Category — tips

One of my most loyal and longest followers requested this recipe by email. Sharon C. has children who attend LPG every summer and she and her daughter, (along with another mother/daughter duo who are their BFF’s) always leave lovely comments, which I appreciate immensely! So this is my shout-out to Sharon and Sydney C. & Debbie and Kelsey Q! Thank you, and I hope to see you again this summer!

Tip: One of the downsides to asparagus soup can be the color. When asparagus gets cooked this long to make it soft enough to puree, it fades a bit. The solution?  Add a few handfuls of fresh spinach to the pot a minute before blending. The spinach will not be noticeable in the taste but will boost the color by leaps and bounds.

My mother-in-law was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, and is a life-long Green Bay Packers fan. She arrives next week, on Super Bowl Sunday, for a visit. I think I’ll freeze some of this lovely green soup and serve it while we watch “The Pack” bring home the Vince Lombardi Trophy!

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I’m making these quick and easy appetizers for our neighborhood Bunco tonight. I know I’ve said it before, but I have the best neighbors and the most fun neighborhood! We are very blessed!

The Ahi tuna marinates for only 20 minutes in a mixture of sherry, sesame oil, sugar, and mushroom soy sauce. (Do not marinate longer or the marinate will totally mask the wonderful tuna flavor, and you paid good money for that!) Mushroom soy sauce is a Chinese dark soy sauce that adds straw mushroom essence to the sauce’s brew. It has a deep, rich flavor and more body and complexity than regular soy sauce and can be used in place of other types of soy sauce in most recipes. The brand to look for in Asian markets is Pearl River Bridge. [Read more →]

Last week, I spoke about my love for the mussels at Tarbell’s Restaurant. Well, I haven’t been able to get them off my mind since, so that means only one thing… make some! This recipe is adapted very slightly from Mark Tarbell’s recipe on his website.

There can be one little itty bitty problem with mussels (bivalvia mollusca) and their cousin, clams. The grit and sand sometimes found inside can ruin an otherwise perfect meal. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is an easy way to get the mussels to give up their sand.

You just dissolve about 1/4 cup salt in a large bowl or pot filled with cold tap water and add the mussels and enough cold water to cover them. Then sprinkle with cornmeal. Soak for 2 hours or overnight, uncovered, in the refrigerator. The mussels will actually take in the cornmeal and expel the grit or sand. Before using, rinse the mussels and scrub if scruffy-looking, and snip off the “beards” (dark threads) with scissors. If mussels have opened slightly before cooking, tap the shell. They should snap shut. Discard any mussels that don’t pass the tap test, as well as any that fail to open during cooking. And be sure to have plenty of warm and toasty bread to soak up all the delicious juices!

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Here is the salad I made at the Valley Dish show yesterday. I created it especially for Tram after I was on the last time and made crisp mozzarella slices to go with a risotto dish. She’d mentioned that she loved the crisp warm cheese and I asked if she’d had warm goat cheese done the same way. She said that she had and would love to learn how to make it, this is how this salad came to be. I’m sure most of you have had something similar while dining out.  It is easy and delicious to re-create at home. Eliminate the shredded chicken to make a lovely vegetarian main-course salad. Here is THE LINK to the intro for the segment I was on, the salad and pudding making are not up, so this is just a bit of a tease.

Tip: One of the best tips around; use dental floss to slice the goat cheese. It makes a perfectly clean cut, something a knife just can not do!

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The Ice Cream Sundae Bar – a superstar at summertime picnics, BBQs, cookouts, kid’s parties, and even fancy adult parties and weddings. But in the dark and cold of a fall or winter night, not so appealing anymore. Yet having a banquet of options and choices for a “make-your-own” dessert is so much fun, that there should be such a thing for those chilly evenings too. There is! It’s called a S’Mores Bar and it is just as fabulous and festive as those ice cream sundaes, about as messy too.

Here are photos and a menu with various concoctions to get you started. And if you really want to go “all-out” be sure and mix up a batch or two of the homemade chocolate and/or raspberry marshmallows in yesterday’s post to make it extra special.  Have Fun!

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Today’s recipe is another one of the many scrumptious creations we made during our week-long stay at La Pitchoune. It is adapted from Simon Beck’s Marmites of Seafood with Creamy Leeks from her cookbook, Simca’s Cuisine.  A marmite is a French-covered crock, by the way.

Simon Beck was Julia Child’s friend and co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Simon (also known by her nickname, Simca) and her husband, Jean Fischbacher, owned the property that Julia and Paul built their Provençal home on in 1963, near the town of Plascassier, in the hills above Cannes. Julia and Paul named it La Pitchoune – affectionately known as La Peetch. Pitchoune is a Provençal word meaning “the little one” which is apt since it is a small house, just up a small hill from Simca’s larger home.

You can read all about those wonderful years in Julia’s final book, the autobiographical My Life in France, published posthumously in 2006 and written with Paul Child’s nephew, Alex Prud’homme. The book recounts Julia’s life with Paul in post-World War II France.

The film, Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, was adapted from Julia’s memoir My Life in France and from Julie Powell’s memoir, Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, the film was released in the summer of 2009.

If you would like to learn more about possibly taking the week-long cooking classes at La Pitchoune, you can visit Kathie Alex’s website, Cooking with Friends in France, and download the brochure to get all the details. Above is a pretty little watercolor picture I found of the La Peetch, on the site… great memories, good times!

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Aubergine, better known as eggplant, is a favorite of mine, although you wouldn’t know it by searching for it on this blog. In more than a year, this is only the fourth time it has appeared. That is due to the fact that Dave doesn’t think he really likes eggplant and I know a lot of people who feel the same way. But each time he has it, he skeptically says, “that was pretty good.”  I have a theory as to why that is usually the reaction. Dave, and many people, have had eggplant prepared badly. Sadly, it is a common phenomenon, because eggplant can be a huge greasy bitter mess.

Eggplant is like a sponge, it will soak up as much oil as it gives it.  And the flesh can sometimes be naturally bitter. Like cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, and tobacco; eggplant is a member of the nightshade family and it has much more of tobacco’s bitterness than the other family members.  The remedy for the bitter sponginess is to salt the flesh first. Salting, also known as degorging, accomplishes two goals: it pulls out juices that carry bitter flavors, and it collapses the air pockets in the eggplant’s sponge-like flesh, thus preventing it from absorbing so much oil and becoming greasy. The salted eggplant may be placed in a colander for an hour (best done with cubes) or placed in a single layer out on paper towels (best with slices). After the degorging is complete, rinse off the salt and squeeze dry before continuing. Eggplant can be cooked with the peel on or off. Unfortunately, the gorgeous aubergine color does not remain once it is heated, if it did, I would never peel it.

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This is part 1 of a two-part recipe. Today we are slow-roasting tomatoes. Not quite to the consistency of sun-dried tomatoes, but close. Tomorrow we’ll have part 2 which will use the tomatoes for delectable chicken sandwiches.

Today, I’m actually providing you with three recipes; the first is for the slow-roasted tomatoes we’ll use tomorrow. Next, you’ll find 2 methods to make your own sun-dried tomatoes, just in case you have a load of tomatoes lying about. One for true sun-dried (which unfortunately we can still do here in AZ) and the next for oven-dried tomatoes. Both work beautifully.

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I learned of a new, new to me anyhow, cut of beef from a most unsuspecting place; One King’s Lane, an online discount shopping site!

I am somewhat addicted to the site and need to take a break from checking out what they are offering each day. Although I do have quite a bit of my Christmas shopping done! The one day I will not give up checking on is Sunday. On Sundays, they offer food and or kitchen products.

About a month ago their featured items were lobsters (I’ve already posted about that!) and Estancia free-range, grass-fed beef. Honestly, I don’t know if the beef we purchased from there was so wonderfully delicious because of the source or if it was the beef cut, bavette steak; but wonderful it was!

If you enjoy flank and skirt steaks,  you will adore bavette steak! Also known as flap steak, bavette has much of the characteristics of flank or skirt steak. Although fibrous and chewy, all three cuts are packed with flavor.

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I seriously need your help! I created the most dazzling dish the other night but I can’t figure out what to name it. I dreamt about it that night, prayed about it the next morning, and have been racking my brain, but everything I come up with is lame and doesn’t do this divine tuna justice. So, I turn to you, my smart, clever, and innovative followers for help and support. If I use our suggestion, a cookbook shall be sent or delivered to you, with my undying gratitude. As Dave said, “This should be on a high-end restaurant menu!” Keep that in mind whilst conjuring up your nom de guerre. Wow, look at how my vocab has increased, just since yesterday! Incredible how using a thesaurus can change your life.

OK, enough of that, on to the tuna. I planned to sear the tuna and serve it with sugar snap peas. I was also thinking of adding cannellini beans and shelled edamame, but when I actually went to make it, I had neither. Dang it, now what? Marissa and I had been out running errands all day and the last thing I wanted to do was get back in the hot car. As usual, that meant it was time to improvise. Sometimes that turns out so so, other times the results are truly awful, but this time – pure genius! I do believe it was the red kidney beans that really made the dish pop. I understand that they appear to be a strange addition, but somehow it worked.

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