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Friday, January 28, 2011

Winter Spaetzle

You know when you're shopping for groceries and you just feel an intuitive gut pull towards an ingredient? Today it was brussel sprouts. They're green, cute, and in season. I built a meal around them. I decided on baked salmon and baked squash. I had a kuri in the back porch which I operated on and put into the oven. Brussel sprouts have a bacon fetish, so I obliged them by baking some until crisp in the oven and chopping it up into bite-sized pieces. I sweated some onions and garlic, added the bacon and halved brussel sprouts and then braised them in a cup of chicken stock with a tablespoon of agave nectar mixed with about a teaspoon of sherry vinegar. Add a bit of lemon juice to preserve the green color of the sprouts. I fried up some homemade spaetzle I had in the fridge with more bacon and more onions. Then I toasted some lovely local walnuts, gave them a whizz in the old food processor and there's your garnish.

We had a 2005 Poplar Grove's "The Legacy" which is a rich, rounded mouthful of bliss. And for dessert, some of my own milky way sesame chocolate bark. A nice way to mellow into a Friday night deep into January.

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