Sunday Morning Harvest
Wabi-Sabi Wasabi-Green Cake
For a Girls Get Together dinner I made a dark chocolate layer cake with blue and green layers of vanilla icing. It was a bit Dr. Suessy and ugly, yet the girls wanted me to pose like I was in a 1960’s ladies magazine showing off my proud creation. It was yummy and imperfect and I’d like to think of it as my Wabi-Sabi Wasabi-Green Cake.
Read more
Catering the Rapture
Special Report — I think about food too much. I know I do. I acquired the tendency honestly.
When I was a little critter growing up in the compound, my mother elected herself nutritionist for our entire breakaway republic. There’s no telling what Mom would have achieved as Dietician-General if our fifty-two member group had seceded from the United States.
Cookie Monster visits Martha Stewart
Beardyman Cooks
This is UK beatboxer Beardyman. The video isn’t new, but it is amazing.
Whole Roasted Kid (Goat) [Cabrito assado a padeiro]
Total time: more than 2 hours
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes per kg
Difficulty: Easy
An original recipe from Maria Lourdes Santos of the Restaurant Beira Mar in Cascais. The animal can be cut up or cooked whole. In the latter case, the offal is left in the carcass while cooking and then served separately. The head is cut in half lengthwise to remove the brains with a spoon. Serve with lemon wedges. (There are other versions in which the butter is replaced with olive oil and the white wine with red. Fans of baked potatoes can slide them into the oven at the same time as the kid.)
Beautiful Bento Boxes
This is one of the things I would do if I had the time.
Aunt Jenny’s Magic Meat Pies
I have to admit that I adore vintage cookbooks and print ads for domestic products. I just found this one in the Flickr Mid-Century Supper Club pool. The guy on the right looks like Salvador Dali.
Blow torch. Just because.
fyi
Exploding bottles of olive oil aren’t good for anything.
Does anybody know how to get oil stains out of grout?
Why I went to Kroger…
Before:
After:
Falling Cakes
Speaking of cakes, here is one Ann Pizer made and photographed in mid-flight.
Mike and the dogs
I snapped this at Mike’s birthday cookout. We had wieners. Where were y’all?
Today, I cook.
Today, I decided to cook a chicken. And some pears. My cat enjoyed them very much.
Please, enjoy reliving it with me.
Dear Clusterflock
Tell me a story in the form of a recipe.
Good Thangs: Green Thangs
In honor of Earth week, I’ve decided to show a few things that are “planet friendly” and also beautiful.
Pretty Bird Applique Necktie by Sugarlust
Recycling at its best here. These ties are just lovely and you can feel good about having these hanging on your neck. Now how many things can we say that about? [$15.]
Handmade wooden spoons by Live Wire Farm
These spoons are carved by hand and sanded from Vermont timber and are finished with a food-grade mineral oil. Yes, they’re made from trees, but these fall under the category of good design that lasts. These won’t end up in a landfill like that cheap vinyl tube dress you’re too fat to wear anymore. [spoons range from $10 to $50.]
Warm & Fuzzy Nesting Bowls at Modern Dose
A set of three hand-made fuzzy nesting bowls made from felted, crocheted wool. So much classier than the beer koozy made from your hair that your college boyfriend made. [$65.95.]
From the Comments
When I grew up, food was like another family member. It would be difficult not to feel that way growing up with New York Italian relatives and a “foodie” mother. Every memory is permeated with something I was eating at the time. When I was probably 4 or 5 years old, I remember my sisters and I secretly routed out the soft insides of a long loaf of Italian bread while the family watched home movies. We didn’t like the crusty outside part, and our arms were skinny enough to reach all the way down inside the loaf to get the good stuff. From what I remember this didn’t go over very well with the rest of the family.
Kitchen Lore
Okay, so there are all these TV cooks that people do or don’t know, but I imagine at least some of you learned to cook from someone in your family or from a friend or a lover. Yes?
Mostly I learned from my mother, though her talent and temperament inclined her toward the precision of baking (for most of her life, she was a slavish follower of recipes; she loosened up around age 75), and as it turned out, my approach to preparing food is more improvisatory. But I imagine it scarcely hurt that I was tutored to do things by the book.
My father introduced humor into the kitchen. He didn’t contribute much beyond weekend pancakes and the occasional picnic offering, but whatever he did, he touched with whimsy. He scrawled comical annotations in the margins of cookbooks. And, of course, he grilled meat. I have my adoration for him to thank for the zeal with which I (a girl!) approach the suspect-in-suburban-America task of slapping steaks down over a hot fire.
Food Network Quiz
Match the cooking celebrity with his/her Scroggins household name:
1. Giada De Laurentis A. Cracker Salad
2. Paula Deen B. Low Tits
3. Emeril Lagasse C. Bubble Bath Cunt
4. Sandra Lee D. Ew, Turn the Channel
5. Rachael Ray E. High Tits
6. Ina Garten F. EVOO
Tastes better than yo mama
A perfect model for the forthcoming Cooking with Clusterflock show (which will star Daryl and Cindy, I believe, with guest appearances by Rick’s beloved, among others):
(Via Swerdloff)
dear clusterflock
I have to purchase new kitchen cookware. On things like this, I don’t like to mess around. I’m all badass. I will buy quality and reliability over low low super Sunday discount pricing or the trend du jour.
So, assuming I really don’t want to get a bunch of professional non-stick cookware because I don’t dig what I’ve been reading about high-temp cooking with Teflon, I am looking for other pro/high-end options. I don’t want stainless steel because I am a hack cook and will fuck things up on a regular basis, so I’m torn between cast iron and enamelized cast iron.
Thoughts, opinions, anecdotes and rebuttals welcome.
speaking of chili
Everyone has a ’secret’ ingredient in their chili recipe, what’s yours?
I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
Okay, I’m offended, too.
A Staten Island pizzeria is offering a seafood-topped pizza for Lenten observers abstaining from meat. The name of the pie with the lobster, crab meat, and shrimp toppings—The Passion of the Crust—is riling some Catholics.
—Gothamist
I laughed out loud, because I’m a godless infidel, but then I gagged a bit when I read a more detailed description of the pizza:
Their Lenten-specialty pizza features tender chunks of lobster, crabmeat and shrimp drizzled with a champagne and blackberry brandy cream sauce, tomatoes and scallions scattered above a layer of homemade fresh mozzarella cheese. Atop a cheese and coconut-infused 10-inch crust, it’s a veritable slice of heaven.
—Staten Island Advance (emphases mine)
What the hell?!? I don’t think this is a religious issue.
what is for dinner?
I can’t decide if I should make pizza or black bean cakes over rice topped with a Mexican slaw.
until liquid is absorbed
This morning I made a ranchero sauce for some eggs - and the recipe said:
simmer until almost all liquid is absorbed
Absorbed into what, the atmosphere? What happened to fancy cooking words like ‘reduce’. This is why I like making things up as I go.