A Week of Great Food

When my friend Boyd visited this week from Baltimore it become a week of great food.  No recipe-testing this week from this cookbook author.  The kids came over ever day and we feasted.  On Tuesday we started with as authentic an ossobuco all Milanese and risotto alla Milanese as you can get.  I made the veal stock for the risotto the day before and I used my ultra-low simmer setting on my stove so it simmered, barely, for about 8 hours.  Wednesday we had a mixed grill of veal sweetbreads, lamb kidney (oh man, those were good), skirt steak, and homemade Italian sausage that I had frozen about a month ago.  Along with it we had frittedda, that Sicilian dish of artichokes, peas, fava, and scallions that I made in June and my favorite Sicilian eggplant dish, mulinciana alla schebbeci, a kind of eggplant seviche, but much more.  Thursday turned into Mexican night and my girlfriend Michelle and son Seri made a 5-course dinner straight from Rick Bayless's Authentic Mexican cookbook.  We had queso fundido, chipotle chile sauce  for our tacos with chorizo and potatoes and tacos al carbon, plus some guacamole and frijoles charros.  On Friday was a break, but Saturday we had our annual lobsterfest, that wonderfully messy affair on the roof deck, juice squirting everywhere and shells a-flying.  We got 10 two-pound lobsters for $5.95 a pound, can you believe it?  Sunday was oysterfest, 100 Blue Point oysters from Long Island that I had my man fly in for our enjoyment.  We bake 24 wrapped in prosciutto and sauced with a balsamic reduction and the rest we ate raw.  Man what a week.  Lotta beer too.

[photo credits: ossobuco, Clifford A. Wright; lobster: Dailymail.com.uk]