Weekend Cook and Tell: Restaurant Recreations
Welcome to the Weekend Cook and Tell. Every Wednesday we sift through the food sections of various national newspapers to create a weekend cooking project. We hope you will cook along with us and share your experiences, recipes, and photos here.
This week's inspiration comes from an article in the Miami Herald from a series entitled Desperation Dinners. Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross are the authors of the same-named cookbook and founders of the blog Kitchen Scoop, where they focus on meals that are quick, easy, and tasty. This week's desperation dinner was a quick take on the flaming 1960s restaurant classic Steak Diane, an impressive dish that is surprisingly easy to replicate at home.
This week's challenge is all about recreating restaurant dishes at home. I have tried replicating many dishes with varying degrees of success. I've learned that some are better left to the experts, while some are easy to adapt at home where they're sometimes even better than the originals. This week we are asking to try your hand at making a restaurant favorite at home.
Sow us your photos on Photograzing (make sure to include "Cook and Tell" in your submission title) and tell us about your recipes here! If you'd like to blog the experience, please leave a link in the comments below. We'll post a round-up of your photos and recipes next Wednesday.
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11 Comments:
i'll see what I can come-up with this weekend... but last weekend I was visiting my sister in Miami and cooked her this blue cheese and walnut pasta - something I recreated from a version I had at an Italian restaurant in Old San Juan.
MadelynRodriguez at 8:03PM on 10/14/09
I love the white bean dip at Roberto Passon in nyc. It's something so simple and yet so delicious. (can't speak for much else on the menu). Has this ever happened to anyone else - when it's not a main dish but a simple appetizer that seems like it would be a throwaway which leaves you wanting more?
prunesaregood at 9:04PM on 10/14/09
On a particularly frigid January evening, I found myself in a tapas bar near Boston College after having been subjected to Waiting For Godot. Body numb from the cold and mind numb from the play, I ordered a glass of amontillado and a small plate of pork with rosemary scented white beans. Magically, all was made right with the universe. We are dipping into our first freezing and below freezing temps here in New England. This will be the dish I make this weekend.
Amandarama at 7:46AM on 10/15/09
Does Cinnabon count as a restaurant ; )?
LearP at 12:11PM on 10/15/09
I wish i could recreate Maragarita's Mexican Restaurants' Salsa...I've tried before but I'm always missing something...
sammie at 1:27PM on 10/15/09
I actually attempted the Scarpetta Tomato Basil Spaghetti that Serious Eats NY posted last week! I had to do it twice, but the 2nd time was a big success! Here's the link to my blog post: http://www.economybites.tv/blog/2009/10/sunday-night-cooking-with-scot
alliect at 1:31PM on 10/15/09
I love these chickpeas with spinach from a local tapas bar, Lola. I eat them at least once every two weeks, which proves it's not just the sangria that makes them so tasty. :)
http://makingitwithmeleyna.com/bow-chickpea-wow-wow/
meleyna at 7:04PM on 10/15/09
One of my birthday gifts was the new Barcelona cookbook, which was easily in my top 3 of favorite restaurants when we lived in CT (our spot was the New Haven location). We already dove into it last Sunday to make my birthday dinner, but with a close friend from the Have coming in this weekend for a visit, we were also thinking of going all-out and make lots of tapas and drink delicious wine.
@amandarama: Could you please post a recipe for that dish? It sounds absolutely heavenly.
ElizabethS at 10:06AM on 10/16/09
In the summer I went to a Latin restaurant in Washington DC and had a fabulous plantain stuffed with cheese and beef. Later, I recreated the dish at home making a few changes: Double baked sweet potato with sausage and cheese. I was really pleased with how it turned out.
orchidgirl at 12:52PM on 10/18/09
at orchidgirl... those are called CANOAS, or canoes. They're a staple in puerto rican cooking...
MadelynRodriguez at 8:28PM on 10/19/09
Didn't have time this week to blog... I made my favorite sandwich...yeah, yeah, it's just a sandwich...from La Bodega, their #36 -- grilled eggplant, bocconcini, tomato, pesto mayo, on rosemary ciabatta. It's something I've been talking about recreating for several years. I've finally sat down to make it with, as usual, substitutions.
Since I didn't have bocconcini or rosemary ciabatta available, so I used ciliengine mozzarella and sour dough bread, respectively, instead. Tomatoes looked awful, so I passed on that. Grated the parmesan (that wasn't stinky!) and made up a quickie batch of pesto. I could eat this parmesan (gasp!).
Why does parmesan smell so bad in those plastic bottles?
Cassaendra at 7:01PM on 10/21/09