Here’s an easy recipe for a classic soup, with a twist. We had this last weekend and it was super good, especially on the cold, grey days of autumn.
Nom.
Archive for the ‘Food’ Category
Rosemary Split Pea Soup
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged classic soup, recipes, rosemary split pea soup, soup recipes, split pea soup on 05 Nov 2013| 1 Comment »
Habanero Hot Sauce
Posted in Food, Recipes on 21 Oct 2013| Leave a Comment »
I mentioned in my recipe for Golden Cayenne Hot Sauce that it was a variation on a habanero hot sauce cooked up by the farmers over at Oaca Peppers. I have my own version of that great sauce, so here it is.
A Bowl of Red
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged chili pepper recipe, chili powder, chili recipe, chili sauce, cooking, Food, golden cayenne, hot sauce, Recipe, texas red on 23 Sep 2013| 2 Comments »
Something tells me that Americans have lost touch with what chili really is.
Go down to the supermarket and you’ll find your choice of chili, chili con carne, and the mind-boggling “chili con carne with beans.” All of them are stultifying assaults to any palate and not worth the label of “chili.”
Red–a hearty meat stew–is to my heart and mind the original chili: nothing but meat and chili peppers. Sometimes called “Texas Red,” my version is definitely un-Texan, so I just call it “red,” but it is, at its core, a purist’s chili It has been a standard big-batch-home-cook recipe of mine for years. I usually cook up a big batch, we have a great meal, and then I freeze what’s left in discrete two-person servings that we can pull out at a moment’s notice.
Last night, for the first time, I rolled it out to non-family at a potluck evening, and it got raves all night. Anything that gets that kind of response deserves to be shared.
This red is best served in a bowl, over a hunk of freshly baked cornbread.
Golden Cayenne Hot Sauce
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged chili pepper recipe, chili sauce, cooking, Food, golden cayenne, hot sauce, hot sauce recipe, Recipe, recipes on 09 Sep 2013| 7 Comments »
A friend of mine runs OACA Pepper Farm, and he shared a great recipe for a hot sauce that uses carrots, onions, and habanero chili peppers. The carrots give sweetness, the habaneros the heat, and it comes out orange, tangy, and very good.
When my garden started providing me with golden cayenne chili peppers, I thought I might try a twist on the OACA recipe. Keeping with the a la page concept, I considered my options as to what might work well with the intense, almost candy-colored yellow of the golden cayennes. The answer came at a BBQ during Labor Day weekend: corn.
I whipped up a batch of this yesterday, and it’s yummy.
Bread and Butter Pickles
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged bread and butter pickles, cooking, cucumbers, Food, Recipe, recipe bread and butter pickles, sweet pickle recipe on 27 Aug 2013| 2 Comments »
When my Earthbox garden produced more cucumbers than I could consume, I naturally looked into pickling. As a child, I never cared for sweet pickles, but then again, the only sweet pickles I had came in the form of hot dog relish, so it wasn’t a good introduction. Then, earlier this year, I saw “bread and butter” pickles on the store shelf. Curious, I tried some.
Now that’s a good, sweet pickle. I set about devising a recipe.
“Bread and Butter” pickles got their name in during the Great Depression. Cucumbers are easy to grow, and very fruitful, so every home had some in the garden. A common Depression lunch during the growing season was bread, butter, and cucumbers. When the plants produced more fruit than could be used immediately, they pickled them and ate them through the cold months–with their bread and butter.
Slicing the cucumbers lengthwise, they’re easy to lay out onto a slice of bread. Take two thick slices of whole wheat bread, slather with some nice, salted butter, add a couple layers of these pickles, and tuck in.
Yum!
Poaching Time Trials
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged cooking, david chang, egg poached in shell, Food, minute egg, poached egg, recipes, wylie dufresne on 11 Aug 2013| 2 Comments »
Yes, I can get a bit…obsessed…at times.
My good friends over at Cheap Seat Eats blog turned me on to a video in which Wylie Dufresne shows a new way to poach an egg. If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know I’ve been working to perfect the various methods of cooking the venerable Hen’s Egg. I just about have the hard-cooked egg down pat (thanks to my friend and author Barb Hendee), but the perfect poached egg has eluded me.
I’ve tried many methods. I’ve tried classic out-of-the-shell methods like the dead-drop (sticks to bottom of pot), the swirl/vortex (still all thready), and the Martha Stewart cook-in-spoon-followed-by-scissoring-off-the-threads-to-make-it-look-nice-nice method (too obsessive, even for me). I’ve tried several in-the-shell methods, too, from the classic 5-minute egg (impossible to peel), to David Chang’s one-hour slow-cook method (too unreliable and never cooked well enough).
Nothing has pleased me. Here’s what I want in a poached egg:
- Firm, cooked white
- Creamy, orange yolk, almost like a sauce when it spills
- Enough of a “sag” in the cooked egg so that it looks poached, not hard-cooked
Dufresne’s method, based on modernist techniques and analysis, gives us a perfect, in-shell, poached/soft-cooked egg. I tried it once. Damned near perfect. I tried it again. Damned near perfect again. My only complaint was that the egg stood a bit too tall, and was a bit “too” cooked at the prescribed cooking time.
So, I set about performing a time trial. Four eggs. Four cook times, ranging from Dufresne’s prescribed 5:45 min, and downward.
Tried and True
Posted in Food, tagged cooking, fruit fly trap, keep onions fresh, keep potatoes fresh, kitchen tips, kitchen tricks on 05 Aug 2013| Leave a Comment »
Some tips for your kitchen. (Sorry…best I can do this week.)
Today: dealing with fruit flies, and storing your onions, and potatoes.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 