Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets

When two of my dearest friends were launching new novels -- Hank Phillippi Ryan ("The Other Woman") and Lucy Burdette ("Death in Four Courses") -- I wanted to throw the best bash ever to celebrate.

Before I knew it I had a crowd of about 80 people coming to wish the authors well and pick up signed copies of the books.

The challenge -- after figuring out where to put everyone -- was to offer up delicious finger food and drinks without breaking the bank, and doing it in a way that I could manage myself with the help of a few stalwart friends at the party.

I kept telling myself: Keep it simple, affordable, and delicious!

The solution: An antipasto table

• Platters of meats and cheeses cut into bite sized pieces
• Platters of grilled marinated vegetables.
• A big basket of sliced french bread
• Two kinds of crostini -- thin slices of barbecued steak on horseradish cream with arugula; and basil-flavored goat cheese with roasted red peppers -- assembled in advance.
• Lots of cookies, baked that day.
• Prosecco and sparkling water, augmented with whatever guests are generous enough to bring.

Snow days keeping me tucked inside my warm, cozy house with my favorite guy, a sweet puppy, a fire in the fireplace, hot soup, homemade bread and a bottle of red wine — winter life in northern Minnesota really doesn’t get much better than that.

Making your own bread does not have to be difficult. French Bread Times Two proves it.

I learned of this recipe that makes two loaves of French bread from an energetic friend of my mom’s years ago. This friend loved to cook and bake and entertain. She excitedly shared the recipe with my mom, explaining how she loved being able to conveniently pull the chilled loaves from her refrigerator and bake them just before her dinner guests arrived, bringing her all kinds of raving compliments and incredulous ooohs and aaaahs.

Well, my mom was duly impressed. Unfortunately, she was never very interested in making bread from scratch. After all, those frozen loaves of dough from the freezer case at the grocery store were awfully good and demanded no effort at all.

My mom passed the recipe over to me.

Where do you get recipe ideas? Cooking shows? Food magazines? The Wednesday food section of your newspaper? Blogs? (Um, I hope you nodded "yes" to that last one.) How about Twitter and Facebook?

Last time I had some overripe bananas to use up I could have made my favorite banana, coconut, and Medjool quick bread, but I wanted something savory. Nothing was coming to mind, so I did what any connected food blogger would do: I asked my tweeps.

I tweeted, "Does anybody have any good savory recipes for ripe bananas?" Within minutes I had several responses, but it was Jill of @eatitdrinkit's response that intrigued me. She suggested I make chipotle banana bread. Chipotle chilis in banana bread? Really? Yes, really.

When I asked her for the recipe, she said she didn't have one. The flavor combo just came to her, and before she realized it, she was making a batch of Banana-Chipotle Bread. When she posted it on her blog, she triumphantly exclaimed, "It worked!"

From The LA Times

Here in California we love to brag about our abundance of wonderful seasonal ingredients and how that makes good food easy. That's more or less true, but I have to confess that I've also always had a sneaking admiration for those cooks who can whip up something from nothing.

Sure, it's wonderful to be able to just pick up a sack of Ojai Pixie mandarins and a box of medjool dates and call it dessert. But you've really got to admire someone who can take a couple of wilted zucchinis, a sprouting onion and some canned tomatoes and turn that into something delicious — the real-life equivalent of the proverbial stone soup.

I've got my own version, and, in fact, it does start with something hard as a rock. In a battered plastic bag in the deepest recesses of my refrigerator, I've got a hidden stash of gold: rinds from used chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Whenever my wife finds them, she pulls them out and asks disbelievingly: "You're saving these?" And probably 98% of people would have the same reaction.

But those rock-hard rinds are flavor bombs, packed with umami. Simmer them in a pot of beans, in a soup, even in a tomato sauce, and you probably won't actually taste Parmesan, but you'll certainly taste the difference.

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