Tag: Cooking

Playing with Fire

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Crack Pie 2There is a restaurant in New York, the Momofuku Milk Bar, that has a pie so addictive they trademarked its name, Crack Pie. And guess what?

You can order this $44.00 dessert and have it sent by overnight delivery for Thanksgiving as long as you make their November 22nd deadline.

Momofuku’s Christina Tosi dreamed up the recipe; it’s a toasted oatmeal cookie-like crust with a gooey butter filling that has a rich salty-sweet taste. There is also a recipe on Epicurious (image by Christopher Griffith) with a litany of helpful reviews that share cooks’ tips.

Preparation time is 15 hours from start to finish so it’s not a light commitment.  The long wind-up probably contributes to the craving sensations that begin to crop up around the 11th hour. I’d make two just in case.

A Cautionary Tale

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I always thought the advice to wear rubber gloves when cooking with jalapeno peppers was for wimps. I mean, really — how bad could a pepper seed be? The truth of the matter is I have never made anything requiring a jalapeno in its natural state until tonight.

Lately I am challenging myself to try new things out of healthy cookbooks, rainbow swiss chard, and carmelized red onions with balsamic vinegar, well — you get the drift. Tonight I made smoky shrimp corn soup and spicy chick pea lettuce wraps.

The spice in the lettuce wraps comes from a jalapeno. I sliced it and using the edge of the knife scraped out the seeds. I minced half of the pepper and tasted it. I didn’t even bother to cut up the second half, there was quite enough heat as it was.

After dinner I turned on the dishwasher and noticed my hands were tingly as if they were asleep. I shook them, and waved my hands in the air. But it didn’t help. My hands felt as if they were simmering, hot and spiking pain. I stood there expecting to see my hands burst into flames.

AHA. This is it, I thought. This is the reason you wear gloves.

When I googled how to get rid of pain from jalapeno peppers, there are a lot of suggestions. Baking soda, rubbing alcohol and milk being the most frequently touted  cures.  I tried rubbing alcohol since it was handy. Mine was a mild case and it worked pretty quickly, others aren’t so lucky.

I read about a man who roasted, peeled and de-seeded a 5 pound bag of jalapeno peppers without gloves. He was in excruciating pain for 18 hours; he went to the emergency room and after trying different things, they gave him some really strong pain killers and sent him home to wait it out.

I bet he never did that again.

Blech

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Contrary to what I have previously suggested, do not, I repeat, do not attempt to bring home a half-eaten salad in a plastic container thinking that what you have is another great meal.

What you have is a soggy mess of limp greens, softish nuts, deflated blueberries and unnaturally slippery chunks of pineapple and strawberry. It is not and will never be either my or your idea of a good follow-up meal.

Oh, yeah, sure — take the sucker home when you can’t finish it. But remember, the clock starts the minute you swoop up the remains and walk to the car. Every 45 minutes, flavor, taste and appeal (FTA) take a big tumble.

(Seems like this should be an important revelation rather than a painfully obvious footnote.)

Thumbs Up

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Too hot to cook? Of course it is.

Get yourself to Panera’s asap. Order the strawberry  chicken salad with a hunk of a French baguette and a frozen strawberry lemonade. Depending upon where your hunger rates on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being ravenous, anything 7 or below will have you toting home leftovers.

This St Louis headquartered restaurant chain has earned a lot of attention for its healthy menu choices — and the best thing about it, it just feels like a normal good-place-to-eat.

Home cooking, you’ve met a match.

Mix it Up

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Cake mix has turned many of middle-of-the-road cooks into rock stars. It happens when a competent cook comes across a recipe and says, “This has got to be really good and better yet, it’s amazingly easy, I’m claiming it.”

I saw it in action when a friend of mine offered me biscotti that she had made.

I said, “Biscotti?”

She said, “Yeah, it’s better than the biscotti you used to get from Kay.”

“Really,” I said. That biscotti was pure grade Italian issue, with a lot of time devoted to cooking, drying and cutting. But I was game. She had given me a full zip-lock baggie, I reached in, grabbed a hunk and bit down.

So this is a keeper.  Change it up if you want different flavors, butterscotch chips with caramel frosting, or walnuts for almonds, for instance. But here are the basics:

Image from Holiday Gourmet

Almond Chocolate Biscotti
1 pk chocolate cake mix
1 cup flour
1/2 cup melted butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup  chocolate syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 pk (10 to 12 oz) vanilla or white chips
2 TB shortening

1) Beat cake mix, flour, butter, eggs, chocolate syrup and extract until well blended. Stir in almonds, chocolate chips. On un-greased pan, half dough,  shape into a 12 x 2 log.
2) Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes until firm to touch. Cool on rack for 20 minutes.
3) Transfer to cutting board cut diagonally with a serrated-edge knife into 1/2″ slices. Place cut sides down on baking sheets. Bake 10-15 minutes until firm. Cool.
4) Melt chips and shortening; stir until smooth. Drizzle over biscotti; store in air tight container.

Edamame (Ay duh Mah May)

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This is So good.

Put them out while people are milling around for the first course.

They’ll be asking you for the recipe.

This combo serves four, multiply accordingly.

Edamane with Chile Salt

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tb coarse salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 pound frozen edamame in shells

Pulse red pepper flakes in a spice grinder until finely ground. (Or use a mortar and pestle.) Mix with salt and sugar. Add edamame to boiling water and cook until bright green and heated through, about 4 minutes. Strain and transfer to a large bowl. Toss with seasoning and serve.

Asparagus Stalk-er

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I have a new and unlikely hero. Euell Gibbons.

Gibbons was a naturalist and writer who did tv commercials in the seventies; typically he stood in a roadside ditch waving a cattail as he talked about living off the land. I thought he was a fruit cake wacko.

But the other day, I read an account of a 6 day camping trip he took with John McPhee one fall in Pennsylvania. Called The Forager, the story is part of Secret Ingredients, a collection of stories, mostly funny, from the New Yorker magazine on all things gastronomic.  

The two set out with a canoe, sleeping bags, nested pots and a Coleman stove. They did not carry any food supplies with them intending to gather all of their meals from the countryside. After the first few days, they agreed they would introduce, a meal at a time, certain staples such as salt and cooking oil picked up en route.

Euell Gibbons ate what he foraged because he liked it not because he was a survivalist. Left to his own devices he’d make liberal use of butter, eggs and spices.  

Along with describing the 16 meals they share, McPhee includes Gibbon’s wry observations about all manner of things and interesting details about his fully lived life. The fortunate reader gets to vicariously feast on dandelion roots, oyster mushrooms,  persimmons and catnip tea.  

Gibbons was 64 when he died in ’75. If he was alive today I bet he’d have a huge following with Tweets such as:  

Not suffering like the early Christians. 

Mushroom? Toadstool? Learn the good ones or die.

Toss out the crops. Eat the weeds.

I never was a hay burner.  

March is Tough

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It is March Madness. It snowed, KU didn’t have a good day and Denver, the sweet yellow lab, got busted. I could have launched my campaign to clean a little area each day but …. I didn’t.

I did rummage through the shelf alcove next to the refrigerator where I store all printed materials related to anything mechanical. (Funny how you repeat the habits of your family, my mother always stuffed everything like that in a certain kitchen drawer.)

It was a memory lane sort of task, where is the pizza stone, the espresso foamer, the clay pot that roasted chicken and carrots? 

Oh, here are the directions for my Superfast Waterproof Pocket Thermometer! Great, I need it now. 

I made pork tenderloin with an onion pan sauce, roasted parsleyed potatoes, and carrots with tarragon and white wine. It turned out to be a good day.