A few meals from this fall

It's been a long time since anything I've cooked has shown up on the blog. Looking back through the archives, the last posting that featured something that I cooked was way back in July. Between moving, vacation, and getting ready for the job market, we haven't had a lot of time to cook and have been eating out a lot. I have been cooking, though. I just haven't been taking pictures or updating the blog. I won't post recipes here since I can't really remember a lot of them at this point, but here are pictures of a couple of the meals I've made this fall.

Earlier in the fall, I was able to take advantage of some of the great farmer's markets in Chicago. There is a weekly market a few blocks from us in Wicker Park, where I was able to get fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn to make a nice gazpacho.

On another trip to the farmers market, I got a bunch of cherry tomatoes, green beans, and fingerling potatoes and used these along with toasted pine nuts, shaved parmesan, and aged balsamic vinegar, and fresh hand cut noodles for a nice pasta dish.

As the weather got colder, I started buying veggies like brussels sprouts and beets. In the picture above, I roasted brussels sprouts and beets. The brussles sprouts were roasted with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. The beets were roasted with olive oil, salt, pepper, and orange zest. I served this with a pork tenderloin that had been brined in a mixture of apple juice, salt, brown sugar, mustard seed, thyme, and bay leaf. The roasted pork loin was dusted with fennel pollen and served with an apple reduction and some couscous.

Since moving back to Chicago, I've also had the opportunity to have a few meals with my sister's family. It's nice to have family in the same city and do family dinners. For one of the meals, I made a tagine with chicken, chickpeas, and apricots. This is a really good dish, so I'll try to post a recipe at some point. I really like this picture of my niece, Midori, waiting patiently for her dinner.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of my shopping in the Fulton Market area where there are some great butchers and fishmongers. Most of the stuff here is wholesale, but they have a few retail outlets. Isaacson and Stein is a great place for seafood and its only about a 5 minute drive from my place. On one of my more recent trips there, I picked up some Chilean Sea Bass.

I marinated it in a sake-miso mixture using the Nobu recipe and served it with crispy sushi rice cakes and seared spinach.