Monday, July 21, 2008
Orange Kissed Cosmo
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Originally uploaded by mikehillwig
It’s Monday night, and that means it’s a Star Trek night in my house with a few cocktails. Instead of my usual cosmo, I thought I’d try something a little different. What I ended up with turned out rather well.
My typical cosmo is 1 part Cointreau, 2 parts vodka, 4 parts cranberry juice, and a squeeze of lime juice.
For this, I did 1 part Grand Marnier, 2 parts vodka, 2 parts cranberry juice, 2 parts orange juice, and a squeeze of lime juice.
At first, I had left out the lime juice, and it felt a bit flat. Once I added the lime juice, it turned out rather well. This could be tweaked a little bit, but I think it’s really well balanced with the right amount of fruitiness and acidity. At first I was concerned about using Grand Marnier AND orange juice, but the two orange flavors complemented each other instead of conflicting.
I wonder how I could work some amaretto into this…
Grilled Ham and Cheese… in Hi Def
Anybody who knows me or reads my blog regularly knows that I’m a big Food Network fan and that I love Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. One of the things I learned from watching Ina is to take something classic and to remake it with top-notch ingredients to turn up the volume. That’s what this entry is about.
Yesterday, when I went to Whole Foods, I picked up a loaf of Challah and a loaf of ciabatta. On top of that, I had some great cheese in my refrigerator, including some amazing gouda, as well as some good cheddar and asiago. And wouldn’t you know, I just happened to have a few slices of prosciutto di Parma on hand as well. If that doesn’t sound like an excuse for a good ham and cheese sandwich, I don’t know what does. Now some food snobs may say that turning this into a ham and cheese sandwich would be a waste of ingredients. I would argue that they didn’t taste how amazing this was. This certainly wasn’t white bread with processed American cheese slices.
First, I cut the Ciabatta into some pretty thin slices and buttered the outside. Then I added bits of cheese and added about half a slice of the prosciutto to each sandwich. This went onto the griddle on low heat.
The low heat is my secret to a good grilled cheese sandwich. It allows the good cheese to melt and the prosciutto to warm. When the bottom slice of bread turned a nice, golden color, I flipped the sandwich and allowed the other side to brown. After the second side has browned, I pulled the sandwiches off the griddle and allowed them to cool a minute or two before cutting. If the cheese were still really hot, it would have been a bit messy.
The results?
I will certainly be doing this again in the future. If I’m having friends over for lunch, this would certainly be a menu option. I think for that, I’ll need to work on a mustard dipping sauce, though. Sure, a good roasted tomato and basil soup would work, too, but this quality cheese begs for some good mustard.
I don’t know that the Challah would have been the right bread choice for this. The Ciabatta worked well, but the bubbles in the bread did allow some cheese to escape. I need to work on finding the right bread here, but my basic formula is pretty sound.
Another lesson learned here is that I need to make a good space to photograph my food. My countertops always seem to be cluttered when I’m cooking, and I need to figure that out.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Unitasker Sunday
I generally subscribe to the Alton Brown theory that there should only be one unitasker in the kitchen, the fire extinguisher. I say generally because there will occasionally be some little device I can’t live without.
I’ve recently found that I love fresh pineapple but that I hate cutting it. My friend Beth has an awesome pineapple cutter, and I decided that this was certainly a unitasker I could live with having. In search of my pineappler cutter, I went to the unitasker store, better known as Williams-Sonoma. They have a really cool pineapple cutter that I bought today, and I had to try it out. It works well.
I’ve decided that it’s time to start eating healthier again, and taking my lunch to work instead of ordering out all the time is certainly a good start. Tomorrow, I’ll be snacking on pineapple. And for lunch, chili. That’s what I’m going to be making here shortly.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Dark Knight
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This is a moblog entry.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Week Three
Today, I wrapped up my third week at the new job. And today I got my second paycheck. And I’m still liking it there.
Don’t get me wrong. I miss the people at Shawmut. It’s an amazing company. Acme is just as amazing, only in different ways. My bosses couldn’t be any more different. The one thing that is consistent is just how incredible the people are.
After spending four years at a privately held company, going to a publicly traded technology company is a big change. The past two weeks, we’ve been dealing with two different audits, and it feels like people have been digging through my closet. Still, it’s okay. Audits keep people honest. If you have good practices and policies, and if you follow those practices and policies, audits should be a matter of presenting the data your auditors care about and then moving on. One of my tasks right now is automating the generation of that data. If you follow my Twitter stream, you may have seen me declare that Crystal Reports is my bitch. If there is something that requires us to generate data every month for a report, you’d better believe I’m going to use Crystal to automate that.
The weekend is here. Tomorrow is a pool party at my boss’s boss’s house. Aside from my self-consciousness about taking my shirt off in front of coworkers (I’ve gotten fat.), I’m really looking forward to it. I work with some great people, and they’ve already proven that they’re fun outside of the work environment. On top of that, I want to meet my boss’s wife. I made a big bowl of pasta salad that came out well. Look for pictures later.
Summertime Cocktails
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Originally uploaded by mikehillwig
One of my favorite summertime cocktails is a mojito. Although one can rarely go wrong with a good margarita, too. However… this has got to be one of my all-time favorite summertime cocktails as well.
This is a glass of Prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) with fresh raspberries floating in it. If you plan ahead, you can briefly freeze the berries so they will keep your drink cold. I’ve done this with blueberries and raspberries. Strawberries would work well, but you might need to cut them down a bit. I’m a fan of Prosecco, but you could certainly use a Spanish Cava as well.
What I love about this is the simple elegance. It would work really well as a before-dinner cocktail at a dinner party where you’re grilling. The berries also give (or bring out) fruity tones to the sparkling wine.
What are your favorite summertime cocktails?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Griled Broccoli
It’s been a long day. After Reggie bounced on my face about 5:30, I was up and moving pretty early, walking into the office about 7:15. I had told my boss I’d be there early just in case there was any fallout of our network issues last night. We knew there wouldn’t be since the problem was beyond our network and was at the ISP. On top of that, the second audit team started today. Every three months, we have one auditor come in. Every six months, a team of auditors comes in. Last week was the three month audit. Today starts the six month audit. But we’re in a pretty good place at giving them what they are looking for.
After work, I had an appointment with the chiropractor. He beat up on me pretty hard and I feel good now. Both my neck and calves were a wreck, and he worked me over pretty good.
On my way home, I had to stop at the grocery store since there isn’t much in the house to eat for dinner. I picked up my standby of thin-sliced bottom round steaks that grill perfectly in just a few minutes. Trying to come up with something else that might go well on the grill, I thought I’d give some broccoli a try.
All I did was cut the broccoli into chunks big enough that wouldn’t fall through the grill and then toss them with some vegetable oil, salt, and pepper. They went on the grill first. Next came the steaks. Again, salt, pepper, and a few other seasonings. The key to these steaks is that you can’t overcook them. Two minutes per side, tops. Otherwise, the steaks are like rubber.
The broccoli was fantastic. Because I seasoned the hell out of it, it certainly had flavor, but perhaps too much salt. It was gloriously crunchy without being raw, and I felt like I was eating pretty darn healthy.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Family Visit
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Originally uploaded by mikehillwig
My parents brought Sarah, my niece, to visit this weekend. They flew in on Thursday night and left today. This trip was my parents’ birthday present to Sarah, to visit Uncle Mike.
I had to work on Friday, so they took the train into Boston and went to the New England Aquarium, and Sarah loved that.
Saturday, though, we trumped that by taking her on a whale watching cruise. (pictures here) I didn’t get as many pictures as I would have liked since my camera isn’t all that great in taking quick-fire pictures.
Sunday, we had brunch with my friends Liz and Dave. After that, Liz and I made a trip to Shubies while my parents and Sarah did some touristy things around Salem. Last night, we grilled some food and just loafed around the house.
Today, I had to work this morning, and my parents stayed here, getting ready to head home. When I got home, we finished packing up before heading to the airport.
It was so nice having my family here, and now it’s time for my life to go back to normal.
Pictures from this weekend (other than the whale watch) can be found here.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The Underwear Files
If you can’t laugh at yourself, then… well, if you can’t laugh at yourself, I can recommend a good shrink for you to visit.
Sometimes it’s great fun to be a smart ass. And every once in a while it will come back to bite you in the ass. Last night was one such case.
Jason, my upstairs neighbor, and I have a pretty good relationship. We call each other if we’re going to be out later than expected so when possible, we’ll walk each others dog. Heck, we’ll even feed them if it’s the right time of day. He took Reggie out for me this afternoon, and yesterday, I had taken Wiley out for him. After the walk, I was feeding Wiley. This 40 pound beast eats two cups of food, and I knew I’d be upstairs few a little while. I took my Macbook and a beer so I could sit out on his deck while Wiley ate.
When I got out on the deck, I saw that Jason had a pair of underwear draped over the back of one of the deck chairs. I thought I’d be a smart ass, take a picture of them with my Blackberry, and then tease him about it at a later time. In retrospect, I do understand that there is a certain creepiness to a gay guy taking picture of a straight dude’s underwear, but that’s a different conversation. Thinking I should have the picture on my computer instead of the Blackberry, I e-mailed it to myself. This is no big deal since I have my e-mail address programmed into the address book to facilitate such things.
After I fired off the e-mail with the picture and no text, I got the notification that the message had been delivered to the recipient. Oddly, I thought, I hadn’t gotten the picture in my e-mail. Hmmm… After a little digging, I found the problem. The e-mail address I had for myself wasn’t my mikehillwig.com e-mail address. It was my work e-mail address--my OLD work e-mail address. Worse yet, I didn’t get an undeliverable message, meaning that the message is sitting in my old mailbox.
It’s fairly common practice at my old company to leave e-mail addresses active for a while and to allow the manager to have access. So I’m sitting here wondering how I should handle this situation. My sixty-something former boss is going to see an e-mail addressed to me from myself, containing only a picture of someone’s underwear draped over a chair. Did I really want to call him and explain this? In the end, I decided to leave well enough alone and to let his imagination have some fun with it.
Like I said, sometimes you have to laugh at yourself.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Secrets of a Restaurant Chef
The Food Network has a new show called Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, starring chef Anne Burrell. I really like her. Today, she showed how to do a one-pan leg of lamb with vegetables.
If the name sounds familiar, she was the sous chef to Mario Batali.