The brother's Grube kitchen

Last night my youngest brother Tay came over and we cooked a meal together. It was something that we had been talking about for a while, especially since he got a job working in the kitchen of a local restaurant called Rockwell's. So Tay, Mel, and I had a nice meal on a Saturday night watching football. Below is a sampling of what we made.

We started with my patatas bravas with garlic aioli. I won't go into too much detail about them because I have already covered them in an earlier post or two. Basically they are fried potatoes tossed in a spice mixture and served with the garlic aioli which really compliments the potatoes. This was our starter.

This was probably the star of the night. I call it a deconstructed paella. I started by making the broth. I put chicken stock in a sauce pan with a lot of garlic, onion, tomato, a half of an anaheim chili pepper, and saffron and let it reduce a long time. Basically what came out may be one of the single best components to a dish I have ever created. And the only word that Tay or myself could come up with to describe it was "sexy." I cooked some arborio rice so that it was al dente and somewhat stiff, as opposed to a risotto which is creamier. This was cooked in chicken stock. I then browned chorizo in a pan so that it became crispy and then added chicken to the same pan to help give the chicken some more flavor. I also fried up some chicken skin until it was crispy and delicious for a textural contrast to the rest of the dish. It was finished with some finely sliced green onion. All the flavors of a chicken and chorizo paella present, without cooking it in the traditional way. I am definitely doing this again so I can refine it and make it better. But for just pulling it out of my head and putting it on a plate for the first time it came out great.

To finish it all off, Tay made this apple chutney and brie on a baguette. He diced up some granny smith apples, red onion, and some anaheim chili peppers and cooked them down with some butter and added red wine vinegar to it. He also spiced it with some cinnamon and added some brown sugar to it as well. He buttered and toasted the baguette, added a slice of brie and threw it under the broiler for a minute to melt the brie. He then topped it with the chutney and garnished with a thin slice of apple. We had the first bite and it was good. The chutney was a little on the sweet side, but all in all it was a good finish to the meal. However, I tried my second with the slice and apple, and it completely changed the dish for the better. The freshness of the apple, which was tart and slightly bitter, mellowed the sweetness of the chutney, highlighted the taste of the brie, and punctuated the baguette. It was like listening to a song with one of the instruments missing. It might sound ok. But then the missing piece is added and it is a new, better experience. We all agreed the apple slice made the dish that much better. It went from a good ending to a great ending for the meal.