More Fancy (Crab Croquettes and Schmancy Restaurants)

    

 So, cooking with someone and sharing food is a heck of a lot more fun than cooking and eating by yourself.  Also, it's a lot more fun to go out to eat with people than by yourself.  Go figure.
     Since moving to Texas, life has gotten fancy.  I live in an apartment building that wasn't built during WWII and so the paint is fresh, the rooms are spacious, and it doesn't smell weird.  Fantastic!  Also, San Antonio has fancier restaurants than I am used to (I am used to Pablo's quesadillas) so bf and I are getting all sorts of ideas for fancy food that we want to make.  Just last weekend, for instance, we made homemade cheesecake out of the "Ad Hoc at Home" cookbook by Thomas Keller with from-scratch raspberry sauce made from fresh raspberries!  I did not take pictures of this cheesecake so you will have to just take my word that it was delicious.
     A couple weeks ago, we went with a group of people to a fancy pants restaurant called Bin 555 (http://www.bin555.com/).  I'll just tell you what we ate.  Bf and I ordered an appetizer of crab croquettes with lemon aioli sauce (more on this later).  Both of us ordered duck confit and cauliflower gruyere gratin as our main meal.  Let me just take a moment to say that I love duck.  I love the crispy skin and the rich meat and whatever the grainy sugary stuff and oniony things that was served with taste and feel in my mouth.  That said, I have looked at recipes for duck confit.  It looks expensive.  I probably will not be making it any time soon.  We finished off dinner with a Nutella tart which was amazingly chocolaty and rich and I WILL be trying to make that someday.  We drank a table wine (Recuerde), but I honestly know nothing about wine so I can't really get into too much detail.  We liked it!  I don't remember what the rest of the table got as main courses but one person ordered both bone marrow and grilled cheese as his appetizers.  Someday, I shall try bone marrow.  Every time I see it my mouth waters.  I did get to the try the grilled cheese and HOLY COW I WANT TO EAT THESE EVERY DAY.  They're simple enough.  Little baguette looking things with goat cheese and jam.  I WILL MAKE THESE.
     Back to the crab croquettes.  .  They are crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside and the aioli was delightfully zesty.  Bf absolutely loved them.  He has been talking about making them every since.  And today we did.  And in the process used three fry pans, one sauce pain, and a ton of plates, bowls, and utensils.  Worth it.
Here's a site with the recipe we used!  We got our recipe from "Izakaya:  the Japanese Pub Cookbook," but so did the author of this blog.  Read their blog and enjoy the recipe! http://chubbyhubby.net/blog/?p=571  We also made lemon aioli.  Neither of us liked it so I won't include the recipe for that.  We ended up dipping our crab croquettes in the ginger dressing that we used on the spinach salad.  Speaking of ginger dressing....here's the recipe for that, too!  Enjoy! http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/10/Benihana-Ginger-Salad-Dressing75170.shtml