Three months since I posted! THAT doesn't seem quite right. But I have been subsisting on frozen pizzas and steamed veg, so I haven't felt like my membership in the food blog world was up-to-date.
Why the hiatus? I dunno. Lazy. I live by myself, cook for myself...not that inspiring.
I do have a discovery, completely by accident - cherry tomato raisins!
This requires tiny cherry tomatoes (I used the yellow ones), a hot place, and a ventilated surface.
I had some little yellow cherry tomatoes sitting in a colander in a single layer in my kitchen, which gets very hot in the afternoons. After a few days, I noticed some beginning to shrivel and was about to throw them out when I thought "What the heck?" and stuck one in my mouth.
Pure sweet concentrated tomato heaven. Kind of like sun dried tomatoes, only a little softer and sweeter.
Give it a try. I would post a photo but Mr. Snackish is busy taking guitar pictures, so I don't have the camera today.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Cara Cara, the pink orange
These Cara Cara oranges are beginning to appear at Farmer's Markets here in Southern California. They are sweeter and less citrusy than other oranges, and their flesh can range from a medium to a dark reddish orange. I'm not a big fan of regular oranges, but I love these.
Melissa's Produce has the whole scoop on where they came from, how to pick a good one, and nutritional values.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Rainy Day Roasting
After a week with temperatures in the 80s and 90s (yep, that's what I said), it suddenly got cold and rainy here just in time for the weekend.
So today we take on another much-hated vegetable - turnips! The key is to buy small turnips, not those softball-sized purple and white jobs.
I had a bunch of pretty white Japanese turnips in the fridge just waiting for the weather to turn. I had thought of a recipe that worked out stunningly a few weeks ago and that I wanted to try again, and it involves roasting, which heats up the house - a win-win situation.
Roasted Turnips with Honey Butter
1 bunch of turnips, the smaller the better, by no means over 2 1/2 inches in diameter.
3 Tbsp butter, more or less
1 Tbsp honey, the darker the better
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get out a big baking sheet.
Remove the tops from the turnips. If they are tiny and lovely, reserve them to make a vitamin-packed turnip greens recipe with. If they are large and spiny, put them in your greenwaste or compost container. If your city does not provide a greenwase container, call them and ask why.
Peel the turnips, even if they are tiny. Yes, you must. Because I have tried it both ways and it only works well with peeled ones, that is why. If they are unpeeled, they are too moist and get mushy.
If the turnips are larger, cut them in half and each half into four wedges. If they are small, just cut them into about 1 inch chunks.
Melt the butter and honey together in a saucepan over low heat. Add the turnips and toss to coat, then spread in one layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or so, turning every 15 minutes or when you remember. When they are done, they will be golden brown with some darker brown spots.
Try not to eat them all yourself. I did.
So today we take on another much-hated vegetable - turnips! The key is to buy small turnips, not those softball-sized purple and white jobs.
I had a bunch of pretty white Japanese turnips in the fridge just waiting for the weather to turn. I had thought of a recipe that worked out stunningly a few weeks ago and that I wanted to try again, and it involves roasting, which heats up the house - a win-win situation.
Roasted Turnips with Honey Butter
1 bunch of turnips, the smaller the better, by no means over 2 1/2 inches in diameter.
3 Tbsp butter, more or less
1 Tbsp honey, the darker the better
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get out a big baking sheet.
Remove the tops from the turnips. If they are tiny and lovely, reserve them to make a vitamin-packed turnip greens recipe with. If they are large and spiny, put them in your greenwaste or compost container. If your city does not provide a greenwase container, call them and ask why.
Peel the turnips, even if they are tiny. Yes, you must. Because I have tried it both ways and it only works well with peeled ones, that is why. If they are unpeeled, they are too moist and get mushy.
If the turnips are larger, cut them in half and each half into four wedges. If they are small, just cut them into about 1 inch chunks.
Melt the butter and honey together in a saucepan over low heat. Add the turnips and toss to coat, then spread in one layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or so, turning every 15 minutes or when you remember. When they are done, they will be golden brown with some darker brown spots.
Try not to eat them all yourself. I did.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Easy to Love
John and Kira's Chocolates
Mr. Snackish did good for Valentine's Day, and since I love what he sent me so much I thought I would tell y'all about it in case you are in a gift-giving or self-treating mood.
At about 10 a.m. on Valentine's Day I got a call from Roger the security guard at work (the nice morning guy, not the kinda trippy afternoon guy) telling me there was a package for me.
"Is it heavy?" I said, thinking of the copier paper order.
"Oh, no, Miss Sue," said Roger (he has the most charming somewhere-in-the-Pacific accent), "I think this box has gooooodies in it."
And right he was. A nice wooden box, tied with a pretty dark red mesh ribbon, filled with chocolate squares from John and Kira's Chocolates. (I must say, though, that picture of whom I assume is John on the front page of the website is rather ominous and scary. It looks like he might have been sampling the coffee-whisky mixture on picture day.)
Like old-fashioned chocolates, the squares are marked with symbols and there is a little map to the flavors inside the box. The flavors include bergamot, lavender, ginger, coffee-whiskey, raspberry, strawberry and mint.
They are all good, even the lavender, which is a flavor I normally abhor in food (and in anything else for that matter).
They are not too strong, not too sweet, lovely and creamy. I am holding myself back with great difficulty from eating more than two per day.
Thank you, Mr. S. You are a champion among men.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Vegan?
I took a disappointing cooking class the other night. Why?
Two words: vegan cheese.
The class was a hands-on vegan demo, led by Ann Gentry of the very popular Real Food Daily vegan organic restaurants in Los Angeles.
That's Ann on the left
I was not afraid - as a vegetarian of two decades, I am fully conversant with vegetarian/vegan food and it doesn't seem at all odd to me.
My classmates, about 20 eager would-be cooks, were very welcoming and congenial, which is far more than I can say for most people in the nouveau riche my-new-facelift-is-better-than-your-new-facelift Westlake Village area.
The hands-on part of the class was kinda fun. We cleaned, chopped, sliced and diced (though most people in class, I am sorry to say, had scary knife skills) while our faithful helpers from the cooking school did the dishes. All good.
But when we tasted the dishes a pall fell over the class. They were uniformly horrible. The tempeh and potato salad was sharp and pointy from too much vinegar, the barley salad was mooshy and tasteless. The broccoli ( I saw it spelled "brocli" at Farmer's Market the other day and am tempted to adopt that spelling) soup was beyond boring, with fibrous bits of brocli throughout
The lasagna had tough noodles and undercooked veggies as well as that damned salty-yuk so-called vegan cheese. Why are vegans possessed to try and copy foods like cheese that are all but impossible to copy?
To top it off, the restaurant's famous chocolate chip cookie (some kind of non-wheat flour - I don't care enough to look up the recipe, but it contains maple syrup, etc) was bitter and inedible. A chocolate chip cookie that I could not eat?!? Now, that IS shocking.
What is so weird to me is that Suzanne Goin's (see previous post) curried pea soup was vegan and her salad could have been vegan without the parmesan chunks, and both dishes were perfect and glorious.
Is wearing a culinary hair shirt part of being a vegan? Just wondering. Hit me with the comments.
Two words: vegan cheese.
The class was a hands-on vegan demo, led by Ann Gentry of the very popular Real Food Daily vegan organic restaurants in Los Angeles.
That's Ann on the left
I was not afraid - as a vegetarian of two decades, I am fully conversant with vegetarian/vegan food and it doesn't seem at all odd to me.
My classmates, about 20 eager would-be cooks, were very welcoming and congenial, which is far more than I can say for most people in the nouveau riche my-new-facelift-is-better-than-your-new-facelift Westlake Village area.
The hands-on part of the class was kinda fun. We cleaned, chopped, sliced and diced (though most people in class, I am sorry to say, had scary knife skills) while our faithful helpers from the cooking school did the dishes. All good.
But when we tasted the dishes a pall fell over the class. They were uniformly horrible. The tempeh and potato salad was sharp and pointy from too much vinegar, the barley salad was mooshy and tasteless. The broccoli ( I saw it spelled "brocli" at Farmer's Market the other day and am tempted to adopt that spelling) soup was beyond boring, with fibrous bits of brocli throughout
The lasagna had tough noodles and undercooked veggies as well as that damned salty-yuk so-called vegan cheese. Why are vegans possessed to try and copy foods like cheese that are all but impossible to copy?
To top it off, the restaurant's famous chocolate chip cookie (some kind of non-wheat flour - I don't care enough to look up the recipe, but it contains maple syrup, etc) was bitter and inedible. A chocolate chip cookie that I could not eat?!? Now, that IS shocking.
What is so weird to me is that Suzanne Goin's (see previous post) curried pea soup was vegan and her salad could have been vegan without the parmesan chunks, and both dishes were perfect and glorious.
Is wearing a culinary hair shirt part of being a vegan? Just wondering. Hit me with the comments.
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