Category Archives: By Ingredient

Mexican, Tomatoes, Vegetables

Chopped Salad

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Annie made this great chopped salad based on the “Chopped Mexican Salad with Roasted Peppers, Corn, Tomatoes & Avocado” recipe from Fine Cooking Magazine July 2006, p 57.

First, she roasted some seeded red bell peppers and corn in the oven with olive oil until the peppers were soft, then diced the peppers. She also diced up some tomatoes and avocado. She blanched some broccoli and chopped that up as well (the original recipe calls for diced jicama). All the ingredients were mixed together along with a drained can of black beans and garnished with chopped cilantro.

The dressing was a honey-lime-cumin vinaigrette which included garlic, lime juice, orange juice, shallots, honey, toasted ground cumin, olive oil and fresh ground black pepper. This is a great salad which has a lot of flavor and texture.

Aloha, Nate

Barbecue, Poultry

Beer Can Chicken

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For most people, chicken on the grill means wings, drumsticks, thighs, or breast pieces that are laid down on the grates and cooked over direct heat. Chicken pieces are a lot easier to deal with, and they all cook at the same time so there is less chance of overcooked meat. (For food safety, you want to cook poultry until the juices run clear and no longer bloody.)

Doing a whole chicken, however, is a whole different animal. The bird has such an odd shape that doesn’t cook evenly. Grill the bird long enough to fully cook the dark meat, and you risk having dried out white meat. You have to find a way to cook the chicken until it’s done, while keeping both the white and dark meat moist.

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Egg, Japanese

Cute Egg Molds

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When I was growing up in Hawaii, we’d sometimes go buy school supplies at the Japanese bookstore. They always had lots of cool or cute stuff that you didn’t find in the regular stores. The Japanese always designed things that were a step above anything else.

Apparently, they didn’t limit cute design to just erasers and gadgets. They’ve found their way into food as well. Annie got these cute little egg molds sent to her from Japan via Singapore.

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Egg, Italian, Pasta

Linguine alla Carbonara

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Before I met Annie, I generally preferred my pasta sauces to be red – tomato based. I avoided “alfredo” type white sauces because…actually I really don’t have a good explanation of why I don’t like white sauces. Anyway, these days Annie usually makes pasta sauces with cream, olive oil, and vermouth, keeping it light so you can actually see all the other ingredients.

This linguine alla carbonara recipe (based on a recipe out of “Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen”), contains bacon, olive oil, onions, chicken stock, linguine, egg yolks, grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and s&p. Our additions included portobello mushrooms, thyme, and some toasted onion powder from Penzey’s.

Oh, it was sooooo good. Made even better by that special onion powder.

If you can get your hands on some, I do recommend it.

Aloha, Nate