

People were nervous about being late I believe so most everyone arrived 10-15 minutes early. You are greeted by the sole front-of-house staff, Bill. Among other things, he is in charge of the music (think really fun 80s cover songs, tv theme songs, remixed hits), the chalkboard drawings, and chilling/serving your beverage of choice. Bill is awesome.

 

The playlist running off the laptop, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force chalkboard drawing that Bill spent 4 hours on, and the BYOB table – somehow he kept straight who brought what

You are seated in a small dining room overlooking the kitchen and invited to come into the kitchen to watch, take pictures, even help plate and serve!

Everyone at EL is so friendly and warm. You feel as if you are being welcomed into the home of a friend for the most amazing dinner party of your life.

plating everything bagel

The food is so beautiful and

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delicious. After everyone receives their plate (which happens very quickly as all three of the chefs are serving and there are only 14 people to serve anyway) the chef who created the dish comes out to explain their inspiration and the ingredients.

 

crab sunchokes/grapefruit/pink pepper

chicken salad gherkin/celery/mayo

everything bagel gravlox/cream cheese/cucumber

roe radish/katsoubushi/tapioca

 

bay scallop cauliflower/leeks/perigord truffle
The camera refused to focus on one of the most beautiful and delicious dishes. The photo on the right shows what my plate looked like when I finished it though.

I just love the look of the Buddha’s Hand

Mise en place

 

Beginning to plate the foie and the black bass

black bass salsify/onion/aged sherry

foie gras kohlrabi/buddha’s hand/verjus

snail grenobloise/celery root/chard

 

plating is an artwork at EL ideas

pata negra brussels sprouts/butternut squash/anise hyssop

plating the pork course

pork cornbread/hot sauce/mustard greens

 

carmelizing the marshmallows for the final course

veal & lobster parsnip/cabbage/apple

citrus meyer lemon/tangerine/passion fruit

 

Phil makes the french press coffee while Adam enjoys some in the kitchen along with a truffle

s’mores chocolate/marshmallow/graham cracker

At this point I had planned to list my favorite courses. But I realized I’d put nearly the entire menu in that category so it won’t be much use. I will say the single course that didn’t work for us was the pata negra. The ham was fantasic, but it was paired with root beer flavors of which I’m not a huge fan.

If you’re spending nearly $200 a person (with tax/tip) on dinner you expect the food to be this good. What you don’t normally get at other fine dining restaurants in Chicago is the warmth, the fun, the laughs, and the overall experience that EL ideas provides. Reservations are tough to get, and will only get harder the more people hear about this place. The menu is constantly evolving, to the point where if we went back next month there will not be a single course we’ll recognize. Sure is going to make it hard to stay away from this gem for long!