Guilty Kitchen-Equal parts temptation and guilt

Adrian’s Tastings of the Week {January 31}

Abbaye-Abdij du Val-Dieu – Grand Cru

Wine like nose. Ripe fruits with alcohol. Malty spicey ripe fruits. Finish is sweet malty. Well balanced. Can’t really tell its 10.5%.

Rating: 4/5

Unibroue – Éphémère Black Current

Another yummy offering from Unibroue. Grape and currents rule the nose with a light spice. Tart & carbonated with light malty taste. Finish is tart but pleasant with a slight spice. Carbonation wanes as it sits out.

Rating: 3.75/5
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Endive, Fennel and Barley Salad

Winter and salads don’t usually invoke a shared memory. When I think back to foods we used to eat in winter during my childhood, there were mostly big dishes filled with hearty stews, soups, casseroles and meat with grains. There was Salisbury steak, pork chops cooked in rice in a dutch oven with green peppers (don’t even get me started on that one), lasagna, beef dips from leftover roasts, chicken legs, pork chops in breading and cooked in swimming pools of oil over an ancient electric frying pan. These were comfort foods of the highest order. My mother, sister and I and our love of comfort foods goes back so far it can’t be traced. My mother brought it to us and her mother to her and so it goes, back through time.
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Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Candied Walnuts

It’s funny how when the weather turns crummy, most people turn to heavy stews soups and casseroles. They bust out the slow cooker and cook up a big old hunk of beef with a side of potatoes and gravy. But for me, when winter comes, I long for the easy food. Quickly tossed together salads with winter citrus based dressing so I can get back under the blanket on the couch with my lover and our little ones. There’s nothing in this world of food I love more than a big, juicy, crispy salad covered in vegetables, cheese and avocado. Add in some seriously addictive candied nuts and I am in food heaven.

Have I ever mentioned that I lived on salads for practically five years. From high school to marriage I ate nothing but salads. Salads were my comfort food for I had exhausted my allowance of real comfort foods during the first 18 years of my life. Here I was, 20 years old, single, having lost 65 pounds and I was determined to never see that side of the scale again. So salads were my friend. I learned to make a million different salads. I became known for them. Elaine’s “Big Salad” from Seinfeld? She ain’t got nothing on me and my notorious salads.
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Smoken Bones Cookshack: The Rebirth of a Restaurant

It all starts with a plan. At first, it’s in your head and you only catch glimpses of it as you sleepily roll around in your warm bed. But then you catch it by tail the with the tips of your fingers, and it begins to come to life. You grasp that idea with the strength of 900 lb. gorilla and you don’t let it go for any reason. You think about it constantly, you eat it, breathe it, dream it. You get up in the middle of the night, keep pads of paper with you wherever you go, manically type on your iPhone in the middle of the aisles of your favourite grocery store. It takes you over from the inside and then finally, it begins to take shape. Physical plans and blueprints get printed, rolled tightly to unfurl at the job site. Contractors are hired, fired, yelled at, throttled, threatened and ultimately become a piece of the background as the maddening pace of a restaurant’s construction takes foot.