This is Why Your Fruit Salad Sucks
February 8th, 2008
If you’ve ever wondered why citrus at restaurants always tastes better and looks prettier than yours at home, this is why. Seriously, though, it’s called supreming, and it’s worth the small effort.
Super Bowl Weekend
February 1st, 2008
Hey, you over there, put down the Lays and jar of onion dip. Yeah you. I know it’s Super Bowl weekend, and the football fan in me knows that such an event allows, nay demands, a certain type of food. We call it Football Food. But you can make your own. And it will be better — much better — and more bacony.
Simply Recipes has an authoritative round-up on Super Bowl recipes featuring everything from classics (potato skins, hot wings, various and sundry dips) to the truly frightening. Okay, so I was honestly curious about the Beer Cheese Cupcakes with Bacon Cheddar Frosting — if that’s not a manly dessert, what is? — but then I saw the “beer” in question: Budweiser Select. What’s a sell-respecting beer drinking to do? Guiness cupcakes, of course.
Penance…
With all of the talk of bacon around here lately, I thought I’d throw a crumb to our vegetarian friends. 101 Cookbooks has posted a delicious-looking recipe for Carmelized Tofu. Go forth, yea veggies, and eat soy.
Gourmet Kitchen on a Shoestring
The ever-wonderful Wisebread has a guide to putting together the kitchen of your dreams on a tight budget. They hit on, among other things, buying bulk spices and growing your own herbs in pots, two things that will not only save money (as they mention), but give you better quality, fresher ingredients as well.
They recommend Ikea as a good source for good-quality pots & pans and utensils on a budget, which can be true, but they’re forgetting the best place of all: your friendly neighborhood kitchen supply shop.
Twelve Under-$20 Ways to Snack Well on New Year’s Eve
The Washington Post offers up Twelve Under-$20 Ways to Snack Well on New Year’s Eve. Sounds right up our alley.
Via Slashfood.
Book: Cooking with Booze
December 20th, 2007
Ah, a book after my own heart: Cooking with Booze. We all know how to cook with wine by now, and thankfully Cooking with Booze focuses more energy on spirits, beer, and hard cider. Even better, whiskey gets the biggest section of all.
The recipes in Cooking with Booze lean towards traditional English fare, with a few adventurous side trips abroad. Some recipes that piqued my interest were Potato Salad with Beer Dressing, Whisky Pancakes, Brandy-baked Brie, and Roast Pork with Apple Stuffing and Cider Sauce.
You can buy the book (obligatory Amazon.com link), or you can view it in it’s entirety online, with the occasional video.
Balsamic Glazed Almonds
Coconut and Lime has a delicious-looking recipe for Balsamic Glazed Almonds. Haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but honestly if you glazed cardboard with balsamic I’d happily eat it.
NY Times 101 Simple Appetizers, and a Brief Treatise on Olives
December 19th, 2007
The New York Times has posted a great list of 101 Simple Appetizers that can be prepared in under 20 minutes for you holiday parties.
Quite a few of the recipes call for olives — which you should never, ever buy at the grocery store, unless your store has a particularly good olive bar and you’re short on time. Buying canned or jarred olives at the grocery store is somewhere below putting your money into a little pile and burning it for warmth on the scale of fiscal sanity. Any moderately-sized community will have at least one Greek or Mediterranean specialty store, and any respectable Greek or Mediterranean store will sell gallon jars of good-quality olives for under $20. Compare that to the $8 you’ll spend on a 8 or 12 oz jar at the grocery store. Do the math — I’ll wait. Mmmhmm….convinced?
Pretzel Praline
Just in time for the holidays, Ideas in Food is featuring a delicious-looking, easy to make Pretzel Praline recipe. Anything that combines sweet, salty, and yeasty cannot possibly be bad.
Balsamic Onions and Goat Cheese Quesadilla
I discovered Meghan’s blog, Tales of a Culinary Novice, through a comment she left here recently, and she’s got some super swanky recipes up. One in particular caught my eye while I was there: Balsamic Onions and Goat Cheese Quesadillas. Mmm. I’m going to go make a few of these right now.