Happy birthday!!

Il Piatto Blu is 4 years old today! For a birthday present, we built a brand new kitchen.It's not quite done yet...still needs floors and a backsplash. But neither of those things are technically essential for cooking so I'm ready to get back into it! Here's where all the new magic will happen:Can't wait. Happy birthday!

Pina coladas en fuego

The kitchen is still under renovation. It's driving us to drink. We made some yummy pina coladas because all it needs is a blender (afterward it can so easily be washed in the bathtub!). Basic city--for each drink it's just 3 parts pineapple juice to one part each white rum and coconut cream, plus lots of ice to blend. We tried it with a few twists--for example used fresh pineapple chunks instead of juice. It's a lot less sweet that way, which is a good or bad thing, depending on what you're looking for in a ridiculous fruity cocktail.And here's the firestarter--2 healthy pinches of ancho chile powder per drink. You could also make a rim for the glasses by mixing sugar and a little of the chile powder and that would be super fancy and yummy. But I have no kitchen, so I didn't do anything cool that would create extra dirty dishes. But the thought behind the en fuego part of these pina coladas was how delicious spiced dried mango and pineapple are--I thought it would translate nicely to a frozen drink and kind of chill out the sweetness a little bit.
Yeah, the blender is on the floor. In the bedroom. No kitchen.
But you know what? We can still enjoy a fruity cocktail. So it's not that bad. Sprinkle a little more chile powder on the top before serving.

Still waiting for my kitchen...

Not having a kitchen while renovation goes on is extremely tough! We spent a weekend away from our demolished house in a beautiful little cabin in Blue Ridge, Georgia...it was just the right place to escape demolition dust and get a chance to cook. No new recipes, just a little weekend fun. We went into Blue Ridge and got peach-jalapeno-pecan jelly to eat with a yummy, buttery Bergenost cheese from Buck's meat and cheese shop. The view was also delicious. The first night we didn't realize how long it would take to drive up the mountain to find our cabin...going about 5 mph around twisty turns makes for a long 10 miles. Gorgeous as it was, after that there was just no way we wanted to turn around and drive back down to the cute little town for dinner, like we had planned. Fortunately we had brought really great sourdough bread and some butter and so we just holed up and made grilled pimento cheese sandwiches. But they ended up being the best grilled pimento cheese sandwiches of all time. Maybe the fact that we were starving had something to do with it. We brought plenty of vinho verde and a bottle of rum from friends, so we were set for that night at least.Some beautiful little potatoes from the remarkably inexpensive Blue Ridge farmers market (with just olive oil, salt and a handful of rosemary I stole from a pot on the main street) went right on the grill...With a perfect ribeye steak and some peppers. I'm so bummed that I'm missing this harvest time of year! Late summer-early fall produce is my favorite. I'll make up for lost kitchen time next year.

Two renovations

You might have noticed that it looks a little bit different around here! The blog has undergone a few changes. And that's not the only thing...the real il piatto kitchen is also in the middle of a renovation. This is what things look like right now:Basically there's a gaping hole where everything used to be in my kitchen. Get ready to see more than a few grilling recipes around here, is what I'm trying to say. I know it's all going to be worth it when the project is done and I have a gorgeous new place to cook...but for now it's pretty hard to see the future through all the dust. In the meantime, I got a nifty new camera so maybe pretty soon the pictures here will be looking better too. Here's my favorite recipe right now: 1.) get your phone 2.) call Cameli's Pizza. It's completely foolproof, works every time.