The Challah that Ate Yom Kippur

How I wish I could claim making this beauty! Our littlest baker gave this recipe from the NY Times a second try. The first rendition was just about perfect too, but she was not satisfied with the quality of her braiding.  This masterpiece is over 18 inches long, took 9 cups of flour and would [...]

Gumbo Time!

After some cooking buddies went to New Orleans in the Spring and then created a fabulous meal of Gumbo, Shrimp Etoufee, Dirty rice and more NOLA specialties, which all vanished in record time, we’ve had a hankering for Gumbo.   Last weekend the weather was cool, I had boneless chicken thighs thawing and the usual suspects for dinner, so [...]

Julia’s take on the Clafouti – Perfection!

Julie and Julia led me to drag out my 25 year old copy of Mastering the Art, which had been gathering lots of dust. Everyone devoured the apple clafouti I made last night from JC’s recipe for this desert; there could have been a food fight if we had more than 5 eaters!  It was [...]

Stand back, don protective garb, he’s making another pizza

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa this one sits on a storebought dough, from DeMoula’s in Tilton, NH to be specific.   Our resident expert, the youngster who’s spent hours chained to the twenty quart Hobart cranking out thousands of donut muffins, the only one amongst our number with recent food service experience described it as [...]

Kale reprise

We are using our kale almost every weekend, so why should this past weekend be any different?  It really did well in our garden, and is a great source of vitamin K and A. With the H1N1 running rampant as well as a shift to fall weather, we need all the protection and TLC we can get.  [...]

In a pickle

People in my house love pickles, and ever since discovering some great sandwiches that rely on pickles for extra punch – the grilled chicken sandwiches from Martha Stewart and the fabulous Cubano come to mind – I’ve started to love them, too. Thus, my yearly pickling effort held a little more interest than usual for [...]

A Chef’s Tale

Finally got around to reading (well, listening) to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Read by the author, it is by turns, amusing, annoying, profane and profound.  He annoys with his arrogance and borderline boastfulness, which he mostly reins in with self-deprecating comments.   The profanity is, according to him, the lingua franca of the restaurant kitchen, and [...]

Pesto – made in small batches with tears for an Irishman!

Oh Danny boy! Anxiety over Hurricane Danny led us to cut all of our basil in one fell swoop. This harvesting, which filled our extra deep kitchen sink four times,  was a huge treat for your nose -  heavenly…really heavenly. But it didn’t take long to realize that getting all the leaves off of the [...]