This is the third installment of my Friday Q & A, also known as “Questions from Lori & Answers from Linda.”

Myself, Lori, and Amy

If you recall, my sweet and dearly missed friend, Lori, asked me four detailed questions when I first challenged all of you to pose them to me. Lori stepped up to the plate and I’ve already answered the first and then the second. This is the hardest of the four, but I don’t want to shrink from the task at hand any longer.

Lori and her adorable husband, Jonathan, have been doing business and living in Tokyo, Japan since September 2012. Lori is a fabulous cook and had the most gorgeous, huge, well-equipped, workable, and enviable kitchen imaginable when they lived here in Scottsdale.

This is Lori’s Tokyo kitchen! Can you imagine? When I wrote about how much of a closet Marissa’s San Francisco kitchen was, Lori wrote to say that she envied it, now you can see why! Here is what Lori emailed me at the time:

“I have attached pictures of our charming little Tokyo kitchenette. And when I say “charming” – I use that term in the loosest of senses . . . the charm quickly wore off … and we are left bumping into each other, cursing at each other and are at our wits end to figure out what to cook on our 2 miniscule burner cook top.

No oven (regular, toaster or otherwise) but a decent microwave, but little else to work with in terms of pots, pans or cooking implements. And clean-up! Did you see the size of that dishwasher? Although I have to say it is very àpropos given the fact that we have exactly 4 plates, 4 salads, 4 glasses and cereal bowls.

So, with information and visuals in hand- what the heck would you cook here? Oh-and of course I forgot to mention, there is no access to “normal” foods, spices, condiments, etc. So, Miss Linda – if you were in my slippers and kimono what would you do?”

The exact question Lori put forth on that Friday, three weeks ago, was this:

Is there a way or rule of thumb to adapt any recipes for the oven to a microwave? I literally never used the microwave except for re-heating in the US, and sadly that is all I have to use here in Japan (along with my tiny stove-top).

My problem is that I too, only use the microwave to thaw, melt and reheat food. I do not use it to cook. So onto the cooking, I tested the theories on a few small items, a chicken breast, a rice casserole, and a piece of salmon. I found all the hints and tricks below to be spot on. Lori, I hope this helps. Please keep me (us) posted on any successes and on the failures too! You have a knack for writing amazingly hilarious “fail” stories!

Here are my Dozen best tips for Microwave Cookery

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My life is spiraling out of control, out of my control. Others are currently pulling the strings. As a result I have nothing new to blog about so today I’m giving you a Throwback Thursday.

Today is a special day for my longtime friend… who also was a bridesmaid in my wedding some 28 years ago …. today is her birthday.

The two cocktails and appetizer in THIS POST are what I served when we had Birthday Girl Karen and her husband, Bob, over for dinner last year about this time.

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Chef/Restauranteur and longtime friend, Mark Tarbell of Tarbell’s Restaurant, was the guest teacher at Les Gourmettes on Monday and Tuesday nights. His menu was inspired, fun, and delicious. The first course was Frico with Smoked Paprika Aioli.

Frico, is an Italian savory food, typical of Friuli, in the northeastern tip of Italy, which consists of a thin crisp wafer of shredded cheese, baked or fried until crisp. The customary cheeses used include Montasio, Parmesan or mozzarella. Mark used Montasio cheese, but Parmesan is easier to find and works just as well.

I’ve sung the praises of smoked paprika or pimentón many times here before. I don’t know why I didn’t think of making a pimentón mayonnaise – brilliant!

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We don’t enjoy going out to dinner on Valentine’s Day.

It’s overcrowded, the service isn’t always the best and working in the food industry, I can not relax and enjoy myself knowing that the restaurant is desperate for you to finish and leave so they can sit their next reservation.

Since Valentine’s was on a Friday this year, it made it easy to go out for our Valentine’s celebration on Saturday night instead. We wisely chose Bink’s Scottsdale.

Via

Bink’s Scottsdale is the newest more casual and relaxed venture for Kevin and Amy Binkley, chef-owners of the best restaurant in the Valley, Binkley’s Restaurant in Cave Creek.

There is also Bink’s Cafe in Cave Creek and Bink’s Midtown in Phoenix.

Dinner was, of course, fantastic. The one thing I had that I thought I might be able to recreate was the Queen’s Affinity Cocktail. The menu said that it was made with Bombay Sapphire, Orgeat, and muddled Lemon and Mint.

Before I made the cocktail at home, I had to figure out what the heck orgeat is and then find out where to buy it or how to make it.

Orgeat is pronounced “or-zsa” – “zsa” as in Zsa Zsa Gabor.

After some research, it appeared that orgeat should be easy enough to find at any liquor store. I also learned that homemade orgeat is far superior to store-bought. As a result, I made my own.

First I shall share with you a recipe for my Queen’s Affinity Cocktail Knockoff and then for the Homemade Orgeat.

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Wow, this week went fast! I can’t believe it’s Friday already.

Once again, I shall be answering one of Lori’s questions. Lori put forth several when I asked you to pose questions to me. This is one that I didn’t expect to be getting to quite so soon. But the week flew by so fast, that I wasn’t ready to answer the tougher questions she asked… here we go:

Are you going to unveil your plan for your “playroom” when you figure it out?!?

Yes, Lori, it’s not only figured out.. it’s all done. Well, not completely done… but done for now.

I desperately needed a space to store and organize all my craft supplies in one central location. I have so many crafting supplies, it felt like they were coming out my ears! Everywhere I turned, there was some sort of craft. From the rolls of washi tapes to paints and stickers, it was everywhere. It’s been stuffed in several places throughout the house; the garage, my closet, in the buffets in the dining room, the master bedroom sitting room, in the kids’ rooms (under their beds – without their knowledge), and even in the backyard patio area.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this month, I’ve reclaimed a portion of a large room upstairs that we’ve always called “the playroom.” The playroom has always had a television, couch, and computer desk. In the early years, it had a dozen shelves along with two of the walls. Those shelves housed Marissa’s extensive collections of Disney figurines and Connor’s huge collection of Star Wars action figures. The shelves came down and the toys went up into the attic, years ago. There were also about a half-dozen tall white cupboards, in the early days, that held school craft and art materials, games, videos, and toys… those too are long gone.

More recently the room has been an extra bedroom, with a trundle daybed, and also sadly became sort of a junk room. When your kids are college age, they accumulate dorm/apartment furniture and when they finish college, that stuff has to get dumped somewhere… this room became our “somewhere.”

Currently, the room is divided into three distinct areas – the television lounge area … also known as Connor’s lair.

… Connor’s computer desk area …

… and my craft area, which still has the daybed included in it. Here are some of the details and close-ups.

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On Tuesday night at Les Gourmettes Cooking School, we had two very charming gentlemen teach a class on Burmese cooking. Robert Carmack and Morrison Polkinghorne also happen to be the authors of The Burma Cookbook – Recipes from the Land of a Million Pagodas.

The class was not only informative and delicious but really fun – thanks to Robert and Morrison and their exceptionally outgoing and fun personalities.

For dessert they made one of the most popular of all Burmese desserts, a semolina cake.  Semolina is the coarse, purified wheat middlings of durum wheat used in making pasta, breakfast cereals, puddings and couscous.

The book is beautiful, the guys were great and the cake was sublime.

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I have a loyal follower who has commented here a couple of times, but most often she emails me with comments and kind words.

The day after Christmas, Sharon, emailed me the photo below and said,

“A friend sent this; have you tried muffin pancakes?”

Pancakes in muffin tins, no I haven’t tried that, but it looks and sounds kind of like Dutch Baby Pancakes, also known as German Pancakes, and what we’ve always called a Magic Pancake Basket.

My first intuition was to use my magic pancake batter, then instead of pouring the batter into a cast iron skillet, use the muffin tins and see if it would turn out the same. But since the photo Sharon shared indicated that regular pancake batter was used, I decided to go that route.

I used a classic lemon pancake batter I found in The Joy of Cooking, only adapting slightly, substituting yogurt for sour cream.

After about 9 of the 15 minutes of baking time, I could see that the pancakes were not going to puff up and create a crater in the center, as the photo showed. I pulled them out and used a spoon to press down on the muffin and make a crater of my own in the center. I then returned them to oven to finish baking and that worked just fine. They were cute little pancake muffin baskets and they tasted great! Next time, I’ll use my Magic Pancake batter though. I’m sharing both recipes with you today.

Thanks for the inspiration, Sharon. Even if it did take me over 6 weeks to get to.

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Yesterday it was pasta and beef – today it’s pasta and lamb.

What’s going on? Honestly, it’s just a coincidence. This was my Valentine’s dinner gift to my guys. After dinner we went to see The Lego Movie – loved it!

The beef and pasta dinner was a couple of days later. Sometimes we all crave pasta.

The pasta used here is pappardelle which is a large, very broad, flat pasta noodle, similar to wide fettuccine. Pappardelle can be difficult to find in the grocery store. I found mine at Whole Foods.

Tip: This recipe calls for canned diced tomatoes. If you only have canned whole tomatoes, an easy way to dice them is by using kitchen shears and cut the tomatoes right in the can.

This particular recipe is one that I adapted from a recipe I found in Food & Wine magazine.

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A week ago yesterday, our neighbors, Allison and Ian, had a new baby girl. She joins two sisters, ages 2 and 3.  Since Allison obviously has her hands full (to say the least!) another neighbor, Kim, organized a sign-up for us to pitch in and bring dinners to the family for the next couple weeks.

Kim used a great online tool called Signup Genius. I’d never heard of it before, but I guess it’s all the rage with mom’s of school age kids. I am so out of the loop! It really is genius though!

Anyhow, I made a double batch of this dish yesterday afternoon. My three guys really enjoyed it for dinner last night. Hopefully Ian, Allison and their girls will enjoy it just as much tonight.

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Last Friday, I answered a question that a follower emailed to me. I said that if any of you had questions for me, I’d answer them on future Fridays. Today is future Friday #1.

The only questions came from my dear friend and former neighbor, Lori, who is now living in Tokyo, Japan with her husband, Jonathan. In fact, Lori asked four questions and I will tackle one the of them today.

Here is Lori and Jonathan with their beautiful daughter, Kylie. I swiped this photo from Kylie’s Facebook page, I’m hoping none of them mind. 🙂   Lori’s question:

“You and I talked about this before. If you were going to take me shopping @ Trader Joe’s . . . . . . what are their top products in your mind, that you use all the time and are consistently delicious and versatile? Basically what are your “go-to’s” that you simply can’t leave the store without?”

That is an easy question to answer but so extremely hard to narrow down. Girl, I could go on all day! We shall start with these frozen garlic cubes. I panic if I don’t have at least 2 boxes in my freezer at all times.

Right when you walk into my neighborhood Trader Joe’s – you run into the produce and cheese area.

In my opinion, Trader Joe’s is the numero uno place to buy cheese. It is inexpensive, it doesn’t sit on the shelf long because everyone knows TJ’s is the best place to buy cheese, so it’s always fresh. And there is great variety.

Two of the produce items that I will only buy at Trader Joe’s are arugula and

Belgium endive.

Raisin Rosemary Crisps. They taste exactly like Raincoast Crisps, but are less than half the price. TJ’s Crisps are $3.99 a box, whereas a box of Raincoast costs $9.99!

Actually all the crackers are yummy and inexpensive.

Here’s my favorite aisle in the entire store. It has…

Fire Roasted Red Peppers…

Olives…

Beans…

Mustards…

Grains and pastas…

Olive oil, and so much more! And on the opposite side of the same aisle…

Dried fruits and…

Nuts. So many kinds of nuts.

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