Some tips for your kitchen. (Sorry…best I can do this week.)
Today: dealing with fruit flies, and storing your onions, and potatoes.
Posts Tagged ‘cooking’
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 »
Summer Zucchini Salad
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged cooking, Food, Recipe, recipes, summer salad, Tarragon, zucchini, zucchini salad on 22 Jul 2013| 1 Comment »
Once my zucchini plants started pumping out 16+oz fruit, I had to think of something to do with them. Fast.
I came across a recipe that turned zucchini into tagliatelle (wide, flat noodles) by julienning them on a mandoline, and thought, “Eureka!” But no, at least not that recipe, which called for nearly 2 cups of fresh mint.
Some zucchini with your mint, sir?
So, I kept the technique, but changed the recipe, and hit upon something really nice. Clean, lively flavors, and goes great with a glass of pinot grigio or sauv-blanc. Note: if you don’t have a mandoline, you can use a box grater (see bottom of recipe). (more…)
Basil Oil
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged basil oil, cooking, Food, herb-infused oil, recipes on 09 Jul 2013| 2 Comments »
My herb Earthbox is still coming along (update tomorrow) but my neighbor, who’s about five weeks ahead of me in his Earthbox garden project, is starting to see the fruits of his labors. This weekend, he brought over a bag of basil (a third of his take after thinning his plants).
So…what to do with a surprise bag of basil? Well, you could whip up some pesto, of course, but everyone does that. No, there was something new I wanted to try, something I’d recently seen that intrigued me.
Basil oil.
Deep in color, I’d seen it used to dot the rim of a plate of sushi, and to lay emerald cabochons on the surface of a bowl of ramen.
I looked up a handful of recipes, and came up with a process that I tried this weekend. It may need some tweaking, but it’s pretty good. In this recipe, the basil hits the heat twice. First, it gets blanched, which breaks down the leaves for better pureeing, and second, the puree is heated to enhance both the flavor and add more of that deep green color. Unlike some simpler versions, I strain the mixture twice, so there aren’t little bits of basil leaves floating about in the oil.
Use it when you want a hint of that basil sharpness, but don’t want to overpower, or don’t want the actual leaves. Great as a garnish, or as an ingredient in sauces, dressings, and poaching liquid.
Baklava a la Moi
Posted in Recipes, tagged baklava, cooking, dessert, dessert recipes, Food, GNOIF, orange blossom water, recipes on 17 Jun 2013| 2 Comments »
This weekend we went to a GNOIF (Game Night of Indeterminate Frequency) over at our friends’ place. It’s a great time for convivial banter amidst board and card games of varying complexity. Everyone brings something potable and something noshable. I brought a bottle of sangiovese from the winery at Castello di Amorosa, and the finalized version of my baklava, a recipe I’ve been finessing for some time.
I can’t share the sangio with you (it was good, though), but I can share the recipe for baklava.
In this recipe, I cut the sometimes cloying sweetness by using salted pistachios, and by using honey for the syrup instead of sugar. The clean flavor of the orange blossom water, and the high, bright notes of the cardamom and the Vietnamese cinnamon also help bring the flavor profile up out of the Too Sweet Valley.
Here ’tis.
(more…)
Chicken Hum Bao
Posted in Recipes, tagged chicken hum bao, cooking, easy hum bao recipe, easy steamed buns, hum bao, recipes, steamed chicken buns on 06 Jun 2013| Leave a Comment »
When the going gets tough, the tough get cooking…at least in my case.
Here’s a surprisingly easy recipe for something you may never thought you could make at home: Hum bao (aka hum-bow, aka humbow, aka “one of those big white steamed buns with savory filling you grab off the cart at the dim-sum place”).
If there’s one thing I’d stress for this recipe, it’s that you should knead the dough by hand, not with your mixer or food processor. I have two reasons.
My first reason is practical. Using a machine will overwork the dough and make it chewier than it should be when it steams up.
My second reason is personal. Working the dough by hand is good for you. It connects you to the food you’re preparing, and is an experience to be savored as you feel the dough change from crumbly to tough to pliable. You feel the dough fighting you, resisting you until, through your slow persistence, it begins to relax, agreeing to become what you want it to become.
If you say it’s faster with a machine, I’d say no, it isn’t. You’d have to set up the machine, clean it, and stow it away again. And even if that wasn’t true, if you can’t find the 8-10 minutes to spend on the task of kneading the dough, you probably don’t love cooking enough.
Just sayin’. (more…)
The Air is Full of Spices
Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged cooking, Food, Middle Eastern cooking, moroccan food, ras al hanout, ras al hanout recipe, recipes, spice blend, spice blends on 03 May 2013| 3 Comments »
I used to pooh-pooh spice blends. Yes, I was that stupid.
My reasoning was three-fold. When I was growing up:
- Most “spice blends” were just with some seasonings tossed in to bump up the price.
- I never knew what was in a pre-packaged “spice blend.”
- They were pretty awful.
In addition, nothing bugs me more than a recipe that tells me to go out and buy something I can make at home. Like all those chicken noodle soup recipes that say “add 16 ounce can of chicken broth.” Come on! I want to cook, not assemble! And so, swathed in my righteous purism, I eschewed any and all “spice blends,” casting them out into the wilderness where the lesser creatures could partake of them.
Then I went to live overseas, and my world changed.
(Hint: There’s a recipe after the jump.) (more…)
Chicken Noodle a la David Chang
Posted in Recipes, tagged chicken noodle soup recipe, cooking, david chang, david chang chicken noodle soup, Food, mind of a chef, recipes, soup on 21 Apr 2013| 23 Comments »
There has been a ton of interest for this recipe, and with good reason; it’s a great show and a good recipe. If you’ve landed here from a web-search, please, enjoy the recipe. Please also check out my books. You can read excerpts here, or find the books in the banner to the right and on my Author Page at Amazon.
Now, to the recipe:
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The other day I happened across an episode of “The Mind of a Chef.” (How did I miss this show before?) In this episode (“Simplicity”), host and chef David Chang finds places where the chefs have pared everything back to its most simplistic.
While the episode was great, at one point Chang frustrated me entirely. He gives instructions on how to make a simple chicken noodle soup, but blasts through the process with no detail. Example: at one point he instructs us to “boil the shit out of [the broth].” Not very helpful.
But, always on the lookout for good recipes, I spent some time this weekend reconstructing (or deconstructing) Chang’s method from the brief clip. One innovation is to cook the chicken and vegetables separately. A common problem with chicken broth is that the vegetables can overpower the chicken, but by separating the two, Chang makes it possible for us to adjust the mixture according to personal preference and to account for, say, a particularly strong onion or exceptionally sweet carrot.
The result was, in all humbleness, nothing short of excellent.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 