Monday, August 31, 2020

Tapenade

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 Classic tapenade isn't just about the olives. Capers play a major role too.  The name comes from the Provencal word for capers (tapenas...
Sunday, August 2, 2020

Gazpacho

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This is not your standard, boring blended salsa Gazpacho. It has stale bread. It has olive oil. It has a touch of sherry vinegar. Nothing is...
Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Pineapple and Ancho marinade and sauce

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This marinade/sauce is part of my summer project - using dried chillies in all sorts of interesting ways. It is adapted from Milk Street...
1 comment:
Sunday, May 10, 2020

When in Texas Make Salsa

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A very good friend invited me over to sample her loquats. I had no clue what they were, but figured that if they were food related, I would...
Sunday, May 3, 2020

FauxFu

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Madame doesn't care much for Tofu. There are, however, some dishes that just wouldn't be right without it. Especially miso soup.. ...
Thursday, April 30, 2020

Tomato and Mozz Skewers

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At a properly socially distanced driveway party last week a friend had made some delicious skewers with tomatoes, Mozzarella, basil and bal...
Friday, April 24, 2020

Sourdough and Buttermilk biscuits.

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We have a lot of sourdough starter here at the birdhouse. So we have to find ways to use the "discard" that which is poured off t...
Sunday, April 12, 2020

Sourdough Crackers

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In the land of sourdough bread baking, we often find ourselves with excess starter. Because as we feed our starters, they increase in b...
Sunday, April 5, 2020

Coronagroni

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This is a cocktail that we came up with during the Covid-19 "social distancing" time in 2020. We had some of the delicious Diplom...
1 comment:
Sunday, March 1, 2020

OTBN 2020

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We often participate in the Wall Street Journal "Open That Bottle Night" concept. The primary idea being to dink wine when you fe...
Sunday, February 9, 2020

Tonic water

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America's Test Kitchen has an extensive YouTube presence. I was surprised and delighted to find a cocktails section. They had a piece o...

Cheese Straws

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A very easy go to appetizer. They hold together nicely, and look quite pretty arranged as a "bouquet". Ingredients 5 oz grate...
Sunday, February 2, 2020

The easiest cheese souffle

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We had some friends over for lunch today. One of whom is French. I wanted an easy dish that takes 40 minutes to cook because we had other t...
Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Blood Orange Cake

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We were invited for dinner by some friends who are lactose intolerant. So the trick was to come up with a dessert with no dairy whatsoever....
Sunday, December 1, 2019

Buttermilk pie

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A year ago, a very good friend told me that he wanted a buttermilk pie for Thanksgiving. He had always enjoyed them as a child, but hadn...
Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Trying Eggs in the Circulator

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America's Test Kitchen showed a different way of "poaching" eggs recently. They refer to it as Sous Vide (but that is technic...
Sunday, September 29, 2019

pita

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An easy and impressive bread. There are a few tricks, but overall pretty straightforward. I use a 66% hydration dough for this - and much m...
Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Killer Brownies - Thanks Bravetart

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I have mentioned Stella Parks before. She has an amazing cookbook entitled "Bravetart"where she meticulously describes how to coo...
3 comments:
Sunday, September 15, 2019

Chicken with grapes, garlic, vermouth and tarragon

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I have stolen this shamelessly from Jamie Oliver. It is such a good dish that I have now made it 4 or 5 times. It gets better with each sho...
Saturday, September 14, 2019

Tomatoes, mushrooms, charred romaine - oh my!

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On a trip around our local "Central Market" grocery store the other day, we had a snack of mushrooms/tomatoes/parmesan, etc. It w...
Monday, July 15, 2019

Testing creativity

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Madame is . just back from Europe and decided to have a creative time at the supermarket. Masses of green beans, red peppers, ginger showed...
2 comments:
Sunday, April 21, 2019

Spring time pea soup - chilled

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Updated, Below. As with many new recipes, I start with posts from Serious Eats and work onward from there. This soup was a hit at a party. I...
Monday, March 18, 2019

Confit tomatoes

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I attended a sourdough class at Kuluntu in Dallas over the weekend. As well as it being an absorbing, informative and fun class, Stephanie ...
1 comment:
Sunday, February 24, 2019

12 minutes 5 ingredients one pot

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Well it's not exactly 5 ingredients because one of the ingredients is tapenade (which itself has 5 ingredients - but who doesn't ha...
1 comment:
Monday, February 11, 2019

Candied bacon

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It started innocently enough. We had been at a party on Saturday evening where someone had made this amazing candied bacon. I had neve...
Monday, December 3, 2018

Spicy BBQ Sauce

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The only reason that this recipe is interesting is because the standard recipe (from seriouseats.com ) that I intended to follow required W...
Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Potato Rolls

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This recipe makes soft rolls that are really good as sandwich bases. As usual, when baking I weigh things, so it may be tough to convert to...
Monday, September 3, 2018

Beef in a towel (Lomo Al Trapo)

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The folks at Serious Eats have done it again. Kenji posted about the method of cooking beef tenderloin in Colombia (where his wife is from)...
1 comment:
Monday, August 6, 2018

Cinnamon buns - again

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My sister has been raving about some cinnamon buns that she had from a bakery in Cornwall. I have posted about these before. But whatever ...

Ajvar - red pepper and egg plant spread

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An article about the Balkan dish called ajvar appeared in the New York Times recently. It looked insanely good, so of course I had to make ...
Monday, July 16, 2018

Gazpacho

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I wanted to make a locally sourced dish for a "slow food" event here in Dallas. Of course I turned to the clever folks at Serious...
Saturday, June 30, 2018

Pate a Choux

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I can't believe that I didn't have a choux paste recipe lying around somewhere. This is a bit of a departure for me because I measu...
Friday, June 22, 2018

Interpreting a recipe

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My sister has been waxing lyrical about the cinnamon buns from the Da Bara bakery in Cornwall (SW England). She dug around and found a reci...
Thursday, May 3, 2018

Cauliflower and asparagus soup

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Cauliflower gets everywhere it seems. This soup wasn't an "oh let's get a cauliflower and use it to make a soup". More li...
Sunday, April 15, 2018

A tale of too much pork

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If there were such a thing as too much pork, this would be it. We had done a pork shoulder on the egg for a work party. And it was pronounc...
Wednesday, February 28, 2018

A Pate a Choux trick

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For most of us at home, using a pastry bag, nozzles, etc. is a royal pain.With that in mind, I was making some mini gougeres for a party ov...
1 comment:
Sunday, February 25, 2018

Bravetart

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Bravetart , the dessert cookbook from Stella Parks has some very approachable recipes for the home cook. She explains things clearly an sim...