use real butter

Recipe: coleslaw

I cannot recall when it was that I changed my mind about cabbage, but it has been one of my favorites for a long time now. I initially only ate cabbage in the Chinese cold salad form when I was a kid. It’s salted and then marinated in sweet, sour, and spicy seasonings – served with the traditional cold appetizer plate. I ate it up. Did I mention that I am crazy about pickled vegetables? Don’t get me started on kimchi… I could eat that for days on end.

Coleslaw scared me at first. In the South, it was usually mixed with a lot of mayonnaise. I’m not afraid of mayonnaise per se, well… yes I am. It grosses me out to consume enormous amounts of mayonnaise. When I moved west to California, I discovered the mayonnaiseless coleslaw and I was hooked, however I didn’t consume much of it because I spent my days eating a lot of fantastic ethnic food that I can’t get my hands on now.

So now, in the Rockies, I’ve been driven to making my own favorites because I can’t seem to find them in town. This summer I did a lot of barbecue testing and of course, the natural partner to pulled pork, pork ribs, barbecue chicken, and friends is… coleslaw (among other things like beans, potato salad, and rolls). Coleslaw is unbelievably easy to make. Even easier if you omit the mayo.

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: lemon mousseline torte

Like I said earlier, my in-laws were visiting this weekend and there was much cooking going on at our house. It was my MIL’s birthday on Sunday, so I thought I’d bake a cake in celebration. My FIL is a huge fan of chocolate – one of those types who won’t actually eat desserts that don’t have chocolate. My MIL likes chocolate, but she loves custards, citrus, fruits, and other non-chocolate desserts too. It was a good excuse to make a non-chocolate dessert. Ever since I completed my pastry course this past spring, my MIL has been wanting to bake with me to learn some techniques and a recipe. I chose the Lemon Mousseline Torte because I never actually made it in class (my partner and I made the Zebra Torte for that lesson).

I altered the recipe slightly because we didn’t have time to make the pâte sucrée cookie base. The lemon chiffon cake had a terrifically lemony-tart flavor. I used a 9×2 inch round pan, but one day would like to get my hands on a pair of 9×3 inch rounds because the chiffons rise beautifully in those pans, allowing for more or thicker layers from each cake.

Recipe: tamales, new mexico style

There is a certain class of food that makes its way across cultures. It involves taking some sort of starch and wrapping it around another ingredient or ingredients, cooking it, and passing into bliss as you eat it. These foods are best when homemade and I have made it one of my many small missions in life to learn to make each of these before I die.

So far, I have managed Chinese potstickers, Argentine empanadas, and as of today, tamales. Others on the todo list include, but are not limited to: samosas, ravioli, tsa-tsao bao (Chinese bbq pork buns), tsong-tse (think Chinese rice tamales). If you can think of other delicious homemade delicacies that I’m overlooking, be sure to let me know!

My whole motivation for making carne adovada a few days ago was to ultimately try my hand at homemade tamales. On our road trip back home from New Mexico a few weeks back, I procured some corn husks along with those beloved dried New Mexican reds. I’m sure I could have found them locally in Colorado if I had looked, but that’s the thing about where I live – you have to LOOK pretty hard to find certain ethnic foods and it makes me insane. I hate shopping. I like cooking.