Green Onion Threads
July 14, 2012 3 Comments
BBQ Heaven for Ribs Lovers: Asian Style Pork Ribs
July 8, 2012 27 Comments
- 1 rack of pork ribs
- Ground ginger
- Salt and pepper
For the marinade
- 4 cups of Soy sauce
- 5 tablespoons Honey
- 1 cup of sugar
- ½ Ginger root, chopped
- 5 Garlic cloves
- 1 Cinnamon stick
- ½ bunch Cilantro
Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes.
Never forget to cook with friends! A dash of friendship makes food taste so much better! Here, my good friend Corey is helping me season my marinade.
Separate the marinade in two batches. Rub the ribs with salt, pepper and ground ginger.
Marinate the ribs with half of the mixture.
Cover with aluminum foil and let rest over night, ideally.
Wrap ribs on foil and cook over medium heat on the grill.
Meanwhile, reduce the marinade over medium heat until you get a light syrup consistency. For the ribs, cook for 30-40 total, but 10 minutes before open the aluminum foil and glaze the ribs with the reduced soy sauce mixture.
Latin Style Eggs Benedict with Salmon Rose!
July 2, 2012 11 Comments
Ingredients
- 1/2 Cup White-wine vinegar
- 4 Eggs
- 4 slices smoked salmon
- 4 English muffins
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 avocado
- Meyer lemon grilled asparagus
Hollandaise ingredients
- 3 Large egg yolks
- 1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- ¼ Cup freshly squeezed lime juice
- Dash cayenne pepper
- Coarse salt
- Warm water, if needed
Directions
Cook asparagus with this recipe.
Fennel, Apple Sausage, & Onion Pizza
June 28, 2012 42 Comments
Ingredients:
- 24 oz pizza dough, room temp
- 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 6 oz fresh mozzarella, shredded
- 1/2 large onion, sliced thin
- 1 fennel bulb, shaved or thinly sliced
- 4 apple sausages, chopped
- Garlic cream sauce
- Seasonal herbs, I used: basil, ground fennel, and oregano.
- Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
- Sheet of baking paper
Preparation:
Place pizza dough in a bowl cover with olive oil and aluminum foil. Leave outside for two hours or until it doubles its size.
Shave fennel. Ok, so I’m using a cooking gadget called mandolin, which looks more like a guillotine, a torture device from the 18th century. It’s a bit dangerous if you dont use the guard, but it is amazingly useful in slicing vegetables paper-thin or for making evenly cut fries. If you don’t have one, shaving the fennel with a plain old peeler will do the trick! Have a bowl with iced water to put the fennel shavings on it ,otherwise they will turn brown. Quickly saute fennel and set aside in a bowl.
Saute the sausage just a bit, not too much because they are going to finish cooking in the oven.
Lay pan with baking paper. Then, stretch the pizza dough in table until the dough has the desired thickness.
Spread the homemade cream sauce on dough.
Place the fennel, sausage and onion atop of the dough. Then, top with mozzarella, Parmesan and season with herbs, sea salt and fresh ground black pepper. I’m experimenting with another type of shape , like a pizzeta to see what tastes/looks better. ..
Pizettas
vs Pizza. 
Cook according to the 1,2,3 method from my potato pesto pizza blog post for baking a stellar crust and enjoy!
Ready for some obscenely mouthwatering pizza pics! Here we go….
Back to Basics: Roux
June 27, 2012 15 Comments
Back to Basics: Roux
In the section Back to Basics, I want to revisit many of the building blocks of culinary arts, such as basic French Cuisine, the flavor profiles and combinations of spices, tools and everything that comes to mind in terms of having a solid culinary foundation. For me, cooking is like building a house, you need to have a sound structural foundation, but also you need some degree of creativity to make the house a home. Though I’m not going to get all Alton Brown on you, I will also explain a bit of the science behind cooking. I believe this section would give my readers the tools and the understanding on how to create stunning and delicious dishes! I hope you enjoy learning from my blog.
In the upcoming posts, I’m going to cover the Five Mother Sauces of Classical French Cuisine, which are the basis for a plethora of modern-day sauces. But lets start with baby steps! A very important component for sauces is Roux. Roux is a thickening agent made out of equal parts of flour and fat, usually butter. It’s the Holy Grail of French cuisine and the base for three of the Mother Sauces of Classical French Cuisine– Béchamel sauce, Velouté sauce and Espagnole sauce.
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
- The ingredients in the picture are for making a garlic cream sauce
Preparation:
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add flour and stir until mixture is well blended.
There are four colors of Roux- white, blond, brown, or dark. I made a blonde one.
The coloration depends on the amount of cooking time. By increasing the cooking time, nutty and toasted flavors will develop and the thickening power of the Roux will increase as well. If you are not going to add a liquid directly after, remove the Roux from pan because it will continue to cook and it will burn. Store in an air tight container for up to 2 weeks.
Why it works?
Cooking the flour allows the starch granules to absorb moisture evenly, thickening the sauce with out clumping it! In this case I made a garlic cream sauce so there was no need to remove it and refrigerate.
Decadently Sinful Chocolate Covered Strawberries
June 25, 2012 16 Comments
Ingredients
- 6 ounces chocolate, chopped
- 3 ounces white chocolate, chopped
- 1 pound strawberries with stems (about 20), washed and dried very well
Directions
Put the semisweet and white chocolate into 2 separate medium bowls. Fill 2 medium saucepans with a couple inches of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Turn off the heat; set the bowls of chocolate over the water to melt.
Stir until smooth.
Once the chocolates are melted and smooth, remove from the heat. Line a sheet pan with parchment or waxed paper. Holding the strawberry by the stem, dip the fruit into the dark chocolate, lift and twist slightly, letting any excess chocolate fall back into the bowl.
Set strawberries on the parchment paper. Repeat with the rest of the strawberries.
For the white chocolate I made a parchment paper piping bag. You can follow the instructions on how to make one with this Chow.com video. As a side note, I love Chow.com, they have great how-to videos!
Fill the pipette with the white chocolate and drizzle over strawberries.
Set the strawberries aside until the chocolate sets, about 30 minutes. Serve with champagne and enjoy!
