Guy's Night Gratin Potatoes with Leeks and Gruyere

When you're cooking dinner for a big group of guys, you can't go wrong with meat and potatoes. Marinated flank steak is easy and (somewhat) affordable and gratin potatoes are a good dish to make ahead of time with little cooking fuss during the party. Throw some in-season vegetables on the bbq and there's plenty of time to catch up at the meeting of the grill masters.

Morning in the Mediterranean: A Turkish Inspired Breakfast

Many years ago I visited Turkey and found that each hotel I stayed at served a variation on a deconstructed Greek salad. Sometimes there were hard boiled eggs or fresh fruit, but always some cucumber, tomatoes, and feta. At first I thought it was strange to not not have a warm, freshly cooked breakfast but after a week, I began to look forward to it.

Bu-Tang Tacos

Every so often it's a necessary step in the cooking process to pilfer through the contents of your fridge. It's so easy to forget about what lurks in the depths of the beast that you'd be surprised when you do go spelunking, there can be quite a few treasures to be found. On this particular night, we discovered some butternut squash living next to the stack of cookbooks we keep stored in our freezer (it's a long, soggy story). 

Brown Butter Duet

One of our go-to dishes when we're feeling decadent is Panko-Crusted Halibut over Gnocchi in a Brown Butter Sage Sauce. It was originally inspired by a gnocchi-making class we took at PCC. Our teacher was a flamboyant Italian woman named Iole and after tasting her homemade gnocchi with the brown butter sage sauce, we knew we'd found a keeper.  Although this night we opted for the store-bought version, it's surprisingly easy and fun to make the gnocchi from scratch.

Where Fish Go to Fry

We popped into The Seattle Fish Company on California Ave. for a quick lunch and to pick up some fresh halibut for our weekend dinner. It used to be that you'd head to Alki Beach for the best fish and chips in West Seattle, but we're firm believers that the title now belongs to this establishment. 

Bob's Slaw Blog

As all of you Arrested Development fans know, season 4 drops on Netflix on May 26th. We're currently working our way through season 3 and had to give a shout out to everyone's favorite dysfunctional attorney, Bob Loblaw. The slaw we created is healthier than the corn baller, more original than a chocolate covered banana, and just as colorful as the characters on the show. Enjoy!

April Flurries Bring Green Curries

Mid April in Seattle is usually mild (in rainy terms), but this year some parts of town got hail and snow. What better way to warm up from this freakishly cold weather than to make some homemade green curry? Ever since we used the recipe from the cookbook, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, we've never gone back to store-bought curry paste. Even though it takes a long list of ingredients and some elbow grease, the flavor is totally unmatched by what you can get in the jar. Plus, you can control the spice level and freeze the leftover paste for quick meals during the week.

Sick of Meat? Don't Be Radicchio!

It's been almost two weeks since our trip to Argentina and we've been experiencing some serious meat withdrawals. Or perhaps our desire comes from watching back to back episodes of The Walking Dead.

Not Your Cardamom's Oatmeal

For Labor Day weekend last year, we headed to the Olympic Peninsula for some good ol' fashioned beach camping. It had been almost ten years since I'd gone camping at this spot and a lot of things had changed. For one, we sadly brought an iPad loaded with movies so we wouldn't have to stare at the stars all night. For another, we traded cheap beer for actual sustenance and hiked in enough food to last us a week.

You Say Picatta, I Say Marsala

There's something about a really thin slice of pan-fried chicken that is so appealing. When you sear chicken and braise it in a sauce, the meat becomes so juicy and tender, you'll be wondering why you didn't buy a bigger piece. The best options for this cooking method are Chicken Picatta and Chicken Marsala. Two wildly different recipes but equally delicious in their own right.

Scampi's Inferno

Shrimp scampi is technically a very simple dish. The fundamental ingredients are shrimp, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, wine, butter and red pepper flakes. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well for some reason, this dish has eluded us on two separate attempts. On our first try, we followed a recipe only to burn the garlic beyond recognition. For our second outing, we sauteed the garlic and shrimp to perfection only to learn that both of us had salted the dish, resulting in a scampi quite literally from the sea. So we brave this dish once again with all of our past mistakes in clear view. We've picked out the perfect shrimp, combined just the right elements...should we be worried that our grocery bill was $86.66? Are we forever stuck in the purgatory of scampi hell?

Chocolate Double Date

What do you get when a self-imposed cleanse meets dessert? Chocolate covered prunes and toasted almonds! We were out of our usual favorite go-to fruit, the strawberry, so we combed our reserves for the perfect substitute. D'noir prunes are some of the juiciest we've ever tasted and nothing beats toasting your own nuts.

For the dark chocolate we got two different varieties from South America. Place a glass bowl above a pan of water and melt the chocolate pieces with a few pats of butter, vanilla extract, and fresh vanilla bean.When the chocolate has reached a smooth consistency, remove the bowl from the heat. Line a plate with parchment paper and start dipping. For the chocolate covered almonds, pour a layer of chocolate over the nuts and finish with some sea salt. Refrigerate until hardened. Enjoy!

Don't Cry for My Big Toe, Argentina

On our last full day in Buenos Aires, we took a short trip to the town of Tigres, a river delta region where a number of tributaries flow into the massive Rio de la Plata. We hopped on a rather large tour boat and spent an hour getting a peak at all the islands and waterways that are only accessible by boat and understandably, a top vacation spot for Porteños. The water is colored brown by silt and quite rough at times, but is teaming with other boaters, kayakers, wake-boarders, and swimmers. We wished we were on our own boat so we could explore all the waterways that snaked back into the trees.