Site News

Menu for Hope IV

4 Comments

The House of Annie is participating in this year’s Menu for Hope IV, which is is an annual campaign by food bloggers to raise funds for the United Nations World Food Programme to help fight global hunger. Last year, Menu for Hope raised almost USD$63,000 in donations to support the WFP. This year, funds raised will go to a school lunch program in Lesotho (a country surrounded by South Africa) that purchases food from local farmers rather than relying on grains shipped in from overseas.

The idea for Menu for Hope is simple and fun: food bloggers around the world offer food-related prizes for raffle to raise money. Some of the amazing prizes up for raffle this year include a personal tour of the el Bulli kitchen laboratory with Ferran Adria, a private tour of Love Apple Farms plus a dinner for 2 at Manresa , an autographed copy of “Baking: From My Home to Yours” by Dorie Greenspan, a “Best of the Ferry Building” gift basket, a KitchenAid stand mixer, and a wine vacation in Napa. WOW!

In keeping with Annie’s tomato madness, House of Annie’s contribution to Menu for Hope is “The Heirloom Tomato Cookbook” by Mimi Luebbermann. The cookbook is a collection of recipes by different chefs, showcasing heirloom tomatoes from appetizer to dessert, along with wine pairing suggestions. There is also a photographic glossary of heirloom tomatoes, as well as information on cultivating them.

Of course, what good is an heirloom tomato cookbook without any heirloom tomatoes to cook with? So, IN ADDITION to the cookbook, Annie will help the winner choose seeds of 10 varieties of tomatoes out of Annie’s library of over 200 heirloom tomatoes. Annie will mail seed packets of these varieties (10-15 seeds per packet) out to the winner along with the cookbook in January.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

If the winner is in the San Francisco Bay Area, we will deliver 10 starts of heirloom tomato plants, ready for planting, in late April or early May; or they can come to the House of Annie in San Jose in late August or early September to collect a basket of ripe tomatoes from our organic garden.

So, how can you participate? First check out Chez Pim for the complete list of prizes. Make a note of the prize code for each prize you are interested in. Then go to

http://www.firstgiving.com/menuforhope4

and click on the Give Now button. Follow the prompts for how much you’d like to give to the campaign. Specify the prize codes you would like to bid for in the “Personal Message” section of the donation form. To bid for Annie’s prize, use prize code UW24

For every USD$10 you donate, you get one raffle ticket and a chance to win a prize. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and use the prize code. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for UW01 and 3 tickets for UW24. Please write 2xUW01, 3xUW24.

That’s it! The donation will be deducted from your credit card and forwarded to the World Food Programme, and the results of the raffle posted on January 9 on Chez Pim. Be sure to tell all your friends about the campaign, and good luck to all who enter!

Aloha, Nate

Fruit, Tomatoes

Strawberry and Tomato Salad with Maple Syrup

2 Comments

Annie is mad about tomatoes. The tomato bug bit her several years back, and each year we have grown more and more tomato plants in our backyard. She got into growing heirloom tomatoes, ones which have been around for a long time and are now becoming popular again. She trades seeds with other enthusiasts and even starts her own plants from seed in the middle of Winter!

During the Summer, we are literally swimming in a crimson tide of tomatoes.


Cherry tomato plants, especially, are some of the best producers in our garden. The challenge then is to figure out how to use all these ‘maters before they go bad. Needless to say, most of the dishes that Annie makes that call for tomatoes use fruits grown right in our own backyard.

Continue reading Strawberry and Tomato Salad with Maple Syrup →

Noodles, Shrimp, Vegetables, Vietnamese

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

2 Comments

What is the difference between a spring roll and a summer roll?

A spring roll is a roll filled with meat and vegetables, wrapped in a skin usually made from wheat flour, and fried crispy. You commonly find it served with a thick, sweet-sour sauce. King Eggroll in San Jose has built a thriving business on the quality of its spring rolls.

A summer roll is a roll filled with meat and vegetables, wrapped in a skin made from rice paper, and uncooked. (The Vietnamese name, gỏi cuốn literally means “salad roll”.) It is served with a hoisin-peanut dipping sauce. Most Vietnamese take out places, like Huong Lan on Tully Rd., sell various kinds of summer rolls.

Of course, if you have the ingredients, you an assemble them at home yourself. Here, we used shiso, mint, and Thai basil leaves plus rice vermicelli noodles and bean sprouts. Cooked shrimp was the protein of choice for this one. There are lots of choices for different ingredients – use your imagination!

The real trick is in the wrapping. The rice paper sheets are very delicate once they get wet. You quickly dip the skin into a bowl of warm water then immediately move it to the assembling plate. Layer the ingredients, then gently wrap and roll.

To make the dipping sauce, I mixed some hoisin sauce, some chunky peanut butter, a little sesame oil, some water to thin it and some sriracha chili sauce for spiciness.

Annie is much better than me at wrapping summer rolls. Once, in order to save time, I piled a bunch of dry rice paper skins on a plate and poured water over the whole bunch to soften them. Of course, I got a soggy mess, especially with the bottom skins that sat the longest in the water. Good thing these skins are relatively inexpensive! Now, I just leave the wrapping to her.

Aloha, Nate

Italian, Tomatoes

Gazpacho

1 Comment

So I was standing there, chopping veggies to make chopped salad (see previous example here), and wondering what to do with all that reserved tomato juice I had saved from the salad plus the lomi lomi salmon. Suddenly, a word popped into my noggin: Gazpacho! Oooh, I hadn’t had *that* in a while.

I like tomato-based soups, and gazpacho is one of my favorite variations of tomato soup, with that spark of spicyness from the raw garlic. A chilled soup would go along great with the chopped salad. So I went over to Epicurious and found this recipe

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Gazpacho-239209

It’s a pretty simple recipe, but one ingredient that was new to me was smoked Spanish paprika. And what do you know, we actually happened to have a package of that, that we purchased at the Penzey’s Spices store in Houston!

This was one of the best gazpachos I’ve made. It’s not too spicy, as I held back on the pepper and the raw garlic. That smoked Spanish paprika made the dish, I thought. Our friend raved about it, saying it was better than the one he had tasted in Italy that got him hooked on gazpacho in the first place.

This recipe is a keeper. I’m gonna make it again soon (of course, using only Annie’s homegrown tomatoes)!

Aloha, Nate

Making you hungry for the good things in life