This week’s lunch is rigatoni with tomatoes and mozzarella, as seen in the June 2004 issue of Everyday Food and on the PBS series Everyday Food. I stuck with the recipe except to substitute fresh basil (yay, Mom) for the fresh oregano.
Points per serving: 13 (Calculated using the nutrition stats in the June 2004 Everyday Food. I have every issue. )
Review: Delicious freshly made; delicious cold the next day. Portion size is gargantuan, so next time I will cut in half. And take a better photo of the freshly made pasta, not a mediocre photo on my iPhone in my cubicle the next day.
In 1987 I was one of 5 grand prize winners of the Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese “Hall of Fame” Recipe contest. What follows is an account of how it happened.
My wife and I are coupon clippers. You know, people who spend most of Sunday sprawled on the livingroom floor, poring over advertising supplements in search of “bargains”. That’s where the entire episode began. On the livingroom floor.
I had just finished eviserating the Sunday paper and removed the few coupons we could use. It’s amazing how many coupons you find for stuff you never use. Anyway, I had completed the operation and was gathering the remains of the paper for recycling when Ana, my wife, stopped me. “Honey, did you see this?” she asked, waving a page from the paper. It was a contest announcement — “Kraft Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese “Hall of Fame” Recipe Contest”
“So,” I replied, frowning at the page in her hand.
“Wasn’t the chicken you prepared last week made with cream cheese?” I could tell by her expression what was coming.
“That chicken was a fluke, a “happy accident”, I pointed out. “Besides, there’s no recipe. I made it up as I went along.”
“So, make one up,” she countered.
“Yeah. Right,” was my brilliant retort as I carried the paper remnants to the recycling bin.
Of the two types of cooks in the world, the “classic” type who always follow a recipe so closely you’d swear it involved recombinant DNA, and the “slap-dash” type who doesn’t own a cookbook, wouldn’t know a recipe from a nursery rhyme and simply tosses whatever is available into pot or pan and hopes for the best, I fall squarely into the latter grouping. When I get an idea, I rummage for ingredients, substituting with abandon and then it’s “Katie bar the door!”, as my mother used to say. Even I don’t know how its going to turn out.
The chicken dish Ana referred to was a something-less-than-faithful recreation of a dish my mother prepared years ago. I had elected to “recreate” Mom’s recipe for an upcoming dinner with some friends.
As the appointed time for dinner approached, I began to rummage around the kitchen in search of ingredients. As I neglected to do any advance shopping, the search netted very little in the way of ingredients. Onions, some less-than-fresh mushrooms, a forgotten pepper, chicken breasts, butter, cream cheese, a few disparate spices and a package of pasta were all I could come up with. While Ana repaired to the bedroom to dress for dinner, I popped the top on a can of Coors and considered dinner possibilities.
As I sat ruminating over how to assemble the collected ingredients into a passable dinner, Ana’s voice “wafted” from the bedroom. “Dinner is in one hour,” she called. “I don’t smell any good smells coming from the kitchen.”
That was my cue to stop cogitating and start cooking. I grabbed a knife, sliced mushrooms, onions and pepper and pulled the skin from the chicken breasts and cut them into strips. Butter went into a large saute pan, more went into a saucepan. Heat applied to both began the cooking process. I cut the cream cheese into chunks and added it to the butter in the saucepan. It was cheese, after all, and cheese melts.
The chicken and vegetables were simmering nicely but something was missing. I grabbed some spices; oregano, basil and marjoram, I think, and tossed them into the mixture. Ana would definitely smell something from the kitchen now. I put a pot of water on another burner, added salt and oil, turned up the heat and waited for the water to boil. Now it was time to turn my attention to my “sauce”.
The cream cheese was indeed melting, but a couple of stirs resulted in something resembling badly curdled cream. It definitely needed “something”. I took a sip of my beer and . . .Wait a minute! I splashed some of the beer into the saucepan and attacked the mixture with a wire whisk. The “sauce” began to smooth out. A splash more and it really began to look like a sauce. I lowered the heat under the various pots and pans and went to dress for dinner. It was beginning to look as though I was going to pull this thing off.
Guests are usually complimentary when it comes to a free meal and ours were no exception. Requests for recipe copies were gently turned away with “It’s just something I threw together.” It was true but no one believed it. Eventually, I was persuaded to provide copies of the “recipe” as soon as possible. I promptly erased the matter from my mind until that Sunday, when Ana showed me the contest announcement and reminded me of my promise.
“You might as well make up a recipe,” she continued upon my return from the recycling bin. “You did promise a copy to Claudia, you know.” A couple of days later I managed to produce a list of ingredients and instructions approximating a recipe and gave it to Ana to copy.
Two months later I answered a knock at the door and was greeted by a Federal Express deliveryman. “Please sign here”, he said, extending a clipboard. I signed where instructed and accepted the envelope with the return address, “Kraft Foods”. Ana had evidently submitted my “recipe” to the contest.
Did I? Could I have? Nah! It wasn’t possible. It’s probably just a letter thanking me for my entry. I dropped the unopened envelope on my desk and lowered myself into a chair, determined to finish watching the ballgame the delivery had interrupted. Still, the envelope distracted me. If all it is is a “Thank You” letter, why not open it? I was still pondering the contents of the unopened envelope when Ana entered the room.
“What’s that?”
“A Federal Express package from Kraft Foods.”
She almost choked on the coffee she was sipping. “Kraft Foods?” Coffee splashed from the mug as she reached for the envelope. I beat her to it.
“Open it! Open it!” she squealed, coffee sputtering over her chin.
“Okay, okay,” I said, tearing the zip-strip from the envelope. A single, typewritten page was inside.
“Dear Stephen Thomas, I am very pleased to inform you that your recipe, Sauteed Chicken with Philly Cream Sauce, was selected as one of five Grand Prize Winners in this year’s Kraft Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese “Hall of Fame” Recipe Contest. . .”
I stopped reading. There was more about prizes, a trip to San Francisco, awards banquets, spending money, etc. But all I truly remember about that moment was Ana saying, “Not bad for something you just threw together!”
Like many men I know, my dad throws a huge dollop of improvisation into just about everything he cooks. Especially when he makes barbecue sauce.
He gets a twinkle in his eye and a little extra pep in his step as he bounces about the kitchen, grabbing honey from the pantry, an orange from the fruit bowl, vanilla extract and peppercorns from the spice cabinet, etc… If the spirit moves him and the season is right, he’ll run out to his well-tended garden to grab a handful of jalapeno peppers to heat things up. It’s obvious that he loves the ritual of it all: Add a dash of something. Stir. Taste (while staring at the ceiling as if the recipe is up there). Repeat. Who needs measuring cups/spoons?
And, to “balance it out,” a fair amount of beer always ends up in the pot. And even though it’s always a little different each time, the result is always fabulous, and better than the last batch he made.
I know some guys who would put beer in a cheesecake if they thought they could get away with it. (And, apparently, you can.) I would think brand managers would have been huddled around conference room tables, planning to launch a line of beer-flavored foods long before now. The stuff wouldn’t even have to taste like beer. I have a hunch that, for many beer lovers, just knowing it’s in there is comfort enough.
What do you love to cook/eat that just doesn’t taste right without a splash or a pint (or more) of beer stirred into it?
Photo courtesy of www.freefoto.com
With the heavy rains of the last several days, some of the garden produce “got away from me,” as my Granddady would say.
I didn’t get to harvest much. I didn’t want to touch the beans while they were wet, for fear of spreading disease, although I did rescue a whole bunch of drying seed pods when it looked like mold was attacking my precious heritage. F. has gone out to pluck the occasional cucumber. (We leave them on the vine because cukes like all the water they can get. I’m really wondering if you could ever overdo the watering with cucumber vines?) And we had okra and tomatoes and eggplant and peppers already in the house, not to mention corn and beans from the CSA pickup last week.
Some tomato plants fell right over in the rain: lovely ‘Juliette’, who produces grape tomatoes about four times the size of grocery store versions, somehow broke a wire of her tomato cage and sent stems sprawling through the lawn, where the tomatoes got red and overripe seemingly within hours, and I found them split and nibbled by birds next morning. She has proved herself to be an exceptionally vigorous hybrid, and one I highly recommend for this climate. But still, it seems a bit of an overkill to bust right through metal.
A few sunflowers flopped their heavy heads to the ground or ended up leaning on neighbors. It’s kind of charming, like they’re inebriated from so much water.
And several serranos, which were green early in the week, turned into fiery beacons in the landscape and developed cracks. How this happens, apparently, is that the pepper has assumed its final size and shape and is ready to ripen (turn red – although we actually prefer them dark green) when the rain comes pouring down and the excess water has nowhere to go. The outer skin is too solid to stretch.
Baby serrano peppers won’t crack, but take in the moisture to grow much bigger before assuming their final form. (And by the way, I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Some of the smallest ones, produced in the driest weather, have had the zingiest heat and most exceptional flavor.)
But I’m still planning on using my cracked serranos. I’m going to roast them in the oven and then peel off their skins and chop them small and make salsa. Hot, the way F. likes it. One lesson I’ve learned from my Victory Garden over and over is that the look of the produce may have absolutely no connection to the taste and that it is a crime to waste good food simply because of a little blemish. I knew that lesson from my childhood, but I’d succumbed to the American supermarket mentality in recent years. The reality of organic gardening has re-educated not just my palate and my conscience, but my vision.
I just have to remember to go pick up some cilantro at the store. Mine has all gone to seed. Soon to be cumin seed for my spice rack, of course. Nature doesn’t waste a thing, and I’m trying not to, either.
I spent some time this evening surfing the internet, searching for information about a television show called “At Home with Helen Crocker”, or maybe “The Helen Crocker Cooking Show” that I remember from my childhood. I managed to find two or three references to Helen and her show, but details were vague. What I remember about Helen Crocker was that mom and I watched her on T.V. in a time when television shows were black and white and we had the choice of two channels for our viewing pleasure.
The recipe I’m including in today’s post is one that mom copied down from Helen Crocker’s television show, hence the name “Helen Crocker Squares”. Because this recipe contains bright red and green glacé cherries, mom usually included them in her pre-Christmas baking spree, along with her dark and light fruit cakes, mincemeat and pumpkin pies, and shortbread cookies. Quick and easy to make, these squares don’t even need to be baked; just cover them and store in the refrigerator.
Thanks, Helen Crocker, for introducing mom to these squares, and thanks, mom, for introducing these squares to your family.
Helen Crocker Squares
30 graham wafers crushed fine
30 large marshmallows cut small
½ lb. Red and green glace cherries cut small
½ cup chopped nuts
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
Directions
Mix altogether. Grease 8” x 8” pan with butter. Sprinkle bottom of pan with desiccated cocoanut. Press in mixture. Sprinkle cocoanut on top. Place in refrigerator until firm. Cut in squares. Enjoy.
Despite my penchant for making amazing challah by hand, I put a bread machine on our wedding registry…and wouldn’t you know, someone bought it!
It sat unopened in the box for the last few months until this week when I started to seriously consider using it to make pizza dough. I decided to open the box today and read some of the recipes. They seemed pretty easy and there was even a recipe for challah! Since I’m feeling a little sick (shhh don’t tell McDreamy), and tired, I thought, “why not? let’s give it a try!”.
The recipe they include is not dis-similar to the recipe I use, though they seem to call for less sugar and salt then I use…theirs also wants you to use butter (I substituted oil to make it paerve). According to their recipe, once you dump all the ingredients in and push a few buttons, your challah gets mixed, kneaded, will rise and bake all in the machine without you having to do anything! The downside I guess is that it doesn’t come out as a braided challah and instead is in loaf form (although theoretically I guess you could stop the cycle after it rises and braid it and bake it in the oven, but then that kind of defeats the point right??)….
One very cool feature of this bread machine is a little window that allows you to watch as your ingredients get mixed, your bread rises and gets baked.
This bread maker also has beeping alerts that reminds you when it’s time to add “mix-ins”…since we had some raisins handy, I decided to dump some in during the “mix-in” cycle…this will be my first raisin challah!!!
Since I have never used a bread machine before, I proceeded with caution and stuck to their basic recipe which was included. Next time I think I might give my personal Balebusta recipe a spin a see how it comes out.
Overall I have been impressed by this bread maker in regards to its construction and ease of use…although for someone who has only ever made bread the old fashioned way (by hand, from scratch), it’s probably pretty easy to impress me when I don’t have to do any work but dump some ingredients into a pan and press a button.
The bread is rising as we speak and should be done around 3pm EST…I will update to add a photo and of course, tomorrow night I will update with the taste-test review from McDreamy.
This was the birthday cake I made for my grandmother a few weeks ago. Like the Japanese style strawberry short cake, this is 2 layers of sponge cake with cream chantilly (whipped cream) as frosting. The crumbs are crushed amaretti cookies.
Amaretti blueberry shortcake
sponge cake:
6 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract + 1/2 tsp almond extract (or just 1 tsp of amaretto)
Preheat oven to 350. Beat eggs and sugar till very pale yellow and is 3-4 times the original volume using a mixer. Cut parchment paper into circles to fit two 8in round cake pans (fold the paper in halves till you can’t anymore and snip the ends to fit). Oil pan with the parchment thoroughly otherwise it’d be hard to bet the bottom out of the pan. Sift in flour and baking powder, fold with large metal spoon and add the vanilla while folding. When fully incorporated pour into pans and bake for 25mins. Check the other cake post for more images.
Beat cream and sugar till it forms soft peaks, add extracts and beat a little more. Put away till cake is completely cooled.
When cakes are cooled peel off the parchment paper, spread on apricot preserve, cover layer with blueberries then spread the whipped cream over. Put on the next cake layer, and thin coat of preserve. Frost cake with the remaining cream.
Crush about 8 or 9 amaretti cookies in either a food processor or in just a freezer bag with something heavy. To get the crumbs on the cake you will need either a cake stand or a second person holding the plate of cake on an angle over a large baking sheet to catch run off.
Top with any remaining blueberries. If you don’t have amaretti cookies, you can just crush up anything from nilla wafers to ginger snaps or graham crackers.
1 pound ground beef
1 large onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 jar (16 ounces) Pace® Picante Sauce
1 can (about 15 ounces) red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
6 flour tortillas (6-inch), cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Directions:
Cook the beef and onion in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until the beef is well browned, stirring to break up the meat. Pour off any fat.
Stir in the picante sauce, beans and tortillas and heat to a boil. Reduce the heat to low. Cook for 5 minutes or until the mixture is hot and bubbling, stirring often. Top with the cheese.
The quickfire challenge tonight involved rolling the die and whatever number you roll is the amount of ingredients you get to use (excluding oil, salt, and pepper as options). Michael V, one of the two brother competing against one another, wins. His brother, unfortunately, is in the bottom 2. Guest judge was Todd English.
When the challenge itself is presented I am immediately annoyed by lezzie Ashley bemoaning the fact that 3 contestants are gay and have no rights to marry but have been asked to do essentially a wedding challenge. This is a goddamn TV show where you’re competing for cash prizes and an opportunity to open your own restaurant — do we really have to take away from all of that while you bitch that you’re not allowed equal rights? I understand the argument, I just don’t think it holds merit on a reality TV show like Top Chef Las Vegas. It’s a cooking show, people. Not a political platform.
The challenge is to cater bachelor/bachelorette parties. Female chefs cook for the bachelor party and the men for the bachelorette. I think the women have a broader criteria to work with as the groom is not nearly as specific, but they are looking at partnering food with the couple’s 3 favorite shots: a grapefruit ginger beer combo, a tequila shot, and a “Golden Delicious” sweet one. The gay man is put in charge of flowers, but I don’t see him complaining about it unlike the angry lesbian. After hearing judge’s critiques, I’m putting my poker chips on the men.
The team that wins doesn’t have to send anyone home. Right away, you know the guys have it because Padma calls out four of them as the winning chefs. Eli did a tuna tartar paired with Moscow Mule, Brian a play on chips and guacamole, Hector a tofu ceviche, and Michael a sorbet. It comes down to the brothers and Brian wins, meaning between the two they swept the episode.
Jessie’s in the bottom 2 again, and is criticized for a watered-down dish. She was also bottom 2 last challenge and in the quickfire, so things aren’t going well for her. Eve also did a shrimp dish that didn’t pair well with her shot and Preeti a tuna and eggplant with limp leaves underneath. Ashley made one great dish but was ripped for making a second dish that wasn’t necessary and didn’t taste good. Bottom line, one of the women is going home. Surprisingly, it’s Eve and I thought Jessie was a no-brainer since she has yet to perform. Eve’s dish must have been really bad.
I look forward to wittling down the number of contestants to separate the great from the mediocre and seeing some more exciting stuff. Let’s hope there is some drama to be had!
We made this in class last week and I was looking for a way to make it my own. Normally, this potato would be cooked with a roast but I have a few friends that are vegetarian so I wanted them to partake in the meal so I roasted this potato with a mirepoix towards the end of cooking the potato. This process takes a little over an hour and involves cutting the potato into a large tourner cut. I needed to practice this cut so ta-da, you get tourner cut potatoes!
Heat up the cast iron pan on the top of the stove then pour in some clarified butter
Place the potatoes in the pan and fry each side until golden brown
Place the entire pan in the oven and cook for 45 minutes to an hour at 350F
20 minutes before being done place in the mirepoix in the pan with some salt and pepper
The potatoes are done when you poke the potato with a knife and it goes through easily. The potato will have a nice crispy crust on the outside and on the inside it will have the texture of a mashed potato.
When foodie friends come to dinner, it’s stressful. For instance … very foolishly I had, about a year ago, boasted of my crème brulée to a friend whose wife is a superb cook and now they were coming to dinner … here at last was my chance to perform. So, made it the night beforehand, but wasn’t happy. It seemed to take a very long time in the oven to set, and I just knew it was overcooked. So the next morning decided I’d try again – though quite what I’m going to do with 16 egg whites, I don’t know! But first, I also knew, I needed a brulée torch. Had a very organised car trip planned … could hit three shops in reasonably close vicinity & be home within the hour. Hah! Previously I’d used a gas torch from the garage for brulée -ing … but did the first, or the second hardware store have any in stock? Of course not. Eventually, at the other end of the city, found several different types, some of industrial bulk & clearly not suitable. So I dithered. And eventually ended up at Moore Wilson’s, where they had explicitly labeled brulée torches. Double the price of the hardware store, but at least I knew it was designed for the purpose. Hmm. Adequate at best, I discovered that evening. Anyway, home to make a second dish of custard for the brulée … even this, I thought, a little over-cooked and a tad too sweet … probably shouldn’t have replaced the sugar with caster sugar. Maybe I just need more practice? Have made this recipe before (it’s from Richard Till) and it’s been splendid. Greatly impressed another foodie friend! But am a bit OD’d on crème brulée for now. Won’t be making it again any time soon.
3 cups cream
8 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla essence
Pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 130 C. Put all ingredients in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Pour into an ovenproof dish and set in a roasting pan. Add hot water to pan so it comes halfway up side of brulée dish. Bake for 1 ½ hours or till set. It’s set when the centre wobbles slightly when the dish is lightly shaken.
Cool and refrigerate overnight. Just before serving, dust with about 6 tbsp caster sugar & brulée with torch.
Preheat the oven, place all cut oxtail pieces on a tray and then roast them for 1 hour until golden brown.
Then in a thick bottomed pot, add the oil to heat and then sauté the garlic, shallots and ginger until fragrant.
Add the cardamom pod, the cinnamon stick, the star anise and the cloves stirring continuously.
In a small bowl, place the coriander powder, fennel powder, cumin powder and crushes black pepper and mix with a little of the water.
Add the smooth and well mixed mixture into the cooking pot and sauté all together for a few minutes until again, fragrant.
Then add to the mixture the roasted oxtail pieces and the rest of the water and bring to a simmer.
Simmer slowly for at least an hour or until the meat starts to fall off the bones.
During the simmering process, as with all meat stocks, impurities will rise out of the liquid and settle in the middle of the pot like a brown scum. This needs to be skimmed off with a ladle to ensure that it does not simmer back inside the dish making it cloudy.
Add the carrots and celery pieces at the end as their cooking time is only about 10-15 minutes.
Notes:
It has to be mentioned that the soup from this finished dish, if cared for properly, can be dark and wonderfully shiny like a mirror if all the impurities that rise to the top during simmering are skimmed off. As when cooking any dish, tender loving care has to be taken to ensure that the presentation of the dish is the best it can be. The soup will only become cloudy if the dish is left alone and all the impurities are ignored. If you would like to have a slightly thicker and darker soup, a simple dusting of flour and a couple of teaspoons of tomato paste can be added and mixed with the oxtail pieces before adding them to the soup for simmering. The flour and paste should be added right at the end and cooked with the oxtails for the last 5 minutes of their cooking process. Chef Kasdi has said that he likes to add rice cubes to make his soup a hearty dish; however potatoes can also be used and should be added at the same time as the carrots and celery. The dish can be served on its own or with a side dish of fried or steamed rice. Chef Kasdi has topped off his soup with fresh shallots and spring onions to intensify the final taste even more.
The day of birthday feasting was great. The herb-roasted chicken and roasted veggies that we had for dinner are from my favorite new cookbook, “Cook Yourself Thin.”
MyLifetime.com aired a television show of the same title a few months back and I just loved it. The guest of the week would tell the hostesses/cooks about their favorite dishes. Total calories would be calculated and were ALWAYS way over the number of calories the guest should eat in a day to get to their goal weight. So the hostesses would re-make those recipes, slimming them down to usually around half of the normal calories.
While you can get the recipes online — here is the link for the Easy Herb-Roasted Chicken and Roasted Veggies — I love the feel of a book in my hands. Had a Barnes and Noble gift card from Mother’s Day to spend, so I ordered one. I have repeatedly made several of the dishes from this cookbook and they are absolutely delicious and do not taste de-calorized (is that a word?).
In addition to the roasted chicken, I can recommend the Turkey Mini-Meatloaves, Green Chile and Chicken Enchiladas and Turkey Chili Crunch (this one might be my very favorite so far). Instead of the chipotle pepper called for, I just use a small can of mild diced chiles and we scoop the soup with Baked Tostitos Scoops. OMG, I can’t even begin to tell you how good this is!
A little cupcake heaven
The cupcakes hubby requested for his birthday cake, we saw on an episode of Food Networks’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate: With My Hands.” It is a devil’s food cupcake (I like the Duncan Hines boxed mix), iced with cream cheese frosting and rolled in sweetened flaked coconut. They are so good! But hubby’s favorite part of the show was when the chef (sorry, can’t remember her name) made a Cupcake Sandwich … tear off the bottom of the cupcake, put it on top of the frosting and you have a sandwich with the frosting in the middle. It really is great and fun to do. Little kids, as well as big Old kids love it!!!
The cream cheese frosting is one of mom’s recipes:
Cream Cheese Frosting
1 T. butter, softened
1 3-oz. package cream cheese (I used Fat Free and it was just fine)
Lodge Enamel Cast-iron Apple Pot is sleek in outer appearance and excellent in features. This 3-quart pot has an optimum size that measures 9 7/8 by 9 7/8 by 9 ½ inches. It has a cast-iron construction that coated with several layers of strong, high-quality, chip-resistant enamel that imported from France.
Lodge Enamel Cast-iron Apple Pot
With the cast-iron construction, this pot is especially good at providing constant heat throughout the cooking processes and superior in heat retention. On the other hand, the enamel coating enables the elimination of unwanted seasoning process that required by cast-ironed cooking utensils and creates a non-reactive surface that can accommodate all types of cooking, marinating, refrigerating as well as freezing processes.
This Lodge Enamel Cast-iron Apple Pot is suitable for cooking tasks on any kind of stovetop, either electronic, gas, induction or the like. Better still, it is fabricated with tight-fitting pot lid that is capable of sealing the food flavors and moistures. The stainless-steel leaf-shaped handle on its lid has rendered this pot an exquisite outlook.
To make things even better, this particular cooking utensil is manufactured with a pair of solidly riveted handles that enables safe and secure transportation of this pot from stovetop to tabletop day in and day out.
Although this Lodge Enamel Cast-iron Apple Pot is dishwasher-safe, but it is recommended to be hand-washed. Nevertheless, it has a limited lifetime warranty. It is also oven-safe up to 500F. Virtually, most of the users acclaimed that this pot not only works as a simple cookware, but it is a piece of art in the kitchen. They are as satisfied with its performance as with its outer appearance.
In balance, if you are looking for a cookware with delicate and superb exterior designs, besides providing you quality cooking processes, this Lodge Enamel Cast-iron Apple Pot will server your turn. I think it is marvelous in design and practical in features.
Further information:
Click here to read more about Lodge Enamel Cast-Iron Apple Pot
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I love food; it’s a bit of a borderline-unhealthy obsession, really. All my life, I’ve drawn immense enjoyment from eating it, whether prepared by my culinary genius of a mum, or by the chefs of my favorite restaurants in the wonderful places I’ve lived (over the past few years, I’ve spent significant time in Orlando, Florida – St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands – Malibu, California and – London, United Kingdom). This past year, I unearthed my own passion for cooking and baking, and now spend more time in the kitchen than any other room in the house. More than once in the past two weeks have I woken up, dazed, at 4am with a cookbook on my lap. Every summer become emotionally invested in (and usually infuriated over the results of) The Next Food Network Star. I’ve been packing my things to move back out to school in California, and all of the books I’m bringing, save Dharma Bums and The Alchemist, are either cookbooks or the biographies of various celebrity chefs (Heat was fantastic!). Sick? Yes, maybe a little bit, but my mom is just as food-obsessed as I am. It must be genetic.
The internet is teeming with foodie blogs- and yay for that! But, what makes my day-to-day culinary experience unique is that I have been a vegetarian for the past 10 and a half years. I’m not a vegan; yes, it makes perfect sense to me, especially from an animal rights standpoint, but the rest of my family is fairly carnivorous (my parents are both from Eufaula, Alabama…) so I was raised to go with the flow. However, because like many young adults, my body no longer likes lactose very much (ew), much of what I cook and order is vegan, if unintentionally. Because I have been vegetarian for so long, a decision which stemmed from a longtime love of animals, this choice of mine is simply a part of my lifestyle and doesn’t feel like any sort of deprivation; it’s second-nature, really. On this little webpage, I hope to showcase some of my favorite (usually not purely vegetarian) restaurants, and share my experiences with their vegetarian options, as well as some of the creations from my own kitchen, so that you might someday try and enjoy them yourself. Even if you aren’t a vegetarian, there are so many health (and financial! hello, bad economy!) benefits to limiting one’s meat munching.
and of course the Brontosaurus, whose scientific name means "Thunder Lizard," was both the second-largest animal to live on earth... and a vegetarian!
For this blog’s maiden voyage, I’d like to present the restaurant here in my hometown of Orlando, Florida where I had dinner tonight… Pho Hoa! I developed a slight addiction to Pho while in London this past year, as there was a little outdoor restaurant in Chelsea walking distance from my house in nearby South Kensington, which served big delicious steaming bowls of the stuff; perfect for lunch on a cool, sunny London day. If you’ve never had it before, Pho is a super-tasty Vietnamese noodle soup, which traditionally consists of rice noodles, mushrooms, and other veggies (as well as beef or chicken, if we’re talking legit-traditionally; nearly everywhere I’ve been has had a vegetarian version, though). It’s generally served with a big plate of mint, coriander, bean sprouts, and sometimes chiles to mix in. Pho is so tasty and feels so comforting and cleansing going down, that one of my best friends swears that it must have healing properties.
Anyway, although this portion of the menu isn’t accessible online (shame), Pho Hoa had a good-sized vegetarian section of the menu with several yummy-sounding options, including a few noodle dishes and curried tofu. However, considering that the prospect of slurping down a big bowl of noodles was my motivation behind going to a Pho restaurant in the first place, I went for the Pho Chay. And oh man, it was so good! My bucket-sized bowl of veggie broth was chock full of perfectly fried tofu (I’m fairly picky when it comes to tofu, and Pho Hoa’s passed the test), broccoli, shitaake mushrooms, carrots and baby corn; I jazzed it up with a sizeable pile of mint and coriander, along with some chili sauce and soy. Sipping a glass of ice-cold coconut juice (with nom-worthy chunks of coconut flesh at the bottom) as I devoured, I spent a night in Pho heaven. I didn’t inquire as to what the tofu was fried in, but as far as I can tell, Pho Hoa is a delicious option for vegetarians and vegans alike. I definitely recommend it, and if you poke around the website, you’ll see that it’s a chain with locations all over the US! So, if you aren’t from Orlando, hakuna matata!
Before I hit the “Publish” button, I’d like to let you know who’s been in my bed all week:
…and that lucky bedfellow would be Madhur Jeffrey! I haven’t actually tried any of the recipes in this intensely rich encyclopedia of Indian and Asian cooking, but have been absolutely sucked in by Ms. Jeffrey’s fierce detail and authenticity. This book is completely organic, not in that it’s pesticide free, but in its dismissal of mixes and premade elements; there is popping of mustard seeds, removal of skin from Dal, and a number of other intensely hands-on instructions. This, World of the East Vegetarian Cooking, is the real deal. I’m absolutely enchanted. Here in Orlando, I’d have to travel out of my usual hemisphere to find the proper ingredients, but once I’m back in L.A. and have easy access to things like seitan and quail eggs, I’m going to dive in… and divulge it all here, of course =)
