Pr0n Post #5: Ray cooks Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook

My friend Ray is learning how to cook and enjoy his food, two goals I wholeheartedly support… One of the pieces of advice I gave him was to find stuff he really likes to eat and then learn how to cook those dishes.

(He’s been doing a great job, you can check out what he’s cooking on his blog, Trust the Fedora.)

Well, Ray and his gorgeous girlfriend Aimee came out to my going away party at the Zeitgeist in SF (fun night, my motto today has been #whiskeybad… ha, ha.)

Before I came completely blotto I remember Ray telling me that he’d picked up Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles cookbook and that he planned to cook his way through it (much like Julie/Julia, but with the rock-star chef of Tony Bourdain, hot!)  Today he Tweeted this photo at me, his first undertaking was a roast chicken — and, from the looks of it, it was a complete success!  Yay, Ray – look at that sexy, sexy roast chicken!

Good job, sir – keep up the good work!!

Tags: Anthony Bourdain, Ray's roast chicken

Recipe #5: Thanksgiving bites… Or, how to con people into trying foie gras

After the low-brow bacon wrapped tater-tots, I feel like I need to redeem myself with a poncy recipe.

Someone told me the other day that they were “over foie gras.”

Okay, how pretentious are you, friend?

I don’t care how many people cook with it, how popular it becomes… this totally un-PC gourmet goody is like sex on a plate and I will never – hear me world? – never be “over” foie gras.

However, I do have more than one friend or family member who won’t try foie gras (or pate, in general)… They protest “ew, gross liver” or talk about animal rights or talk about whatever baloney reason they have for thinking they don’t like foie gras.

Until I trick them.

I call this appetizer a “Thanksgiving bite” – it combines four things I really, really love: bread, brie, cranberries and foie gras mousse.  All complimentary flavors that I (for some reason) associate with Thanksgiving.

Again, a stupidly simple recipe, decidedly delicious – you won’t be able to stop eating these little pieces of yummy.

Tip: the Bristol Farms gourmet deli makes an exceptionally good (and, fairly cheap) foie gras mousse.

Ingredients:
1/4 a pound of foie gras mousse (again, check out Bristol Farms Foie Gras Mousse)
Foot long baguette
Wedge of double creme brie cheese (I like Fromager d’Affinois, personally)
Lightly salted butter
Can of cranberry sauce with whole cranberries

• Slice the baguette into bite size pieces
• Melt the butter over low heat on the stove top
• Brush the baguette pieces with butter and arrange them on a flat baking sheet
• Bake the baguette pieces for seven to 10 minutes, until they’re toasted, take out of the oven and allow to cool
• Spread a thin layer of foie gras mousse on the baguette pieces
• Spread thin layer of brie on top of the foie gras
• Top with a dollop of cranberry sauce… ENJOY – SUPER YUMMMM!

PS: If anyone wanted to know what my favorite cheese is, the answer to that would be brie.

Tags: foie gras

Pr0n Post #4: Bacon wrapped tater-tots from the Boardroom

You know you’re jealous… you know you WISH you were me and that you’d spent the evening drinking cold beers and eating bacon wrapped tater-tots at the Boardroom in North Beach (SF).

Don’t hate.  Just appreciate…

The bacony-goodness wrapped around golden nuggets of crispy potato, dipped in smokey chipotle mayonaise?

Says mustachioed Bruce the bartender, “Eating one of these is like eating a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream – I’m ready to put on my jammies and pop in a Meg Ryan movie!”

I think that these bacon wrapped tots might… just might… be equal to, if not better than, mind-blowing multi-orgasm inducing sex.

Seriously.

You know you’re jealous… you WISH you were me… especially since I had TWO orders.

(Granted I split them with Geek Girl on the Street writers Candice Dayoan, Sean Campbell and their friend Hannah.)

(But still…)

PS: We ran into Top Chef 6′s Mattin Noblia (he’s hard to miss with the red ascot,) whose restaurant Iluna Basque is next to the Boardroom and considered dining there once we’d had cocktails, but once we tasted the tots we decided to pass and just stay where we were… Sorry, Mattin – next time!

Tags: bacon wrapped tots, Mattin Noblia, The Boardroom, Top Chef Las Vegas

Post #4: Friday five food questions

Here’s five food related questions that will help you get to know me (gastronomically speaking) a little better.  As this is a very new blog, it actually might add something to your reading experience to know about the person writing it:

1. What is the first thing you ever remember cooking?

Well – my mom encouraged my brothers and I to participate in helping to run our household when we were little, so I actually did quite a bit of cooking as a kid.  I’m not sure that I accurately remember the first thing I ever cooked, but I think it was either chop suey (from the Holly Hobby Cookbook of all places,) banana bread or Christmas cookies.

2. What is your favorite dish to cook for others?

I really love to cook big family dinners – my family and anyone who has ever lived with me can tell you that.  I’m a big fan of slowly cooked dishes like soups and roasts and complex casseroles.  Honestly, I enjoy cooking what other people enjoy eating… so my favorite thing changes often.  Right now it’s creamy tomato and crab bisque – because I cooked this on vacation for my family this past summer and everyone is still raving about how good it was…

3. What do you eat every day?

Like many people who really love food, I eat pretty simply every day – I eat a lot of cottage cheese (with Tapito, don’t ask why I like this so much, I just do) and oatmeal and salads, I’m also a big big big pasta lover… My thighs do not thank me for that one!

4. What is your favorite cocktail?

I’m pretty easy that way, simple choices: I’ve recently developed a taste for scotch, neat.  Good scotch has such a complex flavor profile (pretension alert, pretension alert!) that it’s really tasty if you drink it at room temp. in little sips.  I’m finding as I get older I have less of a tolerance for alcohol, but I still really do love a ice cold Cuba Libre or a cheap pilsner beer (like Rolling Rock.)

5. What would you choose for your last meal?

Well it’d have to be a multi-course type thing and the meal would make no sense what-so-ever: I know I’d absolutely want some kind of fresh seafood, weather that was sushi or sashimi or maybe my Dad’s pan fried scallops, I’m not sure.  I’d also want several things made by my Mom – chicken ameretto, lasagna and corned beef with cabbage, for sure.  My Grandma Helen’s piroges and my Grandma Ruth’s fried chicken would be nice.  I’d really need my Dad’s eggs benedict in there, too… I’d probably finish it all off with a nice, cold glass of chocolate milk and maybe a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios!  (I know, bizzare!)

Tags: Questions for Kate

Recipe #4: Spicy Chili Rellenos for Sonia and Carly

Last night I cooked Chili Rellenos for the fabulous Ms. Sonia Hunt (of Stirring it Up!) and my darling sister-in-law, Carly.

This was the first time, ever, I have cooked this dish – and, fortunately for me, it came out delish!

Sonia has a lot of food allergies that one has to be careful about, so I took extra care in preparing this meal… Yanno, because I didn’t want to kill her.

Chili rellenos is super easy (as I was told by my good friend, Teresa – the lady who got me hooked on these ooey-gooey, cheesy lumps of yum) as it is basically just a stuffed pepper.  Recipes for this dish are open to interpretation, some people batter these bad boys up and deep fry them.  I roasted mine.  Here’s how ya make them:

Ingredients:
1/2 pound of ground sirloin steak
1/2 pound of bacon
10-12 large chilies (Poblano peppers work best, as they’re pretty mild – yet, still have that chili kick to them.)
One large yellow onion, chopped
Two cloves of garlic, chopped
One large tomato, chopped
Two to three cups of pre-prepared re-fried beans (Amy’s Organic re-fried beans with chilies is what I used)
Two to three cups of parboiled rice (use whatever kind you like, I used jasmine rice because that was all I could find)
One pound of Monterey Jack cheese, sliced
Salt and pepper to taste

• First you need to roast the peppers.  Rinse them in water and pat dry with a paper towel.  Place all the chilies on a flat baking sheet.  Roast them under a low broiler, when the chilies turn dark brown or black on one side, turn them over and roast the other side to the same coloration.  Set aside to cool.
• In a large skillet, saute the ground beef and bacon until it cooked through, but not well done.
• Par boil your rice and put it into a large mixing bowl.
• Combine half the chopped onion, one clove of chopped garlic, all of the chopped tomato, the meat mixture and the rice
• Using the fat from the meat, saute the other half of the onion and garlic.  Add the beans to this mixture and heat until bubbly.
• De-seed the peppers. Carefully slice them open using a paring knife and remove the seeds with your fingers.  You may want to rinse the inside of the pepper to get all the seeds out, if you do – pat the pepper dry with a paper towel after rinsing.
• Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.
• Place the peppers into a shallow baking dish, spread them out evenly across the dish.
• Stuff the peppers – first put a layer of beans/onions and on top of that place a layer of the meat/rice mixture.
• Top with slices of cheese.
• If your peppers are particularly flat you can hold their shape together with a toothpick (I didn’t do this, it was fine…)
• Bake for a half hour to 45 minutes at 425, until the cheese becomes bubbly and brown.
• Serve with sour cream and salsa (I used and quite liked Whole Foods Peach Mango salsa, it cut the spice of the peppers perfectly)

What to do if you have extra filling: I threw this into the middle of some flour tortillas and covered it with cheddar cheese then baked it along with the peppers.  Sonia and Carly liked these imprompteau quesidillias as much as they liked the peppers.

BONUS RECIPE:

With the chili rellenos, I also served a simple spinach salad.  On this salad I put my homemade, super yummy lemon pepper dressing.  It’s ridiculously simple to make, here’s how you do it.

Ingredients:
One half a large lemon
1/4 a cup of olive oil
A pinch of sea salt
A pinch of cayenne pepper
One clove of garlic, chopped

• Bruise the lemon by rolling it back and forth on the counter while pressing down on it with your hand.
• In a small bowl, combine all the ingredients except the lemon juice.  Let it sit for about 10 minutes.
• Squeeze the juice from one half of the lemon into the mixture.
• Whisk until the combo emulsifies.
• Toss your salad in this dressing and enjoy the bright, fresh flavors.

Tags: Chili Rellenos, Kate's Lemon Pepper salad dressing

Pr0n Pic #3: Roast chicken panini from World Ground Cafe

Delishis sandwich just prior to eating...

I telecommute for work. I know you’re all jealous that I can work in my jammies, sleep in and then make it up on the flip side by working at 3am when no one else is online.  However, telecommuting can be a tad lonely – as the only company I have most days is that of my dog and my housemate’s dog and the screaming hooligan children playing on our street (summer vacation).

This is why often I pack up my computer and trudge down to my local coffee house to work in sweet silence surrounded by other people.  At the moment, that coffee shop happens to be World Ground Cafe in the Laurel District of Oakland, CA.  I live about four blocks from this coffee shop, so it’s pretty conveniant for me… World Ground is cool, like coffee shops used to be before Starbucks – lots of squashy second hand couches and weird old men writing poetry in the corner, while black turtleneck wearing college students wax philosophic… And, these days (as I went to college in the 90s when this wasn’t the norm) a lot of people working on laptop computers and teenagers texting from iPhones.

Whether I’m working on my book, my thesis, marketing writing assignments or some other online type thing – it is most likely you’ll find me at World Ground most weekdays until about 6pm… One of the things I like the best about World Ground is that they have a pretty decent breakfast and lunch menu of inventive wraps and paninis and salads… The menu changes a few times a week and everything is made fresh.  They also serve four kinds of beer, $4 a pint and have just added a wine bar (which I believe opens shortly after I move to Chicago at the end of the month.)  They seem to use a lot of bacon and prosciutto in their sandwiches, which of course, I approve of – loving the pig and all it’s yummy parts as I do.

Portions are huge. Come hungry, leave happy…

This coffee shop has been in the Laurel District for a decade and is owned by nice, hippyish people who employ students and a young mother (who brings her daughter with her to work) as baristas.

I’ve wanted to post a pr0n pic of one of their sandwiches for a while now, but kept forgetting to take a pic of one before I tucked into it. Today I remembered to snap a camera phone pic, first.  This is my Monday lunch – better known as the Panini of the Day #2 – roast chicken, sauteed onions, mushrooms and roma tomatoes with feta cheese and lemon aioli on grilled bread.  Triple yum and I wholly recommend trying out all of WG’s sandwiches if you’re in the Oakland area!

Tags: World Ground Cafe

Post #3: What everyone should have in their spice pantry

I’m in the process of packing up for my huge move to Chicago and I’ve finally gotten to the kitchen. Looking into my spice pantry/shelves I’m a little horrified, I have a ton of half-used, crusty bottles of what-have-you random spices, etc. that I bought about a decade ago for whatever reason.

No way, no how am I moving all this crap with me across country.

Personally, I think that most people out there have way too many unnecessary spices in their spice racks/shelves/pantries. Good, simple cooking doesn’t require a lot of bells and whistles. And, fresh herbs are ALWAYS better than dried ones.

Keeping this in mind, I’ve come up with a list of 21 essentials that everyone should have in their spice cupboard (and, a few things you should skip).

21 Items to Stock Your Spice Pantry:

1. Salt – Not iodized salt, though – a good old fashioned box of Kosher salt or sea-salt.  You’ll be amazed at how different it tastes from table salt.
2. Peppercorns or black pepper – with salt, goes pepper.  Personally, I prefer fresh cracked pepper from a pepper mill. Not everyone does, though. Standard black pepper is fine to cook with, too.
3. Olive oil - You can ditch most of the other types of oil, if you want to – olive oil works for everything from baking needs (yes, I’ve used olive oil in cakes) to stir fry to making salad dressing.
4. Some kind of vinegar – Personally, I prefer Apple Cider Vinegar and/or Rice Vinegar… But, as long as you have some sort of vinegar you’re in good shape.  (I also try to keep a bottle of distilled white vinegar on hand for cleaning purposes and for dying Easter eggs…)
5. One can of evaporated milk – Useful for baking, evaporated milk is also handy to have around in case your electricity goes out for any length of time or in a pinch to use in coffee.
6. Some type of hot sauce - Be it Tabasco, Tapatio, Crystal or some fancy designer hot sauce, eventually you’ll have a use for it, even if it’s just in making a Sunday morning Bloody Mary.
7. Beef, chicken or vegetable bullion cubes – There are a million uses for bullion. Most particularly, they are helpful in enriching stocks or sauces. Many contemporary recipes developed in the 1950s call for a bullion cube or two.  If you want to be fancy (and, I usually do) you can make stock and reduce it down so that it’s tres strong in flavor, then fill ice cube trays with the stuff, cover with wrap and throw into the freezer for homemade bullion cubes. (Technically those don’t go in the pantry… but, yanno.)
8. Cumin or Caraway seeds – This is a spice which the dried form is better. Many stews, breads and curry spice mixes will call for either cumin or caraway seeds. They both taste vaguely of anise and are used in many Middle Eastern recipes.
9. Dried Oregano – Only because fresh oregano is kind of hard to find.
10. Some sort of fancy salt - There are a ton of flavored salts out there that are great for cooking with. I, personally, keep truffle salt and saffron salt (which I like on popcorn) in my pantry to add a little gourmet taste to things from time to time.
11. A small amount of the dried spices necessary to make a curry – Believe it or not, curry isn’t a spice in-of-it’s self but something you should mix by hand.  The basic spices which go into a curry powder are coriander, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, tumeric, cayanne pepper and black pepper. Mix these up in a dedicated coffee bean grinder or spice grinder and you have fresh curry powder that will add a giant kick in the pants to soups, stir fry or curry dishes.
12. Two coffee bean grinders – One for coffee beans, one for spices (as in #11).
13. Cane sugar or brown sugar and/or honey- for baking or use in cereal, coffee or many savory dishes which call for a pinch of something sweet to distinguish the tastes of the dish.
14. Some sort of flour – It’s up to you which kind, but eventually you’ll need flour for something.
15. Old Bay Seasoning – From shrimp boils to deviled eggs to fish to soups, this is a handy spice to have on hand for a variety of dishes.
16. Dried mushrooms – Dried mushrooms are helpful for creating flavorful sauces, glazes and soups.  Sometimes they’re even preferable to the fresh variety, due to their potency. Also – there are several exotic mushrooms which are easier to obtain dried than fresh…
17. Vanilla extract – A key ingredient in most icings, frostings and baked goods – even a non-baker will end up using vanilla extract for something, eventually. (I put it in my coffee, YUM!)
18. Ground coffee or coffee beans – because you need coffee to have the energy to cook, right?
19. Soy sauce, Aminos or some other tamari based seasoning – This is essential for cooking dishes with an Asian flavor profile. Not to mention Aminos are a great salt substitute.
20. Some sort of dried garlic product – Even though I prefer to use fresh garlic, my Mom is allergic to it, so when cooking for her, I have to use a dried garlic powder.  I had no idea until recently how many people were actually allergic to fresh garlic, oy poor dears!
21. Peanut butter or sesame butter – Unless you’re allergic to it.

THINGS TO SKIP: Lemon-pepper anything – make it yourself, “Cajun” or “Blackening” spices – again, make it yourself, onion salt, food coloring (unless you use it all the time), any pre-fab ethnic spice like curry or stir-fry sauce, pre-fab salad dressing mixes (make them yourself!), cream of tartar – unless you’re into molecular gastronomy, saffron – do you know how expensive that stuff is and how rarely you’ll use it? …I’m sure there are more things you can eliminate from your pantry shelves – but, that’s my basic list.

Tags: Spices