Dinner with Caroline's family

Last night, we cooked and ate dinner at Caroline's house with her family.  We wanted the meal to include family tricks and recipes as well as new, more exotic ones.  While not all dishes we made can be considered ethnic cuisine, each has its own meaning - whether it be a family standby, a friend of a friend's recommendation, or a traditional recipe.  This eclectic evening of noms began when we realized at 5:00 PM that Dominican ropa vieja (a delicious and authentic meat recipe we have yet to atempt) would take us 5 hours to make.  Bummer.  So we got creative.  What else is traditionally Dominican?  Fried plaintains!!! So we chopped up some bananas and nobody had to know the difference. ;)
Jamie has an Algerian neighbor who has a Spanish friend who has a fantastic gazpacho recipe, which of course isn't written down, so we trusted Ina Garten (a culinary genius) because her recipe is apparently very similar.  We decided to treat the fam to korvapuusti (see "Korvapuusti in the Kitchen," an earlier blog post) because it's mind-blowingly addictive.

Almost oven time!

For all those who want to re-create this around-the-world extravaganza, here's the menu...happy eating!

EPIC MENU:

Gazpacho (Italian but from Jamie's Algerian neighbor)
Salad with strawberries and pine nuts (Tasty...isn't that enough?)
Cornbread (from a family cookbook made by Caroline's cousins)
Fried bananas (...almost Dominican)
Grilled chicken with Italian marinade (a go-to recipe for Jamie's family)
Korvapuusti (Finnish)

Gazpacho ingredients:

23 oz Tomato Juice

Two red peppers

Four tomatoes

One red onion

One cucumber

3 cloves of garlic

Kosher sea salt - about 1/2 tablespoon

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 Cup White wine vinegar

1/4 Cup Olive Oil

Optional: Jalapeno or red pepper flakes for that spicy flavaaah

Gazpacho instructions:

We doubled this recipe to feed the whole fam, but here's the instructions for the normal recipe which should feed 4-6 people

Chop each vegetable into 1 inch sections-make sure to keep each vegetable separate from each other.  It is important for the flavors not to combine yet!!

I kept each vegetable in a separate bowl for my own sanity, I recommend you do this too :P

Separately food process each vegetable for a very small amount of time..I used what Caroline's amily calls the NINJA so, needless to say, processed the food for about 5 seconds before it turned into juice.  Keep all the processed foods in different bowls still!

Mince the garlic and measure out the olive oil and white wine vinegar.

Here's the big moment...MIX THOSE VEGGIES!!!

I know it's scary...but you are ready! NEVER SURRENDER! This is what Caroline and I have been preparing you for.

Add the garlic/salt/pepper/olive oil/vinegar (and maybe that jalapeno/flakes if you want to live a leetle)!

Gently mix with a wooden spoon (ok any spoon will do that's just what I did)

Put it in the fridge!!! The longer the gazpacho chills, the more the flavors will come together and taste even fresher/delicious-er.

Enjoy!

Salad:

mixed greens, sliced strawberries, toasted pine nutes, and balsamic vinaigrette. Or anything you have in your kitchen, can steal from your neighbor, or can dig up outside.

Cornbread ingredients:

Cornbread instructions:  Basically, we thought this cornbread tasted real boring.  We recommend that you spice it up with honey, maple syrup, or jalapeno peppers.




Fried bananas:

I won't lie to you...we completely free-styled this recipe.  The concept of frying plaintains is traditionally Dominican, but we adapted the recipe to suit our kitchen.  I sliced ripe bananas diagonally (so that each slice was about 2 inches long), turned on the stove to medium heat, and covered the bottom of the pan with vegetable oil (1/2 centimeter).  While the oil was heating up, I mixed flour and vegetable oil in a bowl and covered the bananas in the mixture.  Once the oil was hot, I slid the banana slices into the oil to fry until they were light brown and crispy-looking.



Grilled chicken:

Marinate 6 chicken breasts in a large plastic bag with almost a full bottle of Italian dressing for at least 45 minutes in the refrigerator.  I know you're probably hungry, but try to let them marinate for longer because delicious flavor is where it's at.  Grill the chicken outside and serve with black pepper and salt.

What were we snacking on? Tortilla chips and cherries
Tune of the Moment: Time Above the Earth by the Kooks