Screw expensive, store-bought chile powder. I'm making my own!
Last week, I was buying ingredients for a new Mexican chicken recipe, and nearly peed and slipped on it. The two chile powders the recipe called for cost a total of $17! Hell no! I decided to hit my local Mexican grocery store, find some dried chiles and make my own chile powder. Screw you, McCormicks!
The recipe and heaps of food porn after the jump.
A meaty, hearty, delicious vegetarian chili. Who knew?
For a majority of my life, vegetarian chili has always meant one thing to me: a bunch of beans with some spices cooked in water. Every vegetarian chili I had eaten had been variations on that theme.
At my annual chili cookoff, my world was rocked. I was overwhelmed with a plethora of kick-ass vegetarian chili. More than just beans and water, that is for damn sure. The winner of the event was made by my friend Andra, and she made a hearty chili made richer with the addition of soy chorizo.
I had to get my hands on a recipe that made me actually want to eat vegetarian, so here it is. The recipe and heaps of food porn and tips after the jump.
Could leftover pot roast and veggies be turned into delicious baby food?
I’m not gonna lie. I’ve tasted the jarred meat baby food–even the gourmet organic brands, and they are all as flavorful as a dirty jockstrap (and that’s putting it lightly). So when it comes to making meat dishes for my baby, I can’t help but feel like I’m cooking for Roger Ebert–pureed foods that just so happened to satisfy an adult palate.
The recipe and more after the jump.
Curry=smile. Good to know.
SOOOOO remember all of the blood, sweat and tears I put into those last couple of batches of baby food? Not only did Ella basically reject the sweet potato/spinach mix after a few days of eating it, but then the extra freezer door was accidentally left open, and all of her food, both liked and unliked, melted.
FML.
So. Back to the drawing board, and bonus–I get to make food she might actually eat. This time, I decided to make it and feed it to her directly before freezing and saving it all, just in case she hated it. Based on food in my fridge, I decided to try a baby veggie curry. Ella seems to like the curry powder when I add it to her turkey dinner or different vegetables, so I wanted to take it to next level.
The recipe and food porn after the jump!
She asked and I created! A gluten-free recipe for my sister in law.
A few years back, my sister in law started getting really sick. Everything she ate seemed to go right through her, and she lost a lot of weight for an already skinny person. After a lot of testing, they discovered she was a celiac who was allergic to gluten. Gluten is a protein that is commonly found in wheat and other cereals made into flour. It is what helps give bread it’s structure, and apparently, what makes celiacs sick. And after reading my food blog, she realized that a lot of foods she loves have gluten in them. Boo.
So in honor of her, and the upcoming holiday dinner we are going to make together, I am on a mission to research and find delicious and uncomplicated gluten-free recipes. Today’s recipe: gluten-free turkey gravy made with pureed roasted vegetables.Recipe and photos after the jump.
The first of two new baby foods I tried: sweet potato and spinach
Adventures in baby feeding update—Ella loves food! All kinds! So I have started to experiment more with what I feed her. To start, I have been adding either cinnamon or a homemade curry powder to her foods, fruits, veggies and meats. She has loved them both, even though the curry powder is a bit spicy. I figured if my father was able to eat those spices as a baby, so could Ella, and it gives me a way to change things up really easily.
I really wanted to make some foods with spinach in them because spinach is really high in iron (and babies lose their natural supply of iron at 6 months old) and it is in season. I took a stab at making sweet potato (a binding food) with spinach (a mover), and turkey breast with spinach (mover), carrots and parnsips (binders).
Photos, recipes and tips after the jump!
My three meat chipotle chili, inspired by a chili cook-off recipe and a recipe from the book Chili Nation!
Man, I am so glad I had my latest chili cook-off. As a cook, it is easy to get stuck in your own ways and your regular recipes, so it is always a blessing to have as many cooking inspirations as I did from my cook-off. I mean, I actually WANT to make a vegetarian chili! Hell hath frozen over, folks.
One of the cook-off prizes was a book written by Jane and Michael Stern called Chili Nation, featuring regional chili recipes from all 50 states. My friend Matt made a killer beef chili with chipotle and chunks of beef stew meat, and it inspired me to try something similar. I found the “Serious Capital Punishment Chili” from the District of Columbia (also the International Chili Society’s top winner in it’s 1980 cook off), which not only had cubes of beef round and chipotle in it, but also hints of dark chocolate and two kinds of ground meat in it. I made a few adjustments to the recipe, and hot damn. I got probably my favorite new chili of the year. Possibly even the decade. It has a few different textures of meat, which makes it really hearty, and a delicious, almost addictive heat and smoky flavor to it from the chipotle.
I did a search on my blog and for a bitch that talks a lot about chili, I sure as hell don’t have that many chili recipes on here. Time to make up for that. The recipe and photos for Leena’s three meat chipotle chili after the jump.
It's been a while, but Leena's Fifth Annual Feed Me Your Chili Extravaganza has risen again!
I didn’t always love eating chili. As the story goes, I overdosed on my mom’s chili at the tender age of 3 and got sick. The memory of this made me avoid chili for the next 20 years or so (I still can eat red kidney beans without gagging a little), until I went to culinary school and decided to try making a chili recipe I could actually stomach.
That was 2005, the year of my first chili cookoff, and this year is number five. The cookoff has followed me from Chicago to Australia to California, and has yielded some of the most interesting chilis I have ever tasted (like a kangaroo chili with Vegemite and a Thai chicken chili), and this year was no exception. The big surprise? Really delicious vegetarian chilis that were more than just beans and water!
More chili cookoff food porn after the jump.
My cranberry gingerbread sorbet sandwiches! A kick-ass treat for any winter occasion.
Rumor has it Turkey day is just around the corner, so I thought this would be the perfect time to roll out my new favorite winter dessert recipe: cranberry gingerbread sorbet sandwiches. Technically, I made these for my pre-Turkey day chili cookoff, which you’ll read about soon. But since cranberries only seem to appear in the market from November-December, this is a really great way to enjoy the short but delicious cranberry season.
The recipe and more food porn after the jump!
We all knew this was inevitable. A food lover has a baby, the baby finally moves on to solid foods, and food lover goes crazy making gourmet food baby couldn’t possibly appreciate. I am SO there right now. One bite of oatmeal in, flashes of Baby Boom with Dianne Keaton ran through my head, and before I could move my gourmet baby food empire to the big city, I jumped back to reality. I had to. Because she got a hold of the bowl of oatmeal and flung it on the cat.
For me, it all started last year around March. I was preparing for Tigress’s March Can Jam focusing on alliums, and was dying to can some caramelized onion jam. I must have read damn near ten canning cookbooks, and not one had an onion jam recipe. And with no tested, from a cookbook recipe to base my recipe off of, I had to resort to making a delicious onion relish.
During the process, I learned that onions are a low-acid food and require a high amount of acid to be able to can with a water bath canner. This means it is trickier than usual to create a water bath onion jam recipe, because all of the ones I found were for pressure canning (and I don’t own a pressure cooker). Tigress even warned us that onions were prime subjects for botulism. Seeing that I was also seven months pregnant at the time and slower than a pig in molasses, I gave up on my water bath onion jam search.
Cut to the beginning of August. I finally coming out of my “I had a baby” fog and wanted to can something delicious, so I went back to the Tigress Can Jam March round-up, and found this onion jam recipe by Rebecca of Market Life SF blog. It looked delicious, and in my rush to can the recipe, my baby-addled brain completely forgot about the great onion jam search of ’11. I tweaked the recipe to my liking and canned away! I forgot until I tried to post the recipe on Punk Domestics, and Sean kindly pointed out that my acid might be off.
I’m not a big fan of botulism, so I first contacted Rebecca from Market Life SF to find out where she got her original jam recipe (a Martha Stewart magazine). I assume Martha tests her canning recipes, but I wanted to be sure. I read up on the subject of water bath canning a non-pickled onion product. This Doris and Jilly Cook post was a great refresher on the debate, and inspired me to want to test the pH of my recipe. After some more research (which I did in between feeding and entertaining a crying baby because I’m a rock star), I discovered that pH strips, which Doris and Jilly suggest using, are only safe for food products with a pH of 4.0 or less. I was fairly certain my onion jam would be slightly over 4.0, so I would need a pH meter to properly test it. Hot damn, it took a lot of work to get to this point!
More photos, and tips on selecting a meter and using it test your canned foods after the jump.
So, I’m pretty sure I’m crazy. No sane person would ever try to can, let alone can jam, with a 2 month old. Especially one that refuses to nap for more than 20 minutes at a time and eats every hour and a half. What can I say? I like to roll dangerously close to the line of insanity for the sake of caramelized onions at my reach all year round. Making them from scratch every time is a bitch.
Is the jam ridiculously delicious? Hell yeah!
Was the process ridiculously hard with a baby? Fuckin’ eh.
But lucky for you, I came away with a few pointers for you other psycho moms out there interested in canning with babies. It is possible! My tips and the recipe after the jump.
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