use real butter

Recipe: quinoa, fruit and nut salad

I first read about quinoa three years ago in a food article and I tucked it away in my head. It is a great Scrabble or Tiles word to use up that Q, and everyone around you who isn’t a food dork declares it isn’t a word. What do they know? Quasar is another good one, but that has nothing to do with food. I only sampled quinoa a few times in restaurants, but lately I’ve been trying to work more grains into my diet because I love them and it is really a lack of exposure that has kept me from experimenting in the kitchen more than anything else.

Recipe: macadamia orange brittle

The word brittle conjures up so many meanings. Brittle bones, brittle failure (okay, that’s a term in mechanics, but important for all sorts of materials studies), brittle personality. I’ll admit that when I hear the word brittle my mind immediately turns to brittle-ductile transition zones in the Earth’s crust. And yet my favorite meaning of brittle is the confection of a delicious nut meat suspended in the matrix of a caramelized sugary goodness, broken into delightfully dangerous shards that melt and crunch in your mouth. Swoon.

There are two camps of people when it comes to caramelized sugar. Those who love it and those who hate/fear it. I’ve been in both camps – twice. It was pretty easy to master at sea level although I did brick my fair share of pots of hot crystallized sugar when I got a little too cocky (read careless). What a bleeping mess. But in general it was a cinch to make. Then I moved up here, as in several thousand feet up. Caramelizing sugar became a little more finicky and I fell into the hate/fear camp. My pastry course at CSR helped with my “issues”. The introduction of acids like cream of tartar or lemon juice, and the addition of corn syrup helped to stabilize the mixture as it boiled to amber loveliness. Back into the love camp.

Recipe: royal raspberry and almond cake

I trust everyone had a merry Christmas and/or federal holiday! I want to thank those of you who bid on my raffle prize as well as all of the other fabulous raffle prizes at Menu for Hope IV this year. What an awesome turnout. MfH raised 50% more than last year’s effort – over $90,000! That’s a whole lotta raffle tickets, kids!

Ever since I found out that my Aussie friends have lovely cold seafood picnics on the beach for Christmas, I have steadily rejected the traditional roasted animal – be it of feathered or four-legged persuasion – in favor of those animals who gurgle and bubble in the sea. Now *that* is a treat to me. I grew up on the water and spent far too much time in it or at its edge during my youth. This year we had lobster bisque, crawdad phyllo triangles (crawdads = crayfish = yabbies), shrimp cocktail, and king crab legs for our Christmas “meal”. The meal was neither lunch nor dinner, but a long drawn out noshing session. We didn’t have it in us to eat dessert. Who needs dessert after all of those lovely critters?