Winter

ImageI'm not much of a coffee drinker but I love hot chocolate and I love tea. I enjoy the richness of hot chocolate, but sometimes it's a bit too much. I certainly couldn't drink it everyday. I have tried quite a few chocolate flavored teas and while some of them are pretty good, I've discovered a more satisfying solution. I make hot cocoa with equal parts tea and milk.

On the surface this might seem like a weird thing to do, combining cocoa and tea but it's really quite delicious. I learned from chocolate authority Alice Medrich that the fat in dairy products coats your tongue so the flavor of chocolate is sometimes muted in very creamy preparations. She said you can make cocoa with hot water, but I have found that tea provides an amazing addition of flavor. I like a little bit of milk to add some texture.

The result is a beverage that is richer and more viscous than tea and milk, but not quite as cloying as hot cocoa can be. In the Winter, I could drink it just about everyday!

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beercheesesoup009I ‘d always look forward to this time of year when I worked at North Dakota State University. One of my colleagues would bring a big slow-cooker full of her delicious Beer Cheese Soup. Up to that point in my life, the only Beer Cheese soup I had tasted was served at a Fargo restaurant. It was very thick, very cheesy and very goopy. In my opinion, too thick, too cheesy and too goopy.

Nancy’s Beer Cheese Soup would send a sweet, yeasty beer aroma wafting through the NDSU hallway. Lunch that day would be a big mug of soup ladled from the hot slow-cooker topped with freshly popped corn right out of the microwave oven.

Now, I don’t normally do much cooking with Cheez Whiz, but I just can’t make this soup any other way. You’ll see why when you taste it. The soup is light and creamy with just the right amount of beer and cheese flavors. I use unsalted butter in this recipe. The soup gets plenty of salt from the Cheez Whiz and chicken broth.

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figstuffingI know, I know, it's the day after Thanksgiving and who needs stuffing. It's like the Christmas cookie recipe the day after Christmas. Useless. However, since I use my own food blog as a recipe book (I don't have a little binder with secret/favorite recipes), I have a couple stuffing recipes I have to catalog for next year. This is one of them.

Food & Wine Magazine touted this as the quintessential stuffing to pair with Pinot Noir so of course I had to make it. It was very well received and requested again next year.

It definitely deviates from traditional stuffing but I believe every Thanksgiving table should have old stand-bys and new fangled recipes. I also believe there should be at least two kinds of stuffing.

This recipe was excellent. I loved the use of fresh fennel as well as fennel seeds and the dried figs. Slightly sweet and fragrant from the herbs, this was a definite treat to have at the table.

Since a lot of folks also serve turkey for Christmas, maybe this stuffing will grace your holiday table.

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ImageYou've seen it at the market. You've picked it up and wondered, What is this? An odd shaped acorn squash? Then you saw the sign: Kabocha squash, and thought, How the heck do you pronounce that?

What is Kabocha squash? A relative newcomer to the US squash scene, Kabocha squash (pronounced kuh-boh-cha) is a hard winter squash available from late fall to late spring. Its hard, dull, bumpy dark green shell is marked with pale celery green striations. It's rather heavy for its size (usually 2-3 pounds) and has a stumpy grayish colored stalk. Kabocha squash has a brilliant yellow-orange flesh, like a pumpkin's. Both the texture and flavor of Kabocha squash is similar to a sweet potato: the soft, moist, fluffy flesh is surprisingly sweet and slightly nutty.

Kabocha squash is a centuries-old variety of Japanese squash that in Japan is often referred to as a Japanese pumpkin. Apparently it was brought to Japan from Cambodia by the Spanish in the 1500s and is used in dishes ranging from soup to sushi.

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kabochaI am all about kabocha squash.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I do have other obsessions, but today it’s squash.

I bought some of the stuff (aka Japanese pumpkin) at the Farmers’ Market in Santa Monica last weekend, from a vendor who had very nicely already pre-seeded, pre-peeled and pre-cut it. (Actually what I am all about is people who pre-do things like this since if I had to do them myself I would never eat the food that requires such tasks.)

Anyway, all I did was steam the squash till it was tender, then whip it up in the food processor with a little salt and pepper and a tablespoon of coconut milk and it was dreamy.

Kiss your butternut squash goodbye, my friends. This one is much smoother and sweeter. Needs no added oomph, like it’s demanding cousin butternut does.

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