#9: A Caribbean Holiday

Wow, where has the time gone?  I feel like it just became 2015 and now it's March!  With the snowpack finally gone here in the DC area, I thought it was high time to get back on the blog horse and bring this back to life.  In late December, we had our 9th dinner with some very good and close friends of ours.  It wasn't a true Pick Two in that they were visiting from San Francisco so we had to add a few folks to the table as well, so we invited our close friends Joe and Javi (previous You Pick Two attendees)to join them at the table.  It was a fun and relaxing way to wind down the holiday season.  At that point, we were all quite tired of traditional holiday food, so I took a gamble and went with a pan-Caribbean menu.  End result was some delicious food and a new favorite cocktail, the Hemingway daiquiri.

Before we get to the guests, let me first talk about the drink a bit.  As some of you may know, I have been doing some photography work for Edible DC magazine.  It's an elegant publication that I am thrilled to contribute to... you can find them at www.edibledc.com - please check it out if you haven't.  I did some photography for a story discussing a "boozy" book club that meets once a month in DC to discuss the art, craft, and history of cocktails.  The month I covered featured a special guest author who wrote a book about Ernest Hemingway and his history with cocktails and such.  I had heard of a Hemingway daiquiri before, but never made it.  After listening to the group discussion, I was determined to make it and thought it would be a nice accompaniment to our tropical menu.  It contains fresh fruit juices, maraschino liquor, and rum.  It's delicious, we plan to make over the warm summer months.

Our main guests were Matt and Kate King Gubiotti.  Kevin worked with Matt way back in the day at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and both went to GW law school.  Pretty soon after we met Matt, he began dating Kate.  They soon moved to San Francisco, got married, and had a beautiful baby boy.  Matt currently works for Google and Kate went to pastry school and is a fantastic baker and home cook (I still use her ranch dressing recipe every summer).  I have traveled out to the Bay area and Sacramento for work a few times over the past few years and they frankly are a home away from home for me out there.  They always have me over a comforting, delicious home-cooked meal and some great wine and conversation.  After a long week away from home, it's just about the nicest thing you can do for someone in my opinion and I am thankful for their hospitality and friendship.  Kate also used to work at Omnivore Books, a bookstore in San Francisco specializing in new, antiquarian, and collectible books on food and drink.  So it's really nice for me because Kate and I can talk food for hours and I don't have many friends that enjoy those types of conversations.

They brought Kate's brother Jimmy.  Kate grew up in the Northern Virginia area and her parents still live here.  Jimmy also grew up here but has since moved on to pursue his acting/writing/teaching career in the Big Apple.  It's a tough but rewarding industry, from what I understand, and Jimmy has enjoyed some pretty good success early on in his career.  In fact, a play he co-wrote with some friends was nominated (and won) a GLAAD media award.  We talked with him about the play, the award, and in general about stage acting and playwriting, which was really interesting.  It's a world I know very little about, except how competitive and tough it can be to break through.

It was also great again to have our friends Joe and Javier come back to our You Pick Two table.  We recently took a trip to Puerto Rico with them and had a really fun and memorable time.  We met some of Javi's family and just relaxed, ate, and drank our way through San Juan.  It will serve as the inspiration for an upcoming You Pick Two.

For the meal, you can take a look at the menu below but the real standout of the meal was the empanadas appetizer.  The jerk chicken and rice and peas are Nigella recipes I have always wanted to try and they came out really well.  Although, I think next time I would use a cut up chicken rather than just chicken breast.  The rice and peas were outstanding and I have made it since then, it's a great recipe and easy to make.  The dessert was an Alton Brown recipe that I adapted a bit.  I have never made tres leches cake before and this was a good one.  Until then, hope everyone is enjoying the start of spring!

MENU

A Caribbean Holiday

December 27, 2014

Cocktail

Hemingway daiquiri

White rum, maraschino liquor, lime, grapefruit

Appetizer

Beef empanadas (Picadillo)

Ground beef, raisins, olives, tomato sauce

Main

Jerk chicken

Chicken breast, ground chiles, spices

Rice and peas

White rice, pigeon peas, coconut milk

Sweet

Tres leches cake

Homemade yellow cake soaked in sweetened milk mixture, whipped cream

Guests

Matt and Kate King Gubiotti

Jimmy King

Joe Kuehne and Javier Aquino