Barrack’s Cooking: Potato Leek Soup

Thought I disappeared again, huh? Nope, my last entry was just poorly timed. I went on leave soon after my last exciting post, making a trip with the wife and the seven month old back to New Hampshire. Yup, that’s a ten hour straight flight from Honolulu to New York City with a baby. My own parents, hailing from the Midwest, drove out to New Hampshire as well, so baby Jack got to meet both sets of grandparents.

 

Avocado Chevre Torte

I’m continually on a quest for healthy lunch options, so I don’t have to eat so much canned tuna. I despise it. Canned chicken is a little better, but it still has that tin can flavor that I’m not so fond of.

Laura found a few pretty good looking recipes that I probably wouldn’t have tried without her encouragement. This particular one, called an Avocado Chevre Torte, is essentially a frittata with some pretty tasty ingredients in it. It was incredibly flavorful and easy enough to slice and store away as part of a packed lunch. This would also be a great brunch option, if you’re the kind of person that does brunch. Brunch is a great excuse to drink alcohol before noon.

 

Caprese Galette

It has been yet another busy week, and Laura has been doing most of the cooking. In fact, the only new item I have to share of my own doing is today’s recipe.

Fortunately, though, Laura has been putting together some pretty damn tasty meals and she’s been taking pictures as she goes, so I’ll still be able to share those in days to come!

A few weekends ago, we had some good friends over for dinner. I knew they were a little adventurous in their tastes and were open to me putting together any kind of menu, so I decided on an Italian-Hawaiian fusion three course dinner. However, the only course I ended up documenting was the appetizer, which was more Italian influenced than anything else.

 

Date Night! Tsukuneya Robata Grill

Last Saturday, Laura and I were incredibly fortunate to have a good friend of ours offer to take care of Jack so that we could go have a night out. We hadn’t been out in quite a while for a date night, not since Laura’s 2nd trimester. Probably the Signal Corps Ball, actually. So, I took my friend up on her offer.

There is a Japanese restaurant down near Chinatown that we have been wanting to check out pretty much since we got to Hawaii. From what I could tell, it wasn’t like any other Japanese restaurant we’d ever been too. We have been fortunate in Hawaii because there is an abundance of authentic Asian food, including Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean. Not so much Chinese, though. When I say Japanese, I mean more than just hibachi, sushi, and Japanese steak houses. There are noodle houses everywhere, yakitori restaurants where you grill your own prepared food, and restaurants specializing in ononomiyaki. And then there is the restaurant we went to.

 

Coconut Red Thai Curry Beet Soup

Last weekend, Laura and I stopped by the local farmer’s market in Haleiwa, which is about 20 minutes north of where we live. It’s fairly small, at least compared to the big farmer’s market in Hawaii-Kai, down by Diamond Head, but there’s always a pretty decent selection. We had planned to go to the big one on Saturday morning. It opens at 7:30 am, but everybody gets there around 6:30. There are a lot of vendors there, and although no sales can be made before 7:30, the vendors are allowed to pre-sell their items, as long as money isn’t exchanged. Hawaii-Kai, being about an hour away, proved to be too ambitious for a baby that decided to fuss all  throughout the night before, so we settled for Haleiwa on Sunday.

Farmer’s markets around here are great, because it is always growing season, and only a few harvests are seasonal, such as mangoes. We can always get really good tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, yellow zucchini (which is different than summer squash), spring mix, arugula, mushrooms, and all sorts of other things. There are a variety of local and tropical produce as well, like a type of avocado that is the size of a grapefruit, dragon fruit, ramatan (which is very similar to lychee), and fresh coconut. The selection is really quite nice.

 

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

I’m sitting here trying to think of all the reasons why I put so much effort into cooking, but I’m actually having a difficult time narrowing it down. I enjoy it, but I can’t name why. I guess it’s something that keeps me involved and moving. After all, what would I do when I get home from work if it wasn’t for having to put a meal on the table? I’d probably just veg out and stare at the tv.

There’s something about the creative process of cooking that I absolutely love. I rarely use a recipe, and if I do, it’s more for inspiration. The exception, of course, is with baked goods and pastries, which require very specific measurements, or you’ve likely got a disaster on your hands.

Cooking, for me, is just a collection of processes, and I get to fill in the blanks. Sometimes I find this exhilarating, especially if I’m trying something new. The most recent example of this is the creme fraiche I made earlier this week. It was delightfully simple, yet yielded a product so delicious and amazing that it put its grocery counterpart to shame! Even more satisfying is the fact that a $4.00 quart of cream yields far more creme fraiche than the $5.00 8 ounce packaged stuff in the cheese section! Imagine what it would be like if I could get my hands on fresh cream . . .