One day last weekend, I was looking for an excuse to not leave the house so I decided to braise something. I feel like although I’ve been doing a lot of braising this winter (thanks to Julie and Julia, which has us all craving Boeuf Bourgignon in August!!), I hardly ever use my oven. I obviously use it when I bake, but it’s so rare that I do something like roast a chicken and the oven just never gets used for cooking. I takes so long! You have to wait for it to preheat, then it takes forever to actually cook your food…. so it’s the stovetop for me the majority of the time. Every once in a while if I’m snowed in (or want to pretend I’m snowed in!) I take advantage of the time at home to make a delicious braised dish. Like these short ribs, which simmer away all afternoon until the meat falls right off the bone and is tender as can be.
Instead of doing a traditional Italian braise, I decided to put a southwestern twist on my ribs, using beer and tequila as my liquids and adding a jalapeno and some chili powder to the pot. The flavor turned out great – it wasn’t spicy or beer-y at all, but it had a nice little southwestern kick. In order to develop the recipe I used the “Create your own” feature on the Fine Cooking web site. The feature walks you through the recipe and lets you drag different combinations of ingredients into the “pot” – then at the end it gives you a recipe that you can follow to recreate the dish n a real kitchen. I always play around with the feature, but I had never actually cooked one of the recipes before. I was impressed! Although you ned to pay attention to what flavors will go well together and make sure you have a good balance of richness and acidity, it’s a great way to put a fun, personal twist on a recipe that you aren’t that familiar with.
For any of you that have never had short ribs before, it’s similar to pot roast with a slightly firmer texture – fork-tender and succulent meat, with vegetables that cook down into a nice sauce. I served these with mashed potatoes (with sour cream instead of milk) to serve with my ribs. They were a great way to soak up the extra sauce! [....]
January is National Soup Month. January 24th is about the time when most people start losing focus on their New Year’s resolutions to eat better. I love soups and find that they provide a tasty and nutritious meal without a lot of work. So when Foodbuzz sent out a call for proposals for the January 24, 24, 24 event, I knew exactly what I wanted to do – a world tour of soups. (A soup Olympics, if you’re eagerly anticipating the games next month.)
That’s right: I’m presenting you with six soups, one representing each (populated) continent. Each soup is hearty enough to be a meal and can be made quickly and easily as long as you have stock on hand. And to keep everyone happy, two of them are vegan. They also all freeze well, which is good considering I now have enough soup to feed a small country.
(Six recipes with photos makes the just about the longest blog post ever, so I’m cutting it off here. Please click through to read more!)
I’ll admit that the first time I heard of a potato taco, I wasn’t impressed. It sounded like a dense, heavy, carb-fest. Then at the Foodbuzz festival last November I had the opportunity to try a potato and chorizo taco from tacolicious. My mind was changed – they were one of the highlights of the street food fare and I’ve been anxious to try them again ever since. When I saw that my local grocery store started selling their own house-made tortillas, I knew that the time had come to try making these at home.
For something that’s whipped easily up in 15 minutes, these are phenomenal. The potatoes are mild and really let the flavor of the chorizo shine through – you don’t really taste “potato” at all. What I really love about these though are all of the contrasting textures – soft potato, chewy chorizo, and creamy avocado. There’s not really much more to say about them than that – they’re very simple with bright flavors and a fresh feel. I don’t know what more you can ask for in a quick meal. [....]
Now that the Foodbuzz Festival is over, I’ve been given the go-ahead to share my winning cioppino recipe with you all. I’m really excited that I can finally post this dish – as I’ve mentioned before, I thought it was amazing (and from the feedback that I got at the festival, a lot of other people thought to too!). It’s also crazy easy to make. I was honestly worried about how I was going to fill the time in my 35 minute demo, because this essentially just requires dumping everything in the pot and letting it do its thing. Because it’s so fast, easy and elegant, it would be the perfect thing to make for weeknight entertaining. [....]
I got some super exciting news today – thanks to Bertolli Sauces, we’re On The Menu at the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival next month!!
When Foodbuzz announced last month that there would be a few sponsorship opportunities to cover the cost of travel and accommodations for the Festival and that the first would be offered by Bertolli Sauces, I knew that I had to submit an entry. I was excited but I never thought that I would actually be chosen! Entrants were asked to develop to 2-course menu using to different Bertolli Sauces products – I wanted to do something different since I figured they would be flooded with Italian recipes, but it didn’t take me long to come up with my menu.
Since the Festival is being held in San Francisco, I thought it would be fun to start my menu with something representative of the city. I don’t know what says San Francisco more than sourdough and cioppino! But I didn’t want to make just any old cioppino – it needed to be different! So I used Bertolli Sauce’s Fire Roasted Tomato and fish stock as my base, and added lots of garlic, celery, onion, and other traditional cioppino flavors. The to make it even more different, I gave it a Spanish spin by adding saffron, shrimp, and mussels. The final dish has a markedly Spanish flavor that’s slightly spicy and a wonderful aroma that ignites your senses the moment you bring the fork to your mouth. Sourdough was the perfect tool for sopping up all of the extra broth. We ate every last bit and I’ve been itching to make more ever since.
From the minute I tasted the final Menu Item, I knew that it was a winner. This was SO GOOD and it’s killing me that I’m not allowed to share the actual recipe with you all (yet). But here’s the deal: Foodbuzz and Bertolli Sauces tested my recipe and I made it into the Top Eight. That means I won the sponsorship and get to go to the Festival for free (whoo!) and that this dish is On The Menu. BUT only THREE of us get to actually demo and serve our Menu Items at the Festival. This menu item is fabulous, and I really want to share it with my fellow bloggers. This is where I need your help: The top three recipes will be chosen by a vote from the Foodbuzz Community. So, can I count on your vote? Pretty please?
Voting starts tomorrow, Friday, October 23rd and runs through November 2nd. I’ll post the final details when I receive them.
Don’t you want some of this??
(In case you were wondering, only my appetizer was chosen as a Menu Item. My entree was Lamb Meatballs in a Cumin-Scented Sauce over Spaghetti Squash and Wilted Spinach. It was also amazing – Shawn actually said he liked it better than the cioppino but I disagree – and I’ll be posting that recipe to the blog soon.)
