beef wrongonoff

Sometimes ( more often than you think), I have to deal with major challenges in my work.It keeps me on my toes, keeps me smiling.Like this dish,last week where the vegetables got pureed and pour back with the browned beef.....then, to top it off, some cubed( unrecognizable) portobellos mushrooms were added to the mix.....AHHHH delicious.
Now on to the set.

dinner at Chez

Last Saturday, we had dinner at the famous and local Chez Panissewhere some very generous friends invited us.The glow starts as you walk in. The redwood panellings , the rust wool carpet, the bouquet of seasonal branches, it all make you feel welcomed, and enveloped in an anticipating embrace. up we went to the upstairs cafe where a more casual, a la carte menu is offered. The pizza /wood oven roared next to our table which created a welcome added warmth to a chilly evening.
The meal, declined traditionally in appetizers, main and desserts was flawless if, a little blend.I know, the food should be the hero, but my wild nettle pudding souffle tasted of perfect butter, flour, and farm fresh eggs and nothing else.wild nettle sounds unusual,but the flavor is mild.My salad of fennel and grapefruit was delicious, with grapefruit segments as sweet as candy and fennel tender as cucumber.the dressing: good, but mild.
On the other end, my dessert was an explosion of taste and texture:the sherbet was bracing but not acid, the kumquats were the essence of citrus, and the tuile was the exotic crunch to the chewy candied fruit and the melty ice.
What a nice evening.......

sketching

I do not know who these people are, coming to stare at me from the touch of my fingers on a screen. But, somehow, each night, a new one emerges, ready to express a hint of myself. But it is not all faces, it is also the usual table still life, mixed in with what might catch my attention that day.

hanging at chow

After the late night, up on ladder, for the hanging of the paintings, I went back there the other day after a working morning. I sat at the bar, savouring a foamy organic chai and watching Planet of the Apes on a flat screen above the bottles.not my normal early afternoon routine. I was hanging out, trying to take in the rooms, decorated with my scribbles...

more drop

the other morning, as screeching sounds came from the kitchen where monsieur repairman was replacing some pilot and broiler ignitors, J stopped by to give this edible bouquet from her backyard: arugula ( growing wildly) and parsley ( same).
I just made a spanish style soup of garbanzos in a deep red tomato-paprika-safffron-pepper-onion-garlic broth, with a few limp celery branches( great to finish off in soups) diced, with a bintge potato and baby carrots(diced). My plan is to scissor the parsley and arugula and top the soup with it.