Dinner at Bacchus Milwaukee

This is the first part of the dining series in the last week of 2012. This is a treat that my husband and I are giving each other for Christmas. I had been working long hours for the last half of the 2012 that my husband and I could not spend a lot of time together. So for Christmas, we decided to give each other the experience of dining and Chicago weekend getaway as a present to each other. We were in Green Bay for Christmas family extravaganza. My husband's family hosted tons of relatives that we rarely see in regular basis. We were happy to see them but we were glad when the hosting duty was over for the year. We went back to Milwaukee and recovered for one and half day, getting excited for our fabulous dining experience awaiting for us.

For the first portion of this dining fiesta, we selected a restaurant in Milwaukee that we had never set our foot into. We chose Bacchus, an upscale restaurant in the Bartolota's group. There are several Bartolota's restaurants in our area and they are known for the exceptional dining experience - excellent food and service.   We had a rather early reservation, around 6.30 pm.We arrived at a half full parking lot, which was good, considering that it could be tricky to find a parking space in downtown Milwaukee. We walked in and were greeted by a friendly host. The decor is minimalist and modern, which is aligned to our decor taste. There are many mirrors hanging by the wall. The color scheme is neutral and elegant.

For starters, we selected a tasting platter of 3 different kinds of cheese: Pleasant Ridge River of Uplands, Mont Amore of Sartori, and Capriko of Nordic Creamery. My husband ordered Winter Wind for his opening cocktail and I ordered a glass of Tempranillo wine from Spain, which I never had before. We were both very pleased with our choices. Bacchus is unique in a way that we don't have a series of appetizer, main entree and dessert. We wanted to try more appetizers (or small plates, as they call them), so we decided to order 2 small plates and share an entree. We ordered seared foie gras for the first small plate. We never had a whole piece of foie gras before. I know, I know, there are a lot of controversy surrounding foie gras. However, this is a treat and it's not like we plan to eat foie gras every month, or even every year. So as Julia Child said, "Moderation. Small portions. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health. You need to enjoy the good things in life.", we enjoyed every bit of it. All components worked together harmoniously, from the honey crisp apple compote, brioche French toast, bacon, topped with a quail egg and some maple syrup.

For our second appetizer, we had veal ravioli. It was excellent. The pasta tasted fresh and the brown butter sauce gave it a perfect balance. I personally am not a huge fan of ravioli, but my husband really loves ravioli, so I decided to give it another try. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.

For main course, we split a braised beef short rib with cubed butternut squash, braised savoy cabbage, cranberries, and red wine sauce. We were very impressed with the dish. The tartness of the cranberries balances the richness of the beef and the sweetness of the squash. Again, all components work together and create a wonderful balance in your mouth. To accompany such rich main course, my husband ordered a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon from Hayes Ranch. He enjoyed this one as well. Since I am a lightweight, I only took a few sips of his wine and continued working on my glass of wine. Sorry for the "after" picture. We were too eager to take a bite before taking the beautiful picture beforehand.

Usually, when we go to restaurants, we are stuffed by the end of the main course and sometimes we have to pack some of the leftover to go. This time, we polished every single morsel on the plate and we were still feeling comfortable. So we decided to check out the dessert menu, to see if anything jumped out at us. We unanimously decided to order a scoop of eggnog ice cream, just because it is so unique, and a praline ganache bar accompanied with passion fruit ice cream and creme fraiche. This sounded an odd combination, but they both worked wonderfully. We truly enjoyed the dessert and the overall dining experience. The food was outstanding and the service was impeccable. We will definitely come back for another special occassion. Good eats!

Chinese New Year Meal(s)

By now, I have not celebrated Chinese New Year with my family for more than a decade. So I am doing what I can, living just with my hubby. For the last 3 years, I made a hot pot (Asian-style fondue) with different flavors of broth. I made the tom yum flavored broth last year and the year before. This year I decided to try something different and simpler, as I was hosting my parents in-law who don't really like spicy food. I made the broth from miso paste and hon-dashi.

As you can see from the pictures below, I had some bok choy, fried tofu, regular fish cakes, lemongrass-flavored fish cakes, beef tendon balls, pork balls, enoki mushrooms, another kind of wild mushroom and some thinly sliced beef tenderloin. Yum!

Dinner at Topolobampo Chicago

We had been dying to try this restaurant. We had been to Frontera Grill three times before and had a very good experience every single time. So we wanted to try Topolobampo.

It took me more than 3 months to get this dinner reservation. Initially I wanted to surprise my new husband for our wedding celebration. Well, just think of this as 4 month anniversary celebration. =P The wait was well worth it as it was the best dinner we both ever had.

This is my appetizer - the sausage and cheese salad with green verde sauce.

And this is my husband's appetizer: muscle soup

This is my soup entree:

And this is my husband's soup entree:

This is my first entree: halibut with sauce and caper

And this is my husband's first entree: seafood mix - this is my second favorite dish of the evening

This is my second entree: braised pork with some kind of polenta - this is our favorite dish of the evening. The flavor was so complex. It was very tasty, it had some smokiness to it, ahh, indescribable.

This is my husband's second entree: steak with amazingly complex flavor

This is my dessert: shortcake with berries, some crumbs and ice cream.

This is totally my kind of dessert, light, fruity and airy. Delectable!

This is my husband's dessert: chocolate cake with caramel sauce and ice cream.

This is totally his kind of dessert: chocolatey, rich, and decadent!

This is not a cheap meal, by any means. However, it is worth the experience. Obviously we cannot afford to go back every year, but this one time was totally worth it.

My First Real Birthday Cake

OK, I am obviously not celebrating my first birthday. I just decorated my first birthday cake for my father-in-law who celebrated his birthday recently. His favorite cake was yellow cake with chocolate frosting. For practice and in class, we always used white frosting. Since I did not want to take a chance, I bought 2 jars of Duncan Hines chocolate frosting. It is tasty by all means (although a little too sweet for my taste), but it is really hard to smooth, unlike the white frosting.

I ran out of ideas and I just got back from traveling for work that night, so here it is. I had to do it that Friday night because his birthday was on Saturday. Here is the picture of my humble cake.



Oh, my husband also gave this to his dad as part of his birthday gift, the new Crown Royal Black. It tastes smooth. If you like whiskey, this is a good one for you. :)

Mexican Fiesta Dinner

My husband is a huge fan of Mexican food. Not just Tex-mex, but also real authentic Mexican food.
I gave him Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless as a Christmas gift last year and we have tried a few recipes out of this book. Last weekend we decided to try new recipes. We tried to make Chicken in Oaxacan Yellow Mole with Green Beans and Potatoes. The recipe recommended using chayote and fresh hoja santa leaves, but we couldn't find it either of them in our regular grocery store. We followed the rest of the recipe. I have to admit that this recipe is not your typical 30-minute meal. The preps took a long time, from chopping the garlic, slicing the guajillo chiles, to cubing the chicken thighs and potatoes. The result was outstanding and well worth the effort. There are so many layers of flavors in the broth and it was really comforting.

We also tried making some corn tortillas from scratch. We used some masa harina (Mexican corn flour), water and salt. We haven't quite mastered how to do it yet. After putting them on the pan, they got crispy so quickly. I guess we just have to practice making this.

Apple Torte with Breadcrumb-Hazelnut Crust

When I saw the cover of the October edition of BonAppetit magazine, I was so excited to try the recipe for this seemingly delicious apple torte. It's not exactly a pie, it uses breadcrumbs instead of the regular butter / flour / sugar combination, so it might be less dense and less sweet. The recipe could be found here:

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2010/10/apple_torte_with_breadcrumb_hazelnut_crust

I had so much trouble with this that I did not even bother taking a picture.

First of all, after toasting 8 cups of breadcrumbs for a little longer than recommended, they still didn't reduce down to 3 cups. After so much effort, the crust didn't taste that much different from the regular crust.

Cake Decorating Class

I like to learn, a new skills, new sports, anything. So I decided to take a cake decorating class at Jo-ann last month. I was very worried that since I don't have steady hands, my decoration would be such an epic disaster. I have to admit I was terrible, but after some practice, my skills improved steadily!

Week 1: decorating cookies
For the first time, I learned about the frosting/icing consistency, how to hold a bag, the different tips used for different decorations, etc.



Week 2: decorating a cake
For this session, we were supposed to bring a cake. During the class session, we would learn how to torte (split the cake into 2 layers) and fill it with some fillings like jam or more icing. I brought a small 9" cake into the class and my frosting did not set even after 20 minutes. You can tell that I have unsteady hands by looking at the uneven border piping in the picture here.



Week 3: decorating cupcakes
In this session, we learned how to make grass, pompom flowers, mum flowers, and shell borders.




Since I am an A-type who is competitive and does not like being at the bottom of the class, I decided to practice on another cake before going into the last class session. Here is the practice cake I did at home using some of the skills I had learned in the previous sessions.



Week 4: decorating a cake
In this last session, we were supposed to bring a completely frosted/iced cake, so that we could concentrate on the design during the class session. Since I was still pretty slow and I had to mix my frosting to the right consistency, I did not finish the cake during the class session. However, I was determined to finish it at home that day.



Detail view of the rosettes.