foodster
Brit Abroad Beet(root) Soup - served hot ... Looking at two week's worth of beetroots (beets in American) which I don't really like (too many salads covered with the chopped pickled things as a child) but they come in the veg box, I ask Iain if he has...
Brit Abroad - Chocolate Brownies for the East End Runners ... Chocolate brownies are like Chardonnay - too many dreadful versions. But Nigella Lawson is the Redeemer... This recipe comes from her Express book which Kier (one brother) got me for Christmas. Along with being able to play the USA national...
Baked Barley with Shiitake Mushrooms & Caramelized Onions ... From one of my good friends in the new life in Pittsburgh. Great as a main course or side dish. For you barleyphobes (UK school dinner fear) - face it and think of the shiitake. Very, very good winter comfort...
Spiced Tomato Soup ... There is only one Tomato Soup and that is made by a firm that is not British (surprise!) but from Pittsburgh and comes in an Andy Warhol tin. But with a surfeit of sun dried tomatoes one night I made...
Twice as Nice Curry ... Ever thought curry is nicer the day after? I went into my laboratory and came up with this modification of a simple curry recipe that has the cooked-in qulaities of a day-after curry. The secret? Finish the cooking in the...
Proper American Pancakes ... DON'T, from some misguided egalitarian impulse, wrap them in a cloth or put them in a warm oven until you've cooked the lot, as they'll go flaccid and lose a great deal of their charm. Pancakes are an action breakfast...
Guacamole Zinger ... Guacamole, pretty simple, right? Erm, well yes it is but this recipe adds lime to create a serious zing and let's face it who hasn't eaten guacamole and wished it could live up better to its lively Latin reputation? Ingredients...
Veggie Sausage Sandwich (with Green Pesto) ... In my opinion, vegetarian Lincolnshire style sausages work best with the green pesto. And for added effect, once the sausages are cooked, pop the whole sandwich into a sandwich toaster or George Forman grill for a couple of mins to...
Kubi Lamb ... This is a Turkish lamb and chickpea dish that can be perfectly accompanied by the Moro Saffron Rice dish (see sides). I have Kubi to thank for this beauty. Ingredients: 1 large onion (finely chopped) 250g lamb cubes 1 x...
Lemon, Almond & Gin Tart ... As promised. Easy if somewhat time consuming so I make the pastry one night, then filling & baking the next, so it's ready the day before you want it. I've set the recipe up for this. This gives you time...
elise.com-simply recipes Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:11:27 -0800
Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread ...
Our tour of Brazil continues. After posting the moqueca recipe, several of you asked if I had a recipe for Pão de Queijo, or Brazilian cheese bread, sort of like a chewy cheese puff made with tapioca flour. As a matter of fact, I do. My friend Bill gave me this recipe years ago, a favorite from his Brazilian wife Silvia. I've made it several times, each time with different cheeses. Talk about addictive! I've cut Bill's original recipe down to just a third, because if I actually made a full batch (48) I could conceivably eat them all.
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Keller's Roast Chicken ...
Thomas Keller is most known for his landmark 3 Michelin star restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California. French Laundry food is famously exquisite, requiring an insane amount of preparation for each dish (if you're curious about just how insane, check out Carol Blymire's now retired French Laundry at Home blog in which she cooked her way through the restaurant's cookbook.) A few years ago Keller launched another restaurant in the area, ad hoc, for patrons who wanted quality, without all the fuss. Home cooking, done incredibly well.
Out of the restaurant came the cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home
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Corned Beef and Cabbage ...
From the recipe archive, for St. Patrick's Day, enjoy! ~Elise
Last year for St. Patrick's Day, my friend Suzanne had me over for dinner with her family and served the tastiest corned beef and cabbage dish. Usually we prepare corned beef and cabbage boiled, but Suzanne had baked her corned beef in the oven, slathered with sweet hot honey mustard, and sautéed her cabbage with onions on the stove top until they were nice and caramelized. I begged her to show me how she did it and recently we spent the day cooking together, making corned beef and cabbage both ways - oven baked and boiled. We did a taste test with the whole family that evening and the baked version won, hands down. Here I present to you both the baked and the boiled recipe versions.
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Moqueca - Brazilian Fish Stew ...
It seems like every culture with a coastline has their version of a seafood stew. The French have bouillabaise, the Portuguese bacalhoada, New England "chowdah" and San Francisco cioppino. In Brazil, they make moqueca (pronounced "mo-KEH-kah"), a stew made with fish, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, and in the northern state of Bahia, coconut milk. My first encounter with moqueca was a salmon version of the stew prepared by Brazilian blogger Fernanda of Chucrute com Salsicha. So good! We love making fish stew, but had never thought to use a base of coconut milk. Since then, every Brazilian I've met, when the conversation turns to food (as it invariably does), their eyes light up at the mention of moqueca.
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Caraway Soda Bread ...
One of the things I love about making soda bread is that it is just so darn easy. With yeast breads you have to proof the yeast, knead the dough, let the dough rise, etc. But with soda breads, there's no proofing, kneading, or waiting. In fact, because the leavening comes from mixing the base of the baking soda with the acid in the buttermilk (remember those fascinating-at-the-time childhood experiments of sprinkling vinegar onto baking soda?), you pretty much pop it in the oven as soon as you put the dough together. The trick is to use a light hand, just work the dough barely enough to bring it together. It looks like a sheep-doggy shaggy mess, but it bakes up beautifullylightly browned and crusty on the outside, while soft and tender on the inside.
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Lemon Chicken ...
Overheard at the market, "I'm a breast girl." "Really? I'm definitely a thigh girl," pause..."dark meat, so much more flavor." Had to laugh, I'm so so so much a thigh girl myself. Here is the secret to fabulous lemon chicken - use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (or legs, but thighs are easier to eat). Lemon is acidic and greatly benefits from the balance of the stronger flavor of the dark meat in thighs and legs, and the fat from the chicken skin. You don't have to eat the skin (my father doesn't, he gives them to me, score!), but cook with them on for the flavor.
What we most love about this recipe is that it is a classic American lemon chicken recipe without being too lemony. In other words, it doesn't make your lips pucker, it has just the right amount of lemon flavor to it.
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Beet Hummus ...
For those of you out there who cannot fathom even the idea of beets, fine. Truly, I'm a-okay with it. That only means there is more of this beet hummus for me. I ate this entire batch, save one teaspoon that my mother caught just in time, before it was all finished off. (In this family, you snooze, you lose.) Seriously, if you like beets, and you like hummus, you'll love this beet hummus. The ingredients are beets, tahini, garlic, lemon, cumin, and salt and pepper. Use as a pretty topping for cucumber rounds, scoop some up with pita triangles or celery ribs, or just dive in, like oink-oink here, with a spoon, and eat it up before anyone knows what they're missing. Many thanks to neighbor, pastry chef, and friend Evie Lieb, for sharing this terrific recipe with us.
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Orange Bread ...
Unlike much of the country, Sacramento isn't blanketed in snowy white in the dead of winter. We are blessed instead with plenty of green, with flowery shows of red and pink from camellias, and displays of bright orange and yellow from the grapefruit, lemons, kumquats, and oranges decorating the citrus trees that grow everywhere around here. Citrus season is the winter, and when nothing else seems to want to grow, we have an abundance of fruit. In fact, many of the boulevards in downtown Sacramento are lined with Seville orange trees, which anyone can pick, and which produce a sour fruit perfect for zest, marmalade, orangeade, and for baking. For this recipe I used a couple navel oranges from our tree, but truly any orange will do. It's the zest that has the highly flavorful orange oil that you need for this quick bread.
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Curried Squash Soup ...
One of the things I love about butternut squash, or any winter squash for that matter, is that they're practically indestructible. They last for months. You can harvest one in November and still find it perfectly good to eat in February (as long as you store it in a cool, dry place). For the last month I've had a hankering to make curried squash soup, and for the last month the squash I picked out for this purpose has been greeting me from the kitchen counter every morning. Well, the stars finally fell into proper squash soup making alignment and the result was this lovely curried squash soup. The trick is to brown the cubed squash bits first, in a little oil and butter. That really brings out the squash flavor. The trick to that, of course, is effectively cutting a very hard squash. For this you need a large, sharp knife (current favorite is this Shun),
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Peppery Garlic Prawns ...
My friends are so very patient with me. BFF Steve-Anna first emailed me this spicy, peppery shrimp recipe, a favorite of hers, four years ago. And then again, at least two or three more times, when I declared I couldn't find it, and would she please-pretty-please send it again. Hey Stevie, we finally made it! Just in time for Lent. Dang, what took us so long? Love the shrimp. It certainly packs a punch though, with all of the black pepper the recipe asks for. Feel free to cut back on the pepper to tone it down a bit. The recipe also calls for a tablespoon of brandy. This I think is an essential ingredient for the recipe. (Actually with so few ingredients, they're all essential.) There is no substitute. If you simply cannot cook with alcohol, add a dab of butter to the olive oil. It will change the flavor of the finished dish, but it should still taste great.
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Cheddar Cheese Puffs ...
To make cheese puffs, first you make a pâte a choux dough (pronounced "pat ah shoo"), which, if you've never made it before, can seem a little weird. Weird because most of us who bake are used to mixing dough ingredients together and then plopping them in the oven. With a pâte a choux dough, you essentially half cook the dough first, by adding flour to boiling water and butter, and stirring like a madman until you have a ball of dough the consistency of playdough. Then you mix in eggs and then the dough goes in the oven, where it puffs up as the water in the dough turns to steam and expands into air pockets. The dough is used for making cream puffs, eclairs, cheese puffs (gourgères), beignets, and even churros. David Lebovitz has a recipe for making a French tart crust with what looks to me to be essentially a pâte a choux dough, that has been getting raves. So, it's a useful technique, and pretty easy, though the dough can be a little stiff to work by hand.
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Pasta with Slow Roasted Duck ...
Guest contributor Hank Shaw of Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook shares one of his favorite pasta dishes. Sensuous and savory, this simple pasta and duck recipe is perfect for a romantic dinner. ~Elise
This is one of my favorite things to do with duck confit or the easier, slow-roasted duck version of it. This is a sumptuous pasta dish that has its origins in old Venice, where it was done with the Italian version of preserved duck. Despite this, it is an easy dish to make the only tricky part is getting the garlic browned but not burned.
Traditionally this is served with tagliatelle, a long, flat pasta both wider and thinner than the more familiar linguine. Could you use another shape? You bet. Dont go too thin or too thick angel hair or ziti arent right for this dish.
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Easy Duck Confit ...
Please welcome guest contributor Hank Shaw of Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook as he shares his method for making what he affectionately calls "ghetto duck confit". So easy, and outrageously good. ~Elise
Duck or goose confit (con-fee) is one of the most luxurious of foods in French cuisine. Gently cured duck legs bathed in their own fat and slowly cooked to falling-off-the-bone perfection. Then the skin is crisped in a pan or oven, giving you the sinful combination of silky meat and crackling skin. Itll roll your eyes back it's so good.
Real confit takes more than a day to make. But I have a work-around that takes just a little more than two hours, and is nearly as good. And its easy I mean super easy.
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Chinese Almond Cookies ...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as he prepares for the year of the tiger with Chinese almond cookies. ~Elise
Chinese almond cookies are a trademark in Chinese-American cooking. Often relegated as a second string sweet to the more entertaining fortune cookie these don't get the respect they deserve. Sure, they don't tell you what a charming personality you have or offer a string of lotto numbers, but they do have a crisp bite and delightfully sandy texture. Almond flour, almond extract, and slivered almonds ensure that you get an intense flavor that will eclipse any paper filled treat.
Set out a plate of these for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Almond cookies symbolize coins and will be sure to bring you good fortune. Gung Hay Fat Choy!
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Super Bowl Recipes! ...
From the recipe archive, just in time for the big game. For more Super Bowl recipes from food blogs, check out Food Blog Search ~Elise
So, what are you serving up for Super Bowl Sunday? Here are a few of our ideas, as well as a several rather inventive Super Bowl recipe twists from some of our favorite food blogs. Enjoy the game!
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red kitchen
Kristine's Ravioli Extravaganza ... 1 batch of homemade raviolis (see below) 1/2 head of garlic, roasted (see below) 2 tablespoons oil, divided 3 tablespoons...
Yogurt Rolls ... Adapted from Yogurt Biscuits on AllRecipes. 3/4 cup all-purpose flour 3/4 cup whole wheat flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons...
Vegetable Cheese soup ... Adapted from Reva's Potato Cheese Soup. 1 tablespoon olive oil 3 cloves finely chopped garlic (3 large cloves) 1 cup...
Dinner Rolls ... This recipe is adapted from Sweet Dinner Rolls on AllRecipes. 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup milk 1 egg 1/3 cup...
Pasta bake ... My husband is a vegetarian, and I eat meat, so sometimes it means I'll make two main dishes. If I...
Basil Garlic fries ... This recipe was adapted from one at AllRecipes. 4 red potatoes, medium sized 1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese - grocery...
Peppermint bark ... There are a variety of ways online to make this, but my favorite is where there's chocolate on the bottom...
Watergate Salad ... It's fun to eat something from the Deli at your local store and then finding a recipe on AllRecipes and...
Cooking Blog: Tarting It Up ... Some beautiful pics and yummy looking recipes are at Tarting It Up. I am *so* craving crepes now!...
Cooking Blog: Baking Sheet ... bakingsheet: "the most important thing in the kitchen. except the oven. and ingredients." :) This looks to be a great...
chocolate chip coffee cake ... ingredients 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 cup sour cream 2 cups flour 1 tsp. baking soda...
chicken and mushroom marsala ... ingredients 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil (extra virgin olive oil works well) 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, 4 to 6...
Parmesan Basil Spaghetti ... Seen in Cooking for 2 this month. 3 ounces uncooked thin spaghetti 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons lemon juice...
No Boil Fudge ... Ingredients: 1 lb confectioners' powdered sugar 6 tbsp butter 1/2 cup cocoa powder 1/4 cup milk 1 cup pecans, chopped...
zippy chicken noodle soup ... this is a very easy soup to make when you want something that's got a bit more to it then...