Here are some of the more interesting things I've made since my last post:
Portabella burgers via Guilty Kitchen
Moo Shu tofu via Weight Watchers
Salmon cakes with lemon yogurt sauce via Epicurious
Honey cornbread muffins via Food Network
Elote with guacamole
and, per the title:
Sweet potato, caramelized onion and rosemary pizza
Beer popsicles
These last two recipes both came from Apartment Therapy's cooking blog, the kitchn (seriously, if you haven't gone yet, GO) which always has quirky ideas for all types of food. The entire blog has a specific vibe to it, and that includes the recipes. Browsing through the site I imagine all the contributors and readers to be well-off twenty and thirty somethings (yuppies) who have part-time or work-from-home creative careers, (interior design, graphic design, clothing design, food photography, florists), and who are always looking for the next simple beauty to delight at (magnetic spice jars, chalkboard paint, bookshelf lighting, herb-muddled cocktails, a new boutique devoted solely to organic agave nectar, etc.) It's a clean, simple blog of young people swapping domestic ideas. Every contributor, whether detailing how to decorate your mantle with vinyl records, or giving must-have tips on preparing Thanksgiving dinner, is eco-conscious, health-conscious and economical. Local foods and products are encouraged, cleaner, healthier alternatives to ingredients and building materials are trumpeted, and the best flea markets for mid-century furniture are announced with glee. The posts and comments can sometimes be pretentious - even laughably so (read the general consensus about the Netflix price hike here), but I love this site like I love chocolate. It's fun and comforting to lose yourself in the minutiae of domesticity: "Oo I could paint a statement wall." "I could design my own zany computer desk." "I could grow my own heirloom tomatoes!" "Mmm I should add some lemon zest and pomegranate seeds to that dish." Needless to say, it's the perfect place to find ideas for an unconventional, vegetarian, herb-infused pizza pie and homemade grown up sweet treats.
More recent food news in my life: I accidentally ate a habanero pepper. This event taught me that I knew nothing about the varieties of chili peppers and that I really need to learn. As it turns out, a friend of the family has a family farm in New Hampshire. I headed north to visit my parents last week and we visited to buy some veg and support the owners. I was blown away by the variety of produce they had available (see the website) and I bought a ton of food - kale, soy beans, potatoes, onions, corn, tomatoes, popcorn, garlic, carrots, squash, and chili peppers - for a very low price. The bin said only 'Chili Peppers', so I grabbed a handful of short and long, smooth and wrinkly, green, red and orange peppers. The other night I was making Jamie Oliver's recipe for sweet and sour pork, and it called for a chili pepper. I looked at my farm-fresh assortment and decided that the round little orange one was fun and colorful, so I seeded it (thank god), sliced it and tossed it in with all the other ingredients. As soon as it hit the pan, capsaicin seared the air and GP and I were choking, coughing and crying trying to finish the dish. He showed up after I had chopped everything, and when I told him that I had used the orange pepper, he explained, laughing.
Once we managed to cook everything through, still coughing a bit, it was time to eat. Talk about trial by fire. The entire dish burned lips, tongue, throat and stomach. The capsaicin heat masked the sweet and sour flavor of everything, so it was pretty much just 'spicy pork'. It wasn't so overwhelming as to be inedible (and GP and I both like things as spicy as we can handle), but we had to break every few minutes or so until our tastebuds stopped tingling enough for us to try another mouthful. We then trained ourselves in chili pepper recognition, and studied the Scoville scale (see illustration above the habanero in the first image), so overall it was a learning experience - albeit a slightly painful one.
That's all for this post. I have more food-related events to share but I'll save them for next time. Be sure to check out links for most of these recipes in the panel on the right.
