Gray Culinary Adventures

I've always had a weakness for Mexican food and no meal would be complete without those creamy refried beans. You could give me a pot of the stuff with some fresh tortilla chips for dipping and I could pass on the rest of the meal! If your familiar with bean cookery, refried beans just require one easy step after they are cooked soft: mash and add some butter and salt. If you've never tried your hand at dry beans the whole process is very simple and can be a base for a million other dishes (homemade BBQ baked beans for instance, but that's another day). Despite making these a few times and enjoying them far more than anything out of a can I never could make them right. Something was missing that the restaurants were hiding from me. I still yearned for that savory, creamy taste that I couldn't put a finger on. After trying to add more liquid, more butter, more salt, nothing tasted quite the same. The answer? Your not going to like it.....it's bacon drippings (or lard...

Its been a year a a half since we have posted anything despite occasional urgings from you all about what we have been cooking up. Its about time so I'll briefly start with our most recent adventure! After being inspired by a local Italian restaurant in St. Paul last month I (Richard) decided to recreate a wonderful dish we tried: Andouille Sausage Risotto with Parsnips topped with a beautifully seared piece of Sea Bass. For our version I omitted the parsnips (feeling lazy) and had some good quality chorizo on hand instead but it turned out to be pretty close. You simply fry up some kidney bean size pieces of the sausage and add it to some homemade risotto and we quickly seared some Chilean Sea Bass to place on top. Paired with a good Sauvignon Blanc and it was a Tuesday night to remember. If you haven't tried your hand at Risotto before I urge you to give it a shot. Its very simple as long as you carefully follow the procedure until you get a hang of it. We normally just add P...