Flavor Profiles
Pretty Pimentos
Another happy farmer’s market find, the pimento pepper seen here was delicious. I confess, I had never seen a pimento outside of a stuffed green olive. It’s a little sweeter than your standard pepper, and this batch at least was quite petite. They’re maybe a couple of inches across, and a gorgeous shiny scarlet. I [...]
Farmer’s Market Find: Kohlrabi
I was innocently browsing through the South Bend farmer’s market last week, when I happened upon this lovely veg at the left – kohlrabi. I’d heard of it before, but never seen it or tasted it, so I gave it a try. And the verdict? Delicious! It’s the love child of cabbage and radish, with [...]
The Hundred Years Burger
Another one inspired by Bon Appetit magazine… tonight I cooked burgers out on the grill, and wanted to do something interesting with them. Bon Appetit had an article that listed 50 different ways to dress up a hot dog, and one that sounded more apt for a burger was the English style: aged cheddar and [...]
Asian Steak Tacos with Spicy Mushroom Salsa
Elise and I recently started receiving Bon Appétit magazine, although neither of us signed up for it and we’ve never been charged, but hey – it’s a good magazine so why look a gift horse in the mouth, right? At any rate, the latest issue was the “BBQ Issue”, and a number of recipe ideas [...]
Feelin’ Kinda Chile: Part III
Okay, we’ve almost covered it with chiles here… one more topic to hit: dried and smoked chiles. Smoked Chiles For some reason somebody decided it’d be fun to give a chile that gets smoked or dried a totally new name. You don’t ever see “smoked jalapenos”, but chipotles are used all over the place. It [...]
What is Black Garlic?
Those of you who watched Iron Chef this past week may have noticed the use of a very unusual ingredient – black garlic. And, like me, you may have been curious to know what in the world it is. Even though it’s appearance is, in my opinion, somewhat unappetizing, it has apparently become quite the [...]
Feelin’ Kinda Chile: Part II
Back to chiles! First, because I have a weirdo brain that collects random bits of info and keeps them forever (it’s handy for trivia games… otherwise not too often), here are some random cool tidbits about chiles. Have you ever wondered why people eat hot chiles in the first place? I mean, the plants developed [...]
Feelin’ Kinda Chile: Part I
I figured, “I’ll cover the basics of chile peppers, that’ll make a good post.” Then I started thinking about what to cover: the common types of peppers, rules of thumb for making an educated guess at a pepper’s heat, ways to mitigate the heat if you want more flavor than fire, and suddenly I realized [...]
So how do you like your eggs?
So you order eggs at a diner and the waitress comes back with the obligatory “How do you want those, hun?” and you probably answer without much thought. Everyone has their favorite style – but I’m betting there are a few you haven’t tried, and just might like better than your “usual”. I’ve certainly been [...]
How to Read a Wine Label – WSJ.com
Say you’re in the wine store and you want to buy something new. You have nothing to go by outside of the label. Will the label tell you anything you should know? We were asked this question by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” recently and we realized that, surprisingly, we’d never been asked that [...]
