Grillfest Memorial Day

In yet another bid to make everyones mouth water, I just thought I would fill you all in on what was grilled and served at the Shogun manor Sunday Evening.

Mose got us going with the first course:
Chicken skewered and encrusted with Lavender and Pecan, served with a fantastic Apricot Rhubarb Chutney.
On the side, he provided us a very nice Bacon Celery Seed Coleslaw.

For those of you that would like to get involved with lavender cookery, this is where mose got his chicken ideas:
the Lavender Cookbook

Next up was my culinary classmate Greg with both a beef and a pork tenderloin marinated in citrus and wine, grilled, and served up medium rare. Awesome! Been a while since I have had beef tenderloin. Greg did a good job of adding enough flavor to prevent the ultra tender cut from being flavorless. The Tenderloin was easily regarded as the best dish of the evening.

In addition to the above, I added a cucumber salad (yea, same one I have described before, because I make it every. single. time. I cook, basically.) I also did a potato salad. How did I like it? I didn’t think much of it, but some of the folks we had over thought it was awesome. Come on, folks, it was potato salad! heh. Hey, if they liked it, I can make it again: just baby reds with capers, dill pickles and some fresh tarragon. Must have been the capers… people really like them capers.

Lastly, I slow cooked a “Balinese Style” pork shoulder that turned out pretty good. The Balinese thing basically meant it was coated and stuffed with a fluorescent yellow Lemongrass-Galengal paste, and had some heat. The Apricot Rhubarb Chutney mose made was good on this. IN fact, the sweetness of the rhubarb almost read like a tamarind sauce.

Next time, we are doing mexican. Should be interesting! Maybe we will remember the camera.

-shogunmoon

All updated and fixed. Carry on!

Ok, for the record, the three buck shiraz is atrocious. It tastes exactly like I poored it out of a bag of Franzia, which happens to be what the stuff really is.

Shogunmoon needs a better scoop then this.

Note: This applies to the Shiraz only… the cab is “drinkable” in the loosest usage of the term.

Well well well! We have finally arrived as a full fledged city! In addition to such notable achievements as our very first light-rail train, our very first Wolfgang Puck franchise, and our very own Tiffany, we can now count among our local establishments our very first Trader Joe’s! Yay!!! Go Minneapolis/Saint Paul!

Oh wait… go Saint Louis Park. I suppose, to be fair, the Tiffany is in Edina. Hey, what can you do. SLP, you may have Trader Joe’s, but we got a shiny new library! That’s right, don’t get cocky.

Ahem.

Anyhow, though I am sure I will eventually go into the grocery store and see what’s what, my first concern is naturally to investigate the phenomenon known as “Two Buck Chuck.” For those of you who don’t know and/or give a damn, Two Buck Chuck is the legendary $2 bottle of wine available at Trader Joe’s locations across the nation. Course, every state has it’s own prices due to local and state tax variances, the prices vary from the california standard $2 to ohio, where it is $3.39 or something. Here in minnesota, we get it for $3 a bottle. Thusly, I shall dub it as Three Buck Chuck. Yea, that’s right, shogunmoon, marketing genius.

So, blah blah blah. Trader Joe’s, having had its grand opening today, was ballistic. Sometimes the fact that this puritanical state has deemed us unready for the responsibility of being able to shop for wine and groceries at the same time turns out to be a good thing… the lines were much shorter in the little booze annex.

The booze area has a somewhat typical selection of beers, peppered with several Trader Joe’s branded items, such as the house brewed Vienna Style Lager Amber Lager - we picked up a six-pack while we were there. Sipping one now, I have to say it tastes ok. It is hardly a Two Hearted Ale or a Bohemia, or even a Stella Artois, but not too shabby, and not too expensive.

And, the wine. How about that Three Buck Chuck, anyway? Joe’s had five varieties on display, Merlot, Cab, Sauvignon Blanc, Chard, and a Shiraz. All for $3. I grabbed the Sauvignon Blanc, a cab, and a shiraz. Hey, variety is the spice of life, right? Out comes the shogun special rabbit ear corkscrew. First up, the Cab.

Turns out, it is actually drinkable. Would I say it tastes good? Not exactly good. But, it does not have that ultra sweetened taste of rotgut wine known around the country as the flavor of bad hangovers. Unsure of how to describe it, I turned to the following description from Ben Giliberti of the Washington Post:

What’s up with Two Buck Chuck?

Anyhow, what this guy says sums it up. Basically, quality wine it ain’t. However, what they have done is leave out all the added sugar, leaving you with nice dry wine at $3 a bottle. Is it worth the $3? To me, it is, but with one caveat- I am not a serious oenophile. I do my best, and I love good wine, but I can’t buy a $10-$15 dollar bottle of wine every-night, that is for sure. Even the vastly superior Tempranillo’s I have been drinking lately usually cost around $7, double the price.

I will let you know tomorrow if I end up with a splitting headache.

-shogunmoon

Trader Joe’s
Saint Louis Park

Sometimes fate conspires to bring you to someplace you may not think of otherwise. I few Sundays back, Christie and I were looking for a nice little meal. Thing is, not a lot in Northeast is open Sunday nights. After much hangry deliberation, an idea occurred to me: Muffuletta! It’s a place that is close-ish to our house, but not in a neighborhood we generally think of visiting, beautiful Saint Anthony Park. As an added bonus, the joint has a nice large patio, and this was one those nice pre-mosquito season days that practically beg one to either grill or eat outside somewhere.

Anyway, it turned out to be an awesome experience. First of all, similar to Restaurant Alma, Muffuletta sports a rad small prix fixe called Sunday Night Supper. Starter, entree and dessert for a scant $20. Pretty great. The first surprise was when the waitress brought out a perfect little amuse bouche (’amuse the mouth’- thank you Top Chef), which was a crispy homemade flatbread topped with salmon mousse, just the thing to start the evening. First we ordered bleu cheese and yam croquettes, which were deep fried, sweet, salty and tangy. I took advantage of the Sunday special and ended up with a great looking watermelon and cucumber salad (Yum!), a stuffed chicken breast, and a fantastic flourless chocolate torte. Christie went a la carte, and had a decadent crab puff pastry deal, in addition to having a bowl of the very tasty signature beer cheese soup (and sharing the torte, natch). It was a few weeks ago, so I am loose on the details, but we both have very fond memories - it really feels like one of the best dining experiences we’ve had in awhile. Not just the food, but the attentive but not cloying service, the charming deck and the perfect weather all made it an exceptional experience. And there you have it. Sunday night supper… superior!

In Other News:
So, my first post in a while… I have time again now that my semester just ended. As I am sure my loyal readers (Hi, Mom!) are dying to know, how well did I do? Did they flunk me out due to my lackluster chops in the bakeshop? Hell no! I walk away from semester one with four A’s, one B, and my ServSave sanitation certificate. Woohoo!

-shogunmoon

http://www.muffuletta.com/

Milton Square
2260 Como Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55108
651-644-9116

Sweet jebus, somebody has to update this blog, and I guess it’s going to be me: Shogunmoon came home today with his latest creation from culinary school. He’s been super cranky about his latest class, which is all about the baking ( and which may explain his lack of posting- pastry drains the inspiration. Or something). Still, today he brought home an absolutely beautiful cake- two layers. fancy frosting, the whole deal. Apparently the challenge in this week’s class was frosting technique, and for all the bad mouthing of baked goods he’s done in the last 6 weeks, he nailed it. The delicious yellow butter cake was topped with a tableau of perfectly formed pink roses, a swirly blue border, and the final Moon touch: a tiny blue skull and the words, ‘Ahoy Matey!’ Cake pirates rejoice, finally you can have sugar roses with your skulls!