Finishing drysuit certification in Stonington CT on October 25th. The water was a warm 60 degrees with a pleasant 2 foot visibility. Saw a boulder. Sweet.

Zucchini Pizza with Goat Cheese and Walnuts

, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

Joe's started making pizza using dough from down the street at Modern Apizza. This one has thinly sliced zucchini (making good use of our new mandoline!), goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and smoked paprika:
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/summer-squash-pizza-with-goat-cheese-and-walnuts

Chocolate red wine cake and other things that are red

Chocolate red wine cake, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

A few of our friends in our wedding party chipped in to get us a beautiful new red KitchenAid mixer. I really wanted it because I am powerless to resist a cherry red kitchen appliance, but it turns out to be pretty much the awesomest mixer ever. It has this huge bowl, and it's so powerful! I basically want to whip air into every liquid in the kitchen with it.

Which is good, because Joe eats cake for breakfast, lunch, dessert, and post-dessert.

On the topic of red appliances, another friend got us a cherry red ice cream maker, which means that Joe is also fixated on making the perfect ice cream. He just bought about a pound of vanilla beans, which make a huge difference.

Oh yeah, and this cake? Chocolate red-wine cake, recipe at:
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/chocolate-red-wine-cake

The red wine gives it a nicely subtle complexity - it's moist and chocolatey, but not as cloying as some chocolate cakes. It looks a little raggedy though -- it left a little of the top layer on the bundt pan when I turned it over, which happened to me for another cake I made in this apartment too, even though I've greased my pans like crazy. I don't know if I'm taking the cake out a little early or what. Sounds like I need to make more cakes, mmm.

Jaw-squeezed juice

Jaw-squeezed juice, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

Goat cheese gnocchi with lemon caper sauce and salad.

Recipe for gnocchi:
350 g ricotta
300 g goat cheese
8 g activa GS
36 g flour
1 egg yolk
1 egg
.25 g cayenne
salt

Add cheese, egg yolk and 1/2 egg, flour, spices and half of activa to food processor. Mix half of whole egg with remaining activa in 16 g water. Add to food processor. Blend with dough blade for 30ish seconds. Pour into molds and let set in refrigerator for 18 hours.

Lemon caper sauce:
Butter, lemon, capers, white wine, salt, white pepper, ultra-tex 8 (for thickening). Cook.

Salad dressing:
Balsalmic vinegar, olive oil, pepper, salt, mustard, soy lecithin (to create oil/vinegar emulsion)

Sunflower seed risotto

Sunflower seed risotto, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

Made with our new pressure cooker, loosely following this recipe from Ideas in Food:
http://www.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2007/01/sunflower_seed_.html

Third Course of our New Year's Eve Dinner

IMG_0235, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

Lobster with tropical fruit, citrus juices, and tomato pudding with coconut ribbons and Thai chili rings. Adapted from the Alinea cookbook.

Second Course of our New Year's Eve Dinner

IMG_0228, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

Transparency of Manchego Cheese, also from the Alinea cookbook. The transparency is melted with a kitchen torch over a layer of roasted red and yellow peppers, croutons, dried Nicoise olives, and Manchego cheese dice, all on a bed of olive oil pudding.

Joe followed the recipe pretty faithfully for this one, except we forgot to add roasted garlic cloves to the dish, we left out the arugula and anchovy garnish, and we used plain white bread for the sourdough croutons. This is definitely one of the less labor-intensive dishes from the cookbook.

This was my favorite of the three dishes -- the combination of the silky pudding with the melted cheese and the saltiness of the olives has an amazing mouth feel. We'll probably make the olive oil pudding again, maybe alongside a simpler grilled sandwich with Manchego, peppers, and olive spread.

First Course of our New Year's Eve Dinner

IMG_0185, originally uploaded by gluttonomics.

Shellfish sponge with celery, horseradish cream, and grape sauce. Recipe from the Alinea cookbook. (We've never been to Alinea, so we don't really know how Joe's versions compare with the real deal.)

As with most of the Alinea recipes, we had to make a few ingredient substitutions -- Joe got littleneck clams and mussels, but no geoduck clam (we can barely pronounce it, much less find it around here) and grapes instead of gooseberries. I loved the grape sauce though -- it's made with Ultra-Tex 3, so it's smooth without having been heated.

This dish was really exciting and an interesting combination of strong flavors, but my palate got tired after about two bites. I'm not the hugest fan of celery, which shows up in three forms (dice, leaves, and ice), and I think Joe got a little overzealous with the horseradish (which is pretty much the most noxious thing to try to force through a sieve ever). But the shellfish sponge (gelatin, broth, and salt, whipped up and then frozen) was airy and exciting and made me feel like one of the Jetsons.