When I was young, I had one of the infamous Teen Talk Barbies.  She and I would have long, imaginary conversations about the sociopolitical unrest in the Middle East, the impending real estate bubble, the stylistic value of cinéma verité…you know, all the usual interests of a ten year old girl.  At least, I would talk about those things.  Barbie, dear sweet, plastic-headed Barbie, would spout delightfully silly exclamations, like “Wanna have a pizza party?” and “Math class is tough.  Let’s go shopping!”

Actually, that’s not true.  I never had one of those Barbies and I only know about the infamous Teen Talk version off the doll because it was later parodied in a Simpsons episode where Lisa’s Malibu Stacy doll proclaims, “Math is hard.  Let’s go shopping!”

But let’s pretend for the sake of this post that I did have one of those dolls and in that case, alternative-reality me would be reminded of it years later when various friends and readers would flop down in their chairs, sigh, or type frowny-faced emoticons into messages and declare, “Cooking is hard.  Let’s eat out.”

Now, I may never teach you to like math–I’m not even going to try; after all, this is “Have Fork, Will Eat” not “Have FOIL, Will Calculate.”  I will, however, try to prove to you that not only is cooking not hard but it can also make basic math terribly tasty like these delicious make-ahead recipes that can be added to future meals for a nice boost of flavor and are easy to multiply and divide so you can make as much or as little as you want. Continue reading →

I can hear the battle raging on inside of Cookie Monster’s head already: “It look like a cookie.  But it not a cookie.  But it have chocolate chip like cookie.  But it scone.  But it round like cookie.  How it not cookie?  Cookie Monster like cookies.  Cookie Monster not Scone Monster.  To eat or not to eat scone cookie?  That is the question.”

The story behind these scones is pretty simple.  Last night I wanted to bake something with chocolate in it.  I didn’t want to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies.  So instead I made something that looked like a chocolate chip cookie instead.  I don’t know what to think about this.  Granted, it’s a very good scone.  Airy, fluffy, sweet, delicious, easy to make.  Vanilla-y with little morsels of semisweet chocolate.  Everybody loves them.  But I’m starting to wonder how bad my obsession with chocolate chip cookies has gotten if I start making little cookie clones out of other types of food.  First the chocolate chip cookie pie and now scones?  Maybe I’ve given scones low self esteem, made them the Jan to the chocolate chip cookie Marsha.  I mean, maybe it’s always, “Cookie, cookie, cookie!” What’s next?  Will my other baked goods start making up fake boyfriends, maybe a George Glass of Milk, to try and convince me of how wanted they are?  What should I do about this?  How should I put this poor pastry out of it’s misery?

I’ll have to eat it.  It’s the only way.  Continue reading →

This was a sad week.  Our household was struck down by the plague.  Well, a cold.  But a vicious cold.  You know, like one of those snarling, drippy cartoon germs you see in commercials.  It ruined all my weekend plans of…doing nothing.  I mean, sure I still did nothing but I didn’t enjoy it as much.  I missed the beautiful 80-degree day that was Sunday.  I missed two days of work after that.  So did Josh–which is how you know this was a bad cold, because Josh rarely gets sick and even more rarely takes days off because he’s sick.  And sadly, I missed all my good opportunities in the kitchen–there were no baguettes baked, no pretzels dipped in chocolate, nothing.  Oh the humanity!

But yesterday, we were will enough to go back to work.  And the little fish who controls the weather felt accommodating enough to make it sunny and warm, which was most appreciated.  At some point during the day–and I blame Chase for this–the idea of grilling burgers started fluttering around in my head.  Normally, I prefer ideas not flutter around in my brain.  It tickles, for one thing, and the noise is a bit disturbing.  But this idea was so appealing, I let it slide.  After all, I’ve been itching (figuratively, I swear) to get my grill on for weeks now.  Not to mention that grilling is a relatively easy, low-maintenance way to cook dinner and a good way for me to ease back into cooking while I recovered.  Clearly summer was trying to break free from Cold Miser’s grasp.  That made it my duty to embrace it with a good grilled burger, which, let’s be honest, is the epitome of summer itself. Continue reading →

There’s a great joke in an even greater movie, a classic work by an utterly influential artiste. Anyway, in the joke, this guy is talking to a girl he likes at a party and he lists off all these fantastic foreign foods that are sitting on the buffet, including dates.  And he offers her a plate and says, “Would you like a date?”  “Sure,” she replies, reaching for it.  He pulls the plate away.  “How about next Thursday”  Hahahahahah.  That, my dear friends, is the genius work of Mel Brooks in his cinematic masterpiece Robin Hood:Men in Tights.

That joke is what I’m always reminded of when I think about dates, the fruit.  If you’ve never had a date, they are these delicious little elongated fruits that come from a tree called a date palm, indigenous to the Middle East.  You can usually find them dried, sometimes pitted and bagged in the grocery store.  They are delicious in savory and sweet dishes and are often the base for various healthy snackbars, like Lärabars or Youbars.  In fact, those very bars are the inspiration for these little snackables.  Continue reading →

It is a really icky day here.  Cold, wet, rainy, some hail.  Not exactly a vision of spring bursting forth with sunshine and warm rays and flowers and bunnies with miniature gold pocket watches in little tiny pockets.

But that’s ok, because summer marches on an endless parade in my head.  Well, summer and a small battalion of green plastic army men, à la Toy Story but with less realism.  I decided that since I was on my own, I should make a dinner that was as seasonally uplifting as my imagination.  In the winter, I stay about two energy levels above hibernation and only because as of this writing, there is no way for humans to safely and economically hibernate through the less desirable parts of the calendar so far as I know.  (If you know of something…email me.)  I stay indoors, surrounded by warm blankets and fuzzy socks and eat hot, heavy, delicious comfort foods like chili, short ribs, mac and cheese, meatballs and lasagna.  But in the summer, I tend to slide more towards light, fruit and veggie heavy meals.  This dinner totally fits the bill. Continue reading →

I’m on year two of a five year plan that was put into operation about 15 years ago.  I’m a little behind, I’ll admit.  But the plan, the plan is still good.  The plan is to take over the world.  At first I thought I’d do it with my charm and effervescent wit.  But that hasn’t panned out yet.  So now I’m thinking I’ll take a slightly different tack.  I’m going to take over the world through a slow, steady and judicious application of macaroni and cheese.

First, I get the world’s attention with irresistible bacon comfort filled baked mac& cheese.  Then I up the ante with a sophisticated, spring-friendly chicken, spinach and leek concoction.  And now I’m sealing the deal with this sassy chorizo, garlic and broccoli  mac and cheese.  It’s just a little taste of what my reign will be like: a macaroni in every pot.

Well, a penne anyway.  Or a rigatoni.  Maybe shells.  Or spirals. Continue reading →

Why did the chicken cross the road?  To get to the rooster sauce.  At least, that would be my goal.

Like most people who pray at the altar of spicy food, my favorite edible deity is srircha sauce, or rooster sauce as it’s sometimes called (check out the bottle).  It is amazing, not just because it’s hot—and it’s hot—but because it’s packed with flavor.  I love hot sauce (have you tried making it?) but the thick, complex taste of sriracha is a perfect accompaniment to a lot of things, like pasta sauce.  It is also, I’ve discovered, an excellent addition to a meat brine.

Josh is a big fan of brining for two main reasons: 1) it gives poultry a much better flavor and more moisture and 2) he likes to do science to things and brining is really easy science.  As I explained in the brining pork ribs post,

If you don’t know, brining is the process of soaking meat in a salt solution that’s generally spiked with herbs, spices and other flavorings, for a few hours or overnight.  It tenderizes, moistens and flavors meat, making it really great for drier cuts of pork and poultry, in particular.

Continue reading →

Lemon curd has become my new it-dessert for spring, I think.  It’s cheerful and luscious and sweet and tart and quick and easy.  I like to eat it with a spoon and someday, I may even spread it on a scone or two but mostly, I like to eat it with a spoon, in front of the fridge.  With the door open, of course.  Because I’m classy like that.  I like lemon curd so much that I started wondering what other kinds of fruit curds I could make.  Lime was my first thought.  My second thought was “spiked with rum.”  But then I had what I consider to be a brilliant idea…pomegranate.  It’s sweet, it’s healthy, it’s got a luscious red color.  And I know from previous experiments in pomegranate that anything made out of it is delicious.

So I set about trying it out on Saturday morning.  After a week away, it was a relief to be back in my own kitchen, puttering away.  I debated whether to add another flavor in with the pomegranate in the curd.  I didn’t want to do lemon–although I will try that next–because I didn’t want its flavor to overpower that of the pomegranate.  I also didn’t want something super citrusy.  I decided on vanilla, figuring it would make an elegant, rich companion and it did.  Continue reading →

Ogres have layers, bars have layers

It’s that time of year again.  Fat Tuesday.  Mardi Gras.  Carnivale.  For some people, “Paczki Day.”

I, for one, enjoy Mardi Gras.  Who doesn’t like shiny beads and socially accepted overindulgence?  Monks.  But we just won’t tell them about it.  Anyway, I enjoy the festivities.  There is, however, one thing that has always somewhat baffled me about the way people celebrate Fat Tuesday here in southeast Michigan, at least.

Paczkis.  The overwhelming obsession with paczkis.  I mean…why?

Now don’t hate me.  I know that already some of you are going, “Oh my god, you did not just say that,” and others are going, “You didn’t mean it; I forgive you,” and still others are going, “What the hell is a paczki?  And how do you even pronounce it?”  A paczki, pronounced here as puntj-ki, is a Polish pastry made of fried dough filled with jam. Continue reading →

It’s a terrible dilemma, isn’t it?  Breakfast?  Or burgers?  Breakfast?  Or burgers?  Well, who says it has to be one or the other?  I say, have both.

I’m all very in to combinations this week.  On Sunday, a few friends and I had dinner at El Barzon in Detroit.  If you’ve never been there, it’s a fine dining restaurant in off Michigan Ave that serves Mexican…and Italian.  Mexican and Italian.  Mexitalian.  If that isn’t just a brilliant idea, I don’t know what is.  Why choose between tacos or lasagna?  Have both.  This is America, damnit, the land of opportunity…to have both tortilla chips and salsa and gnocchi in the same meal.  Apparently. Continue reading →

Does making a Bart Simpson/Butterfinger joke make me old?  No, of course not, don’t be silly.  But the fact that the Simpsons as we know them debuted on my seventh birthday in 1989 makes me feel old.  And awesome at the same time.  I never liked Butterfingers as a kid, cowabunga-cred notwithstanding.  Even now, I don’t eat them.  I much prefer my candy bars to either be all chocolate and nuts or contain vast amounts of caramel.  Josh, though, Josh loves Butterfingers.  Josh likes any combination of peanut butter and chocolate but Butterfingers are his go-to candy bar when we’re on the road and we’ve stopped in to a gas station for a pick-me-up.  So when I started experimenting in making homemade versions of popular candy bars last year, this was his request, and it was seconded by my friend Tim.  I sort of slowed down the candy-train a bit over the last few months due to just being busy with other things but now, spring is in the air, Valentine’s Day has come and gone, Easter is around the corner…the allure of melted chocolate is once again knocking on the proverbial door.  Continue reading →

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: real desserts have chocolate in them.  But sometimes, sometimes it’s nice to have an “after diner snack” that is light and fruity instead.  And I adore fruit for breakfast, snacks…basically any meal of the day.  And fruit is more than welcome to dip itself into some melted chocolate and march itself into my mouth.  By all means, please do.

Having said that though, I do have a soft spot for lemony sweets as well.  Lemon is an amazing flavor when treated right.  Sometimes it can be too sweet, or too harsh and sour.  But sometimes it can be just the right amount of sweet, just the right amount of tart, just the right level of flavor and then it’s amazing.  It’s bright and light and interesting and to be honest, makes me feel like a kid again.  As a kid, my favorite (non-chocolate) dessert sweet snack was lemon meringue pie, a favorite I shared with my dad.  But mostly lemon makes me think of my grandmother.  For two reasons.

One, when I was young–and occasionally still these days–my grandmother would make us lemonade from scratch.  As in, from real lemons.  Not from packets of Kool-Aid like I know some of you think of when you hear the words “make lemonade.”  No, this is the real deal.  She hand-squeezed lemons (a juicer? Pshaw) and strained out the seeds and mixed in just the right amount of sugar, water and ice to make a perfect icy cold tart-with-a-hint-of-sweetness treat, especially great during the hot summer days when my sister and I would come over and catch butterflies in the fields by their house, or to make me feel better after their chickens chased me around the yard.  Continue reading →

If you’re in the midwest, chances are you’ve been hearing about this massive snowstorm of Texas-fair-sized proportion that is currently bearing down upon us.  Depending where you are in the midwest, you’re probably already seeing the terrible side effects of living in a non-tropical climate.  At the very least, you probably at least ran to the store for “supplies,” are flexing your shoveling muscles in preparation for tomorrow and your kids are assuming that the time-honored childhood glory that is the Snow Day is a foregone conclusion.

I’m hoping so myself.  Either way, there’s a good chance that Let It Snow will be more than a quaint Christmas carol tonight, and you should be prepared for that with my Storm Sustenance Checklist.

The Checklist

–Lasagna heating up in the oven as we read/type
–Cookie dough made and chilling in the fridge until baking later
–Plenty of milk
–Plenty of booze
–Hot Cocoa
–Netflix subscription paid
–Dogs indoors, asleep on couch, drooling on their toys
–Low-fuss breakfast planned (french toast is a good one–you know the picture has made you hungry)
–Thawed meat roast for slow-cooking all day
–Plenty of booze
–A tub of peanut butter.  Just in case.
–some sort of fruit.  just because it’s a snow day doesn’t mean you can’t be healthy.  bonus: fruit dipped in chocolate.  negative points: fruity pebbles cereal.
–The will to cook the cookie dough before eating it
–A second batch of cookie after your will to not eat the first batch raw fails
–Enough bacon and mashed potatoes to create a sizable fort.
–Peas.  No really.  They’re good.  Give peas a chance.
–Sugar for making snow cream
–Tums

I like weekends that are both productive and lazy.  Productive as in “I made a lot of delicious food.”  Lazy as in “said delicious food require very little effort on my part.”  It’s nice.  It was a good way to spend the last weekend of January 2011, alternating between lounging on the couch with Josh and the dogs and spending a few minutes in the kitchen here and there, whipping up something tasty and fun.  I made another batch of beef tallow, rendering down about 3.5 pounds of suet, and I made my very first brioche which was then used in a delightful but deadly french toast casserole with heavy cream, whole milk, eggs, raw sugar, vanilla and Vietnamese cinnamon.  However, one can only indulge so much without slipping into a coma.  I love good, hearty comfort food spiked with full-fat dairy as much as the next person, but not all comfort food has to be loaded down with fat.  Most, yes, but not all.  So Saturday afternoon, I made a delightful dinner of light and flavorful lettuce wraps to combat the growing comfort food coma.  Continue reading →

It was ungodly cold in Michigan this weekend.  A high of 14 yesterday.  Fourteen. No, I didn’t really mean to type 41.  The 1 and the 4 were in the correct locations.  14 degrees.  Fahrenheit.  I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, 14 is not a temperature.  It’s an awkward time in adolescence, yes, but it is not a temperature.  It is against everything that is right and holy in my world.

Luckily, to combat this, my office had a chili potluck on Friday, complete with 4 delicious chili concoctions to take the freezing edge off, as well as chips, cheese, cornbread, biscuits–all the necessary accompaniments–cookies and cupcakes.  It was delighful.  But all too soon it ended and I found myself on my own Saturday morning with the cold wind trying to slide into the creaky doorways of my house.  My house is a delight.  I enjoy it immensely.  After all, we did strive to pick a house that we adored, because I intend to live there until I die and then I’m going to haunt it (although admittedly, indeed, I do plan on retiring someplace warm and sunny, but I still plan on keeping and haunting this house).  But some days, the grand old house is a little less grand.  Like days where it’s 14 degrees outside.  My house is three solid layers of brick wall (so if that big bad wolf ever comes around, I’m golden)…and no insulation.  And all wood floors.  And single pain, 150 year old windows.  It just soaks up the cold like a sponge.  With Josh off playing some RPG game with friends, and the dogs out of the house playing at day care (you laugh but it’s the greatest thing in the world if you have a puppy, especially one that weights 95 pounds and is the size of a deer, like our mastiff), I knew that if I followed my instincts and just melted myself into the couch, cloaked in a blanket like a ghost and watched endless hours of the Cooking channel, eventually….wait, why didn’t I do that?  That sounds awesome. Continue reading →

One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while was learn how to make and fry thing in beef tallow.  I know it might seem like an odd aspiration for a girl, but those of you who know me are probably nodding and going, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”  It’s said, though, that the best fried potatoes are fried in beef fat  and even McDonalds used to cook their French fries in tallow.  Remember those days?  When McDonalds had the best fries in the entire damn corporate restaurant world?  Well now you know why.  Beef fat.  Beef fat sits up there on a pedestal with pork fat and butter as the holy trinity of lipids, in my opinion, veritable liquid golds when melted, with the unparalleled ability to turn food from good to face-down-in-the-plate-awesome.

And as someone who also loves potatoes–I do love potatoes, they are the perfect vegetable, gastronomically–of course I’ve had a lifelong dream to dip slices of soft baking potatoes into clear, sizzling hot beef tallow, remove said starchy delight, coat it in salt, pepper and mountains of cheese and eat it–I mean, who doesn’t have that dream?  Maybe vegans.

But either way, I can proudly say to you that indeed, I have conquered this beefy potato mountain.  I have stood on its peak and raised my foodie flag to the sky and proclaimed, “It is done.”  And it was good. Continue reading →

I’ll say that one more time: double chocolate chip almond cookie pie.  Cookie pie.  Cookie pie. Cookie pie.

This is a beautiful dessert, in so many ways.  First of all, it contains some of the most important ingredients known to man: chocolate, double chocolate, almonds, butter, pie crust.  All it’s missing is pork…and you could remedy that buy adding in crumbled bacon and/or using lard in your pie crust.  Just something to consider.  Secondly, it solves that terrible, gastronomical conundrum that is, “What do I want for dessert?  A cookie or a slice of pie?”  Welcome to the future, my good hungry friend!  Who needs flying cars?  You can have cookie pie.  That’s two desserts in one.  It’s like a culinary double rainbow.  Plus, it offers twice the opportunity for supplemental dairy.  I mean, pie needs to have one of two things to go with it: ice cream or whipped cream.  Or ice cream and whipped cream.  And cookies need milk.  So you could have a slice of cookie pie with some whipped cream and a glass of milk.  Boom. Done.  Third, think of all the neatly paired colloquialisms you could make.  “Any way you slice it, that’s the way the cookie crumbles!”  And uh…um….ok, well maybe that’s the only one.   Finally, this dessert is extremely easy to make, even for those of you who are baking-phobic.  And do you know what you get at the end of this easy process?  Flaky, buttery pie crust, crunchy top and a nice thick layer of chocolate in the middle. It makes a great alternative to the usual whipped chocolate or fruity pies.  And if you’re tired of eating pumpkin after Thanksgiving and Christmas, then I believe this one is calling your name. Continue reading →

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a links post, but I’ve been finding so much interesting stuff lately that I figured I should revive the tradition.  Have a cookie and read on for some of the fascinating things the intarwebs have to pique your gastronomical interest.

• A map of all 50 states with the foods they are “best known for.”  I know you Michigan peeps are wondering was was listed for the Great Mitten.  It was pasties.  I know, seriously, pasties.  I realize they’re popular but I think it’s more of an Upper Peninsula thing.  I personally have never have a pasty in my entire life, although I’m probably a bad example because I have also never had a paczki despite their abundant presence in southeast Michigan.  Still I personally would’ve selected the all-mighty coney dog, or at least cherries, to represent the big M.  Your thoughts?
• Food is art–a beautiful tumbler blog full of what can only really be referred to as food porn.
• How to Make Chocolate Vodka.  Now let’s get something straight.  I’m not showing you this link because I suspect you’re an alcoholic.  Don’t worry; everyone sways back and forth like that…at 9am in the morning…at a bar.  Nor am I sending you this link because I’m secretly hoping to get you smashed in order to take some hilarious video footage of you doing the hokey pokey with a miniature goat so that I can post it on YouTube and make you web-famous.  No, no, the reason I’m sending you this link is because you’re obsessed with chocolate.  Just like me.  By the way, that link also contains a video, in case you’re too drunk tired to read properly.
• You’re attracted to me because of my spicy personality.  But alas, I’m taken.  We can never be.  Console yourself with this spicy sriracha cookbook instead.
• An infographic for no-knead ciabatta, bread thanks to Redditor zclip (original thread).

• Of all the recipes I’ve saved over the last month, this is the one, the one where I looked at the picture and thought, “Oh my god.  I would kill everyone in this room to have that right now.”  Just kidding of course.  I’m the only person in this room and that would be counterproductive.  Roasted pepper and tomato ragu.

• Fooducate, an iPhone app that helps you make healthy eating choices in the grocery store.  Scan the barcode of a grocery product, see the truth about it’s nutritional value and find better options.

Happy Friday!

One of the questions I get asked on a regular basis is—how do you do it?  And no, they’re not asking me how I remain so effervescently awesome–it’s clearly obvious that’s a trade secret.  No, they’re asking me, “How do you put a meal together?  And not a meal from a recipe you’ve searched for and pored over and planned out and executed with ninja-like precision (speaking of, there are at least 5 ninjas in this article.  But you can’t see them).  No, a meal from just whatever you have on hand.  How do you do that?”

It occurs to me that somewhere along the line, cooking became some sort of mysterious alchemy to a disturbingly large amount of people.  Food goes in one way, and deliciousness—or for some, vast amounts of thick black smoke–come out the other.  What happens in between is a mystery.  But it really doesn’t have to be that way.  You don’t have to go down the long, dark path to Frozen Foodland most nights, or make the same safe spaghetti and meatball dish every single night.  Not that I’m hating on meatballs–I love meatballs, some of my best friends are meatballs–or anything like that.  But of all the things in the world to fear, making dinner shouldn’t be one of them.  You don’t always have to have a plan.  It works to just toss in what you have. Continue reading →

Well, it’s New Year’s Eve. How exciting and yet terrifying. I mean, after midnight tonight, it will officially be 2011.  And I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed. I mean, I love my Camry and all but I kind of thought by now I’d have a flying car, or at least a pegasus that was hooked up to a cart of some sort. But no. My vehicle is still a non-magical, non-nuclear powered terrestrial vehicle.

But if I can’t have a personal automotive levitation device, I might as well have the next best thing this new year: brunch. I love brunch. First of all, it’s a delightfully crunchy-sounding word. Brrrrruncccchhh. It’s like weekend-in-a-bowl. It’s also flexible, relaxing, laid back, amenable to last minute plans, sociable and full of delicious flavors and my friends and I are indeed fans of delicious flavors (and also of the TV show Psych). Thus, we are big believers in the awesome healing powers of a good brunch.

Our last brunch was a bit last-minute. It was a couple weeks ago and the planning started on Friday, I think, with Paul messaging me as to whether we were interested in brunching at his place on Sunday. On Saturday, he laid out his menu ideas and we assigned tasks during a quick phone call and then we went grocery shopping for whatever items we didn’t already have in stock. On Sunday, Josh, myself, Brian and Rita trooped over to Paul’s house to get the party started, so to speak, with him and his roommates. Continue reading →