Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs

with olives, lemon, and fennel

Adapted from “Ad Hoc at Home” by Thomas Keller with Dave Cruz

Back in Easter, I got the “Ad Hoc at Home” cookbook from Mr. Y2K, before our dinner at Ad Hoc later that day .  We decided to try out a recipe from it and we mutually agreed on this recipe.  You can find the ingredients and directions here from the LATimes.

This was a simple recipe and I surprisingly enjoyed the fat from the chicken.  And, as always, I loved the salty olives (although I substituted the Ascolane with Queens.)

For dessert….

TOFU CHEESECAKE (adapted from Kitchen-Em’s blog)!!!  The texture wasn’t the same  as regular cheesecake, but definitely had the cheesecakey taste.  It was also a no-bake recipe.  This is a keeper if you’re looking for a less caloric cheesecake.  The only change I made was reducing the amount of gelatin to 2 tsp.  I’m thinking of reducing it even further to only 1 tsp to get the texture I’d like.

I topped the cheesecake with an almond macaron with vanilla swiss meringue butter cream, blackberries, an almond dipped in carmelized sugar, and spun sugar.  It’s not the prettiest decoration, but I had a bunch of these random items around.

Yes, I made more macarons…mac attack!

Easter Book Hunting + Ad Hoc

Instead of hunting for eggs, I was hunting for books this past Easter weekend…books that were hidden right under my nose.  Someone’s sneaky-sneaky!  These were what I found:

books galore

And it so happened that we were going to eat at Ad Hoc on Saturday….

so I got this:

autograph of Chef David Cruz

Apparently, Chef David Cruz still thinks we’re in March.. LOL.  Regardless, I’m grateful he signed it!    ^___^

simple sign...love it

The food was okay.  Here was the menu:

Menu for 4/3/10

The duck breast was pretty large, but was really tough to cut.  I got a nice arm workout trying to cut it into pieces.  Is this normal of duck breast?

Liberty duck breast + farro

The farro however was mighty tasty, especially with the tangerine.

broiche + apple butter + tarentaise

The brioche was definitely a rich man’s brioche – the butter was literally oozing out of it and the apple butter helped cut the fatty-ness.  Tarentaise is probably the hardest cheese I’ve ever had.  Not really a favorite of mine.

tres leches cake + coffee

The dinner however end well with the tres leches cake.  We ordered coffee as well and it paired really nicely with the sweetness of the cake.  YUM.