Ham Sandwich Indicted!

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...

After a day of dealing with the aftermath of man's depravity, it's deeply gratifying to come home and see this happening on my porch: Lettuce sprouts! Hooray for growing things!

If you're a woman who likes to cook, chances are you've heard of Ree Drummond--a city girl who meets and marries a cattle rancher in Oklahoma, with home-on-the-range adventures ensuing.  She cooks, bakes, home-schools her children and writes about all of it. I've only made one other Pioneer Woman recipe--her buttery, decadent cinnamon rolls--and found this to be a good opportunity to further explore her cooking. For our first foray into Ree Drummond's new cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier , my friend and fellow food blogger Shawnie Kelley (of  Manges! Mangi! ) decided to dive in head first with a meal of three dishes and a cocktail.The theme for dinner number one: recipes with alcohol in them. To start, we whipped up a batch of frozen Mango Margaritas, pictured above. As far as frozen cocktails go, these were pretty good...but then, it's hard to mess up tequila and fruit.  They're strong...1.5 cups each of  tequila and triple sec, and...

That's a really terrible picture, but hopefully the intoxicating deliciousness of this cake will make up for my lack of food photography skills. (I was working on a deadline, people wanted to eat it.) Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, here's a chocolaty, boozy, cake that will do you right by St. Patrick, Leprechauns, and the IRA. (Just kidding, bomb jokes are not funny. But seriously, this cake will blow you away. Ok, I'm done. Seriously.)  I made this for my friend's birthday last week...as it seems we've developed a bit of a pattern of baked goods-as-gifts. (Last year, it was these peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes .)  The cake was still warm when I applied the glaze, so it didn't quite stay on as well as I would have liked.  Thankfully, it could be ladled up off the plate. It's a riff on this cake that I wrote about last year....and I think it's an excellent improvement.  The Guinness gives it a rich depth of flavor, and the B...

A work in progress: take the ingredients of a White Russian (Kaluha, vodka, cream), combine in an iSi canister and squeeze into a cup with about 1/4 c. of liquid nitrogen. Result: frigidly cold White Russian ice cream in about 30 seconds. 

Pickled radishes with goat cheese foam Modernist cooking (or modernist cuisine, or molecular gastronomy) has gradually been moving out of the realm of high end restaurants like Ferran Adria's "elBulli" or Grant Achatz's "Alinea" and into the kitchens of passionate amateurs (check out what the guys at Jet City Gastrophysics are doing) or science-minded home cooks.  The publication of Nathan Myhrvold's epic tome, Modernist Cuisine   last March stirred up a firestorm of interest in manipulating food using scientific techniques like centrifuging, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids and emulsifiers.  These self-described modernist techniques allow us to reexamine how we prepare food, whether it is by finding a way to cook the perfect burger (you'll want 30 hours and a vacuum sealer) or by creating a platform that captures the absolute flavor and essence of an ingredient. These techniques also promote a sense of playfulness, encouraging ...

(Is that a fractal I see?) Cauliflower, I think, was for a long time an underrated vegetable.  It's to be expected, I suppose, when your entire existence pretty much revolves around being placed on a raw credite platter to balance out all those other colors.  I'm fairly confident that the only time I saw cauliflower in my house growing up was when it was slowly oxidizing on a vegetable plate with a bowl of Ranch dressing. In the last few years, however, it seems like cauliflower is experiencing a sort of Renaissance. Elevated from its raw and odiferous existence by a good roast or a hot sear in a pan, cauliflower becomes tender and sweetly nuanced.  "Rediscovery" might be a strong word, but it definitely seems to be experiencing an increase in popularity: Michael Ruhlman is roasting whole heads  of it and basting it with brown butter, it's showing up in "steak" form as a vegetarian main dish, back in 2010, Michael Symon engaged in a cauliflower...