For the benefit of 2 of my favorite foodies, I thought it might be nice if I posted about the Valentine's Day dinner that Mrs. Bali Hai and I put together last Tuesday:

The missus made a Cuban pork roast with mango sauce in our shiny new crockpot. We got the recipe out of a fabulous cookbook called, ¡Cuba Cocina!, given to me as a gift by my most favoritist foodie bud-ette in the whole wide world. In addition to the roast, she whipped up an incredible batch of frijoles negros with white rice.

My mission, which I decided to accept, was to use my top-sekrit training to produce a chocolate-pudding souffle. Inexplicably, my souffle-fu was weak, and my offering came out only partially cooked through, so we wound up with a dessert that was part souffle, and part mousse. Still delish though.

As an apertif, I uncorked a bottle of Renwood 2004 Zinfandel Amador Ice, an incredibly delicious Eiswein that had us both drooling uncontrollably after the first glass.

Thank God Valentine's Day only comes once a year!

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's a fascinating post from The Art of Drink about the history of Orgeat syrup, a delicious emulsion of almonds and rosewater. If you're an aspiring mixologist like me, then you know that Orgeat is a crucial ingredient in classic cocktails, such as the Trader Vic's Mai Tai and the Scorpion. What you probably didn't know, is that before the dawn of the Refrigeration Age, Orgeat was originally used as a milk substitute!

I was also very interested to see that Orgeat can be made rather easily at home: this would've been extremely useful to know several years ago when it was virtually impossible to find in my locale. Nowadays, I can simply pop into my local gourmet coffee shoppe and buy a bottle off the shelf.

[link]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)