spice

OH  MY! I missed my blog’s birthday!! I can’t believe SPICE has been up and running since June 2011. It’s been exactly ONE YEAR AND ONE MONTH since my first post. Here’s a cheers to many more to come!

Take a look back at my very first post, I think it’s safe to say my photography has improved a bit but it’s still no where near where I’d like it to be. Happy Saturday friends!!

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Pre-birthday celebrations started this weekend with my parents coming to Memphis! We ate, ate and ate good food, celebrated with friends, and shopped as much as we could fit into one day. After church Sunday, Bowen wanted a home-made tomato soup.

Friday night, mom made the most delicious cheese plate to have a taste before our birthday celebration Friday night. We enjoyed quince jam, honey comb, prosciutto from Italy, parmesan, and aged balsamic. All the left over ingredients made for the perfect soup and sandwich duo. I used the prosciutto and cheeses grilled between two slices of crusty, grain bread as dunking devices for the roasted tomato soup.

Here’s how I did it: slice tomatoes in half and de-seed, toss with extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt and cracked pepper, roast at 500 for 10 or 15 minutes. In the meantime, sauté some garlic (lots of garlic) in olive oil until fragrant, add san marzano whole tomatoes and chicken stock, bring to boil. Once the tomatoes are nice and caramelized from roasting, add them to the soup. Simmer for as long as you can wait, puree half of the soup ( I like mine with some texture) and finish with cream (and fresh basil if you have it).

after about 15 minutes of roasting, the sugars begin to caramelize and the tomatoes becomes even sweeter

halved and de-seed tomatoes, roast on 500 with olive oil, kosher salt and cracked pepper

prosciutto di parma mom brought back from Italy for the panini's

Well I’m headed back to Memphis from another great weekend home. For some reason our weekends tend to start with the party and then be focused around good food. I hope that one day I can cook like my mom. I feel like I’m stealing her thunder posting about the wonderful food we ate at home, but the truth is her food is the best in the world to me, the ingredients, the preparation, the love that goes into each meal; I want people to love my food as much as I love my mom’s. That’ll be a tall order.

My mom picked us up from Anna and Jimmy’s Saturday morning after a long, fun night out and we went straight to paul anthony’s, a speciality food market in Jackson. Mom picked up fresh shrimp, fresh crab claws, and fresh-baked french bread to make shrimp poboys for lunch. We pretended it was the middle of the summer Saturday, it might as well have been with the gorgeous weather we had. Bowen hopped in the freezing cold pool while mom fried shrimp and I made tartar sauce. Mayo, lemon, green onions, a pinch of sugar, relish and a squeeze of mustard made the perfect accompaniment to toasty French bread, just fried, gulf shrimp, crisp romaine and a slice of fresh tomato. Mom made the cocktail sauce with ketchup, lemon, horseradish, worcheshire sauce, salt and crack black.

You’d think this lunch would last us, but after a two-hour nap we were all beginning to talk supper. I had to make a sweet potato dish for a southern food throw down in school Thursday so that was on the menu along with grilled porterhouse(for the boys) and grilled lamb with a Demi glaze (for mom and I). We also had grilled romaine with a blue cheese dressing mom made.

Are y’all exhausted yet from all this good food? I am and it’s not over yet, we had a spread before church this morning. “Touch of grace” biscuits with cherry-chambord butter, mom made, which was divine, absolutely one of my favorite things I’ve ever had. Of course, I’m sitting back here with the extras being temped not to snack the whole way back. I really can’t wait for breakfast tomorrow. I get to take pictures for RSVP tonight at the Memphis Restaurant Association banquet at the Peabody. Hope I get to meet some foodies as excited about cooking as I am:/
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Judging by this picture it was a good weekend (Reed Bowen)
-Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

How blessed I am to have such a godly man for a father leading our family. This was one of the best weekends home celebrating my dad’s 60^th birthday. Full of family, fellowship, food and lots of laugher I was sad to leave and looking forward to being back next weekend for an engagement party.  One of the best parts of the weekend was watching him open his gift this year. Bowen made his dad a case to hold his knives last week and I couldn’t think of a better gift for my dad. I commissioned Bowen to make my dad a “keepsake” box to hold his arrowheads or whatever trinkets he’s found and kept over the years. This turned out better than I could have ever imaged, Bowen has such a gift and it was really sweet to share that with my dad. I would have liked to contribute a wee bit more to the birthday gift but  there wasn’t much for me to do, except suggest a monogram for the glass

Saturday morning birthday celebrations began with a FEAST, as usual. Mom made the most delicious, lightest, lightly sweetened biscuits in the (breakfast) world. They are their very best hot out of the oven, with a smear of homemade plum jam and topped with a  sweet and spicy deer sausage. MMM I brought back all of these delicious components and plan on eating this exact combination until next weekend rolls around. We went to Walker’s for dinner-our favorite and enjoyed more birthday celebrations, champagne (thank you family-Fowlers and Samples!) along with truffled risottos, charred filets, delicate veal, and decadent sauces—finished with a trip to Brewsters and birthday cake at home.

drumroll.....

"touch of grace" biscuits

champagne celebration

a little bit of dress up at the end of the night in mom's OLD dresses

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