Shallots, garlic, tarragon, brandy and balsamic vinegar create a lively sauce for simply prepared duck breasts and sautéed pears—an easy, elegant Valentine’s Day dinner. Recipe below.
Ducks are funny. When we’re kids, they’re the subject of cartoons and homey barnyard stories. “Quack” is one of the great comic animal sounds we all enthusiastically learn. But put duck on a restaurant menu and suddenly it’s exotic and luxe, even in rustic preparations. Prepare duck at home and it’s sure to impress, making it perfect for a romantic dinner for you and your valentine.
Unfortunately, duck can also seem intimidating to some home cooks. And sure, preparing duck confit can be a long, involved process. But duck breasts are a breeze, not only easy to prepare, but quick. [click to continue…]
In its first comprehensive report since 2006, Feeding America shows how the economic downturn is increasing risk of hunger for a growing number of families and creating pressure on relief organizations.
The French have a saying: Jamais deux sans trois—never two (catastrophes) without three. There is certainly no shortage of catastrophes, disasters and ongoing problems in the world today. The latest to capture world attention is the devastation created by the earthquake in Haiti.
And just this month, Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity organization, issued Hunger in America 2010, “the largest study of domestic hunger,” according to their website. The report shows that hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States. [click to continue…]
I never called him Dad. I was already grown and living on my own when he and Mom married, not the first marriage for either of them. So Dad just didn’t sound right to me. Instead, I called him by his name, Jim.
Friends from the old neighborhood and the Fisher Body plant in St. Louis where he spent much of his working life called him Red. They did so even after his hair no longer matched his nickname. Red suited him. Like the color, he was big and bold and cheerful—and yes, sometimes a little loud.
Jim dreamed big. He always had projects, plans and ideas brewing, some of them a little goofy maybe, but some of them verging on visionary. And as he aged, they shifted from schemes to get rich quick to ways to save the planet, or at least a little corner of it. [click to continue…]
Many flavors come together to create a complex, satisfying and surprisingly mild seasonal pasta dish. Recipe below.
Brussels sprouts get a totally undeserved bad rap. I think much of it comes from our national suspicion of vegetables in general. And much of that stems from bad or at least unimaginative cooking. Too many cooks treat vegetables as an afterthought, something to be boiled beyond mushy and then seasoned with a little salt and pepper. Of course many of us learn to fear vegetables from our parents. They hated them as kids and expect us to hate them too. So we do.
Whatever the reason for this collective aversion, hiding vegetables has become an industry all its own. Campbell’s V8 Juice first turned them into juice, so you could drink them. Now they’ve launched V8 Fusion, which hides vegetables in clear fruit juices.
For people who can’t get enough of cooking—and that would include me—Guide to Culinary Schools has compiled a wonderfully eclectic mix of cooking videos.
The Internet is a wonderful place, chock full of cool stuff. On the other hand, it’s chock full of stuff. So much so that sometimes it’s hard to sift through everything to find what you’re looking for.
The website Guide to Culinary Schools has done some major sifting and come up with a wildly varied mix of 101 cooking videos. The videos range from classic Julia Child to current big names such as Mario Batali and Eric Ripert to goofy bits about baking cookies on your car’s dashboard. [click to continue…]
Slow marinating with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, Chinese five-spice powder, fresh ginger and other pan-Asian ingredients infuses quick-cooking Chinese Pork Tenderloin with big, complex flavor. Recipe below.
Guitarists sometimes refer to capos as cheaters. By strapping a capo onto the guitar’s neck in various positions, you can change the key you’re playing in without having to transpose the music.
To me, marinating is kind of a cheater technique. And I mean that in a good way. A very simple process—mixing some stuff together and letting it sit for a while—can transpose a simply prepared meal into something that tastes more impressive than it rightfully should.
Marinating infuses meats [and seafood and even vegetables] with flavors limited only by your imagination, and just about every cuisine and culture [click to continue…]
Quickly stir frying pre-cooked noodles with a variety of flavorings—in this case, shallots, green onions, roasted cashews, soy sauce and mirin—takes them from bland backdrop to exciting side dish. Recipe and variations below.
These noodles weren’t meant to be posted. I just needed a quick side for the Chinese Pork Tenderloin I was serving, something a little more interesting than the usual steamed white rice. But then they turned out so well. Even better, they were quick and easy to make and open to endless variations. So here they are.
I kept my dish simple—udon noodles, shallots, green onions, toasted cashews, oil, soy sauce and mirin [a sweet, low-alcohol Japanese cooking wine—you could also use sherry]. I didn’t want the noodles to overpower the tenderloin. Toasted pine nuts would be a fine substitute for the cashews.
The food blogging community has proven itself time and again to be generous, warm and caring, always ready to share. The people of Haiti are in desperate need of your generosity right now.
Living in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haitians face daily struggles in the best of times. But the devastating earthquake has left many of them injured, homeless and without food or water. According to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as much as a third of the nation’s population—about 3 million people—has been affected by the quake.
The best way to help is money. Donations in whatever amount you can give. Here are four organizations that will put your generosity to good use. [click to continue…]
Three different ingredients—cayenne pepper, wasabi powder and, in the case of Marion’s Asian-inspired “poison gas potatoes” below, Sriracha hot sauce—add kick to three different potato side dishes. Recipes below.
Potatoes are pretty versatile as sides go. Even the everyday treatments we all rely on—baked, mashed, roasted, fried—show their flavorful flexibility. But add a little heat and things get really interesting.
This week, we’re featuring three potato recipes that do just that. The results range from subtle, with Wasabi Mashed Potatoes, to semi-serious spiciness, with Spicy Roasted Potatoes and Marion’s delicious [if frighteningly named] Poison Gas Potatoes. We’ll start with the one with the most intriguing name.
Poison Gas Potatoes
There’s nothing that will clear the kitchen faster than when these potatoes are cooking and the Sriracha hot sauce hits the pan. [click to continue…]
Two very different new food blogs have caught my eye recently, for very different reasons.
That’s not lettuce is written very much the way its creator Melissa Yen thinks about food: Constantly and from every angle. Our too infrequent conversations may occasionally veer away from food, but they always hurry back. Buying it, growing it, making it [at home or for paying customers], enjoying it [in restaurants or at the tables of friends and family]…
A former owner of the much missed Vella Cafe here in Chicago, Melissa’s first food job in a long line of them was in her aunt’s restaurant when she was eleven. She’s also been involved in the Logan Square Farmers Market. So when she says that thing that all food bloggers say, “I am someone who is absolutely passionate about food,” I think she has a little more history to back up those words than some of us do—certainly than I do. [click to continue…]
