Friday, June 28, 2013

Realization...

Time for a little realization about my cooking.

If anyone read this post, I wrote about how I had entered the Arizona Republic's Best Home Chef contest. I had hoped to reach the final 3 and then would have hosted a dinner for the Dining & Entertainment people from the newspaper. 

After reading the articles about the 3 dinners all I can say is 'What was I thinking'! I've come to realize that I am glad that I wasn't picked. All 3 put on fantastic dinners that most anyone that loves fine food would have wanted to eat. For your reading pleasure here are the top 3 starting with the winner.

Win Thomas

Shereen Thomas

Anthony Coury

I tip my hat to all 3 and hope that it was fun having food critics over to your homes. My wife says she has known Win's wife for years, now she just needs to get us invited over for dinner...

I guess I was thinking that if I was chosen I would have broken out some tequila along with my sangrita chaser so that the judges would be sufficiently impaired for my unfocused dinner.

The realization to me is that cooking is like my hobby. I really enjoy picking out interesting stuff and then trying to figure out what to do with it. Sometimes it works out and other times I am the only one to try the crappy food. I don't really have a plan until like 5:15pm when I get home from work, and then I go to work on some food.

So here is a little impromptu grain salad that I put together the other night.

I started by cooking a cup of Hayden Flour Mills farro berries. They took around 40 minutes to get tender. While that was cooking, I assembled the ingredients to make a tabouli type salad.









I chopped up a bunch of Italian parsley and a large beefsteak tomato. I also used some cilantro, green onion, radish, jalapeno and red bell pepper. Then I made a simple vinaigrette with the juice of a tangerine and a little lemon juice. When the farro berries were done, I cooled them off and added all the ingredients. Tasted and added some salt and pepper and sprinkled some za'atar on top.







Pretty good with the fresh veggies, dressing and chewy farro berries.

Until next time when I realize something else to write about...