Archives for the 'Recipes' Category
Because You Can’t Spell ‘Cheat’ Without ‘Eat’
Delia Smith, who’s basically the Sandra Lee of England, is helping create a nation of cheaters, according to Britain’s Daily Express (which modestly bills itself as “the world’s greatest newspaper”).
Britain is breeding a generation of lazy cooks who cheat at dinner parties with dishes they pretend are home-made.
Millions of us admit to cutting corners when it comes to entertaining at home in a bid to impress our guests.
We serve up ready meals and packet sauces and pass them off as our own, according to a survey.
Eighty-five per cent of people said they simply do not have the time to cook meals for friends from scratch using fresh ingredients.
The research comes as TV cook Delia Smith, 66, continues to be criticised for promoting easy-to-prepare meals, often using frozen foods. Delia’s quick-fix method in her book How To Cheat At Cooking and BBC spin-off has struck a chord with busy families who simply do not have the time or energy to waste over a hot stove.
Delia was criticised for recommending recipes using ingredients including tinned minced meat, frozen mashed potato and cheese sauce from a packet.
In his famously outspoken manner, fellow TV chef Gordon Ramsay described her cooking style as an “insult”.
In one of my favorite moments from the underrated Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Angelina Jolie’s Mrs. tells husband Mr. (Brad Pitt), after he criticizes her aim with a gun as being “as bad as [her] cooking,” that she’d always ordered out and had never, in fact, cooked a meal for her hubby.
Compare Sandra Lee’s spaghetti “recipe,” which includes a jar of Newman’s Own sauce and packages of pre-sliced garlic and mushrooms, with Delia Smith’s less unambitious penne with asparagus and four cheeses, which includes Sainsbury’s fresh four cheese sauce and pre-grated parmesan.
Like a Taco Bell Gordita, Only Grosser
Butch’s Pizza has been around in Appleton, Wis. for several decades. Sounds like a good, traditional, family-style pizzeria.
Butch’s is filled with charm. For example, [owner Ned] Montanye’s community involvement is evidenced by the dozens of youth sports trophies that adorn the walls.
[…]
On the menu: I couldn’t decide on just one pie, so I just ordered two. I got a 14-inch Butch’s Special ($15.20) on thin crust, which is topped with sausage, mushrooms, pepperoni, green peppers and onions.
“All the flavors blend together really well,” Montanye. “I like adding bacon to it. That really jazzes it up.”
So far so… great! Awesome! Perfect! But then…
I also ordered a 14-inch Taco Pizza ($18.25), which is made with taco meat, lettuce, tomato, taco sauce on the side and, as a nice touch, crushed Doritos on top.
“Our taco pizza I think is amazing,” said Ned. “It is so filling. There is a lot of stuff on there.”
Speechless. Horrified. More here.
Though I’ve learned the Internet is rife with taco pizza recipes, anyone who craves such crap deserves to eat the Burrito Mexicalian Pizza, which features as its first ingredient “1 box single cheese pizza mix.” Check out Norway’s inexplicably “singing” taco pizza here.
Next Big Thing in Food: Australian Finger Limes
What’s ugly, exotic, rare and forbidden, great to cook with, and my guess as the next hot ingredient in kitchens worldwide? It’s not my friend Jacob’s miracle fruit. It’s the finger lime — also known as citrus caviar. They’re native to Australia, in demand in England, and now even making the odd appearance on an American menu.
Finger limes were on the menu when Charlie Trotter’s celebrated its twentieth-anniversary party just a few months back. (Chef Tatsuya Wakuda said they’re a pest to prepare, but called them key to his dish, due to the “nice kick” they provide.) Writer S. Irene Virbila of the LA Times, who recently tried them at the citrus-themed Restaurant Omakase in Riverside, likens them to “beads of sharp lime”.
Since you’ll undoubtedly be trying finger limes soon enough, you may as well know what the hell to do with them. Drink and food recipes here and here.
Cooking with Ye Oldest of Ye Olde
The Union Oyster House in Boston, which bills itself as America’s oldest restaurant, has issued its first cookbook. And it only took 200 years. The Boston Herald has the scoop:
The newly published “Union Oyster House Cookbook” (Seapoint Books, $12.95) is everything you’d want from America’s oldest restaurant. Lots of recipes, appetizing food photographs and fascinating facts about the legendary eatery, which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
The earliest standing-brick edifice in Boston (constructed circa 1716), the Union Oyster House building was an important site long before it served food - housing an early Revolutionary-era newspaper, serving as headquarters for Continental Army paymaster Ebenezer Hancock and as temporary home to Louis Philippe, the future king of France.
It wasn’t until 1826 that the building became a restaurant, famous for its semicircular oyster bar in the front window. Union Oyster House was a haunt of local politicians from Daniel Webster to John Michael Curley and John F. Kennedy. A slew of celebrities, including Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tiger Woods, have dined there as well.
Mistakenly left off that eminent list? Me! More here. Pick up the book here.
Tomorrow is Super Duper Fat Pancake Mardi Day
Sure, tomorrow is Super Tuesday. (Or Super Duper Tuesday, even.)
But before it ever was that, it was Fat Tuesday, also known in mainly British circles as Pancake Tuesday. The Times of London has a few celeb chef pancake recipes, most of which would surely form a lead weight in your stomach as you draw a bead on the primaries’ exit polls. I’ll probably stick with the simplest beer-pancakes recipe ever.
Frothy former Sen. Rick Santorum suggests Super Duper Pancake Tuesday as he endorses Mitt Romney at the Pancake Pantry in Tenn. here.
Whales: Big, Cute, Lovable, Edible
If you listen to pint-sized actre-vist Hayden Panettiere**, whaling is all about cruelty, mercury, and Osama bin Laden. But if you choose to shape your views with the input of people who are not 18 years old, and who are not best known for wearing a form-fitting cheerleader’s outfit, you might learn that people eat whales because whale taste falls somewhere between excellent and passable.
You might also be interested to learn that sixty-five years ago, Time reported whale steaks (which were being reintroduced into the U.S., presumably to broaden the American diet during wartime) were set to sell at about 35¢ a pound in the U.S.
Norwegian recipe for whale steaks with herbs here. In lieu of buying illegal whale meat online, check out Carvel’s Fudgie the Whale MySpace page here. Amazon’s Japanese shop sells no whale meat, but does sell a Happy Whale mobile. Celebrate the late Swedish pop group Whale here.
**Panettiere’s opposition to whaling at least seems more rational and genuine than that of this Aussie columnist, who would “eat the sucker” abroad but doesn’t want it sold at home under some convoluted theory of cultural imperialism. His basic argument is that it’s wrong to impose his moral views about food on the world when he’s abroad — which is probably right — but he’s fine with telling his countrymen that they can’t eat what he’s just eaten abroad.
Raccoon Goes Haute in a Blaze of Gory
Ranger Rick was the first magazine to which I had a subscription. (Mother Jones was the second.) Perhaps that’s why I’ve always had an affinity of sorts for raccoons. And so while they frequently scare the living hell out of my girlfriend and her sister in the parking lot behind our apartment (which is in a building that abuts federal parkland on three sides), I actually dig the little fellas.
But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat one if I accidentally backed over him. Thankfully, I have a template (well, besides the one I might have used — the fried squirrel recipe in my 60’s edition of Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook) to follow in case one of Rick’s peers were to meet his unfortunate demise under my UniRoyal, courtesy of Monica Eng in today’s Chicago Tribune.
Eng’s friend acquired a bargain-basement raccoon carcass, bringing it to Moto on the city’s west side. There, the kitchen sliced, diced, simmered, and braised said raccoon until it offered up to Eng this brilliant recreation of a roadkill scene:
That is nothing short of staggering brilliance. Stunning. I can only guess that Moto chefs must have looked at a current craze (i.e., chefs cooking and writers and travel hosts downing bats, balls, brains, & blood), seen it had clearly jumped the shark, and applied culinary standards to it (i.e., presentation, whimsy) in order to rein it in and make it something fresh and new. Bravo!
More from the Trib (including video) here and here. Moto site here.
