Ham Sandwich Indicted!

Thanks to a tip from fellow food writer and friend, Libby from  Cooks Like She Talks , Shawnie (of Manges! Mangi! ) and I were invited to a cheese tasting hosted by NYC's famous Murray's Cheese Shop. Anyone who spends any time with us knows Shawnie and I are suckers for a good creamy brie or a pungent, tangy blue -- and have driven 13 hours one way for a cheesy experience (see our road trip to  Rhode Island  last summer). A quick trek across town to meet the Murray's team and savor their wares was a no-brainer.   Murray's , if you're not familiar, is New York City's oldest cheese shop, founded by Murray Greenberg in 1940.  Over the years, Murray's developed a reputation as a premier cheesemonger, featuring a rotation of over 300 cheeses and their very own aging caves below their main store in Greenwich Village.  More recently, they have been building a partnership with regional grocery stores to share their love of cheese with the whole nation, s...

Mention Pittsburgh and food, and chances are someone will bring up Primani Brother's sandwiches or Iron City Beer (oh, and maybe you're familiar with Heinz' products).  And while those are Pittsburgh icons in their own right, there's more culinary action going on in The Steel City than just giant sandwiches, bottles of IC, and ketchup.  One of the best spots in town to get a true sampling of Pittsburgh food culture is along the northern side of the city on the Allegheny River, in a warehouse filled district known as The Strip. Conveniently located on the Allegheny River, The Strip became an industrial hotbed in the 1800s, as iron, steel, glass, and aluminum mills sprang up on the shoreline. By the turn of the century, produce wholesalers began moving into the area, with auction houses and warehouses flooding the area.  Fast forward past an actual flood, the decline of railways, and the proliferation of grocery stores, and the produce merchants in the area dwindl...

Mushrooms are one of my all time favorite fungus. And Brie is one of my all time favorite cheeses.  So it made total sense that I try Ree Drummond's Brie Stuffed Mushrooms from her new cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier .  Unsurprisingly, it's a delicious combination, tied together with a "gremolata" of parsley, garlic, and green onions (and a splash of white wine).   The brie has to go somewhere, so you remove the stems from the mushroom caps. You could throw them away, or you could chop them up and add them to the parsley/onion mixture....which is what I did. Why let those delicious bits go to waste? To assemble, you just stuff pieces of brie in the caps, and sprinkle the sautéed parsley mix over it all. Baked in an oven for 15 minutes, the cheese gets melty, the garlic roasts, and the dish makes your kitchen smell like complete decadence. They were earthy and cheesy, and the brightness of the parsley and onions kept them fr...

It's Super Bowl weekend, and maybe you care profoundly about the outcome, and maybe you don't. But regardless, someone you know is probably having a party as an excuse to eat a bunch of ridiculous food and check out some commercials that you've probably already seen online. If you're expected to bring something to a party this weekend (or hell, any party, ever), you should probably bring pimento cheese.  Those of you from the South are probably familiar with pimento cheese, a spread/dip of shredded cheddar cheese, mayo, and chopped, roasted red peppers. And chances are, if your mom/aunt/grandma made it, you have very strong feelings about how it should taste. If you're from Yankee territory, you might have heard of it via any of of the articles / magazines declaring Southern food last year's (and probably still this year's) big "thing." Maybe you're intrigued, maybe you're grossed out. You should be the former. True, this is a d...

It's the first of February, but yesterday it was fifty-some degrees and sunny.  With weather that nice in mid-winter, in Ohio, there's only one thing to do: fire up the grill.  My freezer had a complete dearth of grillable items, however, but thankfully,  The Greener Grocer at the North Market has this great thing called the Weekly Fresh Market Bag .  It's essentially a mini-CSA, and they offer a summer and winter season, with seasonal, if not local produce, grains, and cheeses.  I don't have a WFMB myself, but am lucky enough to have a boyfriend that does, and is willing to share. Since this week's bag had (among other things) kale, shiitake mushrooms, and fingerling potatoes in it, we decided to throw an impromptu grilled, winter veggie pizza party. Topped with a variety of cheeses pulled out of my fridge (fontina, goat, and Parmesan) and infused with the smoke from a super-hot grill, it made for a delightful taste of winter with the slightest hint of...

Like a scene from the predictably cheesy Jim Carey flick "The Yes Man," sometimes you just have to say yes to an invitation...no matter how ambitious or bizarre.  If the invitation is to drive from Columbus, Ohio to Providence, Rhode Island and back in a weekend, a brief consideration of the logistics is understandable, but then I strongly suggest that you say yes, pack a bag and book a room.   I was presented with this very invitation, with the goal of visiting the Rhode Island School of Design to see the last days of an exhibition on cocktail dresses and accouterments.  A few weeks later, I found myself in a car with a girlfriend, blasting our way Cannonball Run-style across Pennsylvania and up the coast to Providence. Our first stop on our brief tour of Rhode Island was RISD, were we were treated to an incredibly well curated exhibition illustrating the history of cocktail culture, from its roots in the 1920s to its retro-revival populari...

Ok....maybe it wasn't quite mayhem. Actually, it was remarkably easy--dare I say, idiot-proof? I bought my cheese making kit from The New England Cheesemaking Supply Co . The 30 minute mozzarella kit has enough ingredients to make 30 batches (!) of cheese. In the kit is a package of rennet tablets, a bag of citric acid, cheese salt, cheesecloth, a thermometer, and directions. First step, add the citric acid to one gallon of milk and heat to 90 degrees (I used Snowville Creamery, whole milk). You cannot use ultra-pasteurized--ultrapasteurization kills all the little bacterias you need to make your cheese work. While that's heating, you dissolve 1/4 of a rennet tablet in 1/4 cup water. Step two, turn off the heat, and gently mix in the rennet solution for 30-60 seconds. Then, step away from the pot (pour a glass of wine, munch on some olives, whatever--just leave the pot alone.) In three to five minutes, the milk will develop a custard-y consistency, and the whey and the cu...