Dinner at My Chef Friend's

Today, I had lunch with my chef friend Hamed.  He is the one that is classically trained from FCI, the school in NYC that I had checked out and wanted to go for so bad but couldn't get the timing right.


We had lunch at Matt's at the Market.  Great place with really flavorful food. I was bummed they didn't have the Grilled Cheese Sandwich nor the Tomato Soup, but they reminded me they cook seasonally so they don't have it on the menu, and that it may comeback in the fall.   It makes sense and why they are so good.  I had a Grilled Halibut Sandwich and Hamed had a sandwich of the day which I think was some kind of grilled meat.  We then went to Le Panier for the best Eclairs ever.  The espresso ones are the best.  He told me just the day before, him and his wife Pascale got 16 of them and ate them all.  Crazy!


Anyways, it reminded me a fabulous dinner that they had me and some other friends over for a couple months ago.  His food seem simple but the flavors are amazing and all technically correct.  Everything is always cooked perfectly and presented so well.  Here are some pics below.

Hamed the Chef

These are little Tartines he served first with wine.  This one was carmalized onions and some sort of cheese.

These were made with salted zucchinis and goat cheese and were not cooked at all.  There is a lot of curing vs. cooking these days in the food world.  All the pickling popularity from David Chang's stuff.  This one was delish!

First course was a Red Lentil Soup.  He made this one vegetarian and with water because of me and my sis but it was so good, I couldn't believe he didn't use sort of stock.

Main course was Black Cod flavored with lemon and some spices.  Simple but so good.

The sides were some Glazed Carrots and Boiled Potatoes.  Again, so good!  Carrots weren't too sugary like many glazed carrots and simple boiling of potatoes had that nice "puffy" texture.  

Now, this was Hamed specialty.  It was a Peanut Sauce made with peanut butter, onions, and some spice. It was very spicy.  I've never tasted anything like this.  We ate it like a condiment for the fish and sides.   I need to get the recipe for this and post here.  He really should bottle this stuff.

Update: Hamed gave me the recipe. Yay.  So I had it wrong, this is not the Peanut Sauce.  This is the Onion Peanut Butter Salad.  He did serve the peanut sauce at another time and that looked more like a jar of mustard.  I know, it sounds strange but it's not.  Here are recipes. He didn't give me portions.  :)  But I'm going to take the recipe I can get.  I'll give it a try and take down measurements and repost later.

Onion Peanut Butter Salad

Onions

Peanut Butter

Lemon

Olive Oil

Salt

You slice the onion and let it for a few hours in a salted water, take all the access water out.

Mix with peanut butter, lemon, little olive oil and season.

Peanut Sauce

Hot Green Chili

Peanut Butter

Tomatoes

Garlic

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper,

Blend everything together and there you have it.  :)

This is what it looked like on our plates.

I made desserts of an Apple Spice Cake and Lemon Tart.

Here is the dinner gang.  Soung, Pascale, Marisela, Hamed, Dan, and me.  Good times!