I should title this post, “the cursed food processors,” but then you wouldn’t get to know what I was making! This month’s Daring Cook’s challenge was to make a nut butter and use it in a dish. Well, nut butters mean one needs a food processor. I thought this would be a great challenge to do at home in the US visiting my parents (if I’m visiting can I still call it home?), because I knew that they would enjoy the flavors I was thinking of for this month’s dish.
Well, I get there and find that my parents’ puppy had decided that the cord of the food processor looked appetizing, and bit the cord right off of the machine! It’s quite hard to run a food processor if you have no way of plugging it into anything. Ok, so no homemade nut butters this time. Instead, I went to my nearest health store corporate giant and picked up some cashew butter. Why cashews? Well, everyone in my family loves them, and peanut butter is boring 
This week I had thought about making my own cashew butter now that I am back en Suisse, but again with the cursed food processors! There was a mighty wind event the other day, and silly us left our windows open in our apt. all day. We’d gotten into the habit of this because it’s been so freaking hot lately – and trust me, you learn a totally different definition of hot when there is no A/C to be found, especially when your office faces the afternoon sun. I melt into a sweaty sticky puddle on a regular basis. It wasn’t until we left work that I thought things could be a problem. After all, tree branches don’t normally float. We got home to find so much stuff all over the floor of our apt., including the food processor!! The lid is cracked and in pieces. gahhhhh! Well, there goes making any nut butters this month. At least the wind kept our stuff inside the apt., I half expected to find our life’s belongings strewn out all over the street below.
So jarred cashew butter it is for this month. I’m ok with this, it was organic and quite tasty. As long as your’e also ok with my store-bought nut butter, onto the challenge!
The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.
Continue reading Daring Cooks go Nuts! Grilled Kabobs with Cashew Butter Sauce
Although I grew up in New England and have fond childhood memories of many regional treats like maple sugar candy, my family did not cook much fish. Actually, truth be told, I did not even know I liked fish until my early 20s. I started to become a bit more adventurous in this area upon moving to college, and distinctly remember a time during my summer in NYC when my friends and I were in Little Italy, and were faced with a decision of ordering seafood in a restaurant. My only previous experience eating ocean critters involved them being battered and deep-fried or in the form of clam chowder. I decided to be brave and show off my “New England upbringing” talking about how natural it was to eat seafood, and ordered a pasta dish with sautéed calamari. After all, I couldn’t let it be known that my seafood palate was so limited! I very loudly exclaimed to all my friends about how much I loved seafood (well, I was from New England after all) and that I would eat anything that came out of the ocean – we all ordered the calamari, but feeling some irrational need to show off, I was the first to try it. Looking back I really don’t know why, but it took a bit of courage for me to confront sea critters that did not come with a crispy batter coating. Luckily for me (and my reputation amongst my friends), I loved it upon the first bite – and ever since then, there really hasn’t been a dish involving a critter from the ocean that I have come across and wouldn’t try – from raw sea urchin roe in New Zealand to cod tongue in Newfoundland, I’ve definitely had some unique experiences!
During my then “newfound” love of seafood in my early 20s, as I was exploring tastes of fish and various shellfish, salmon was about the fishiest tasting dish that I really enjoyed. It’s funny, because salmon actually isn’t that fishy. Over the years I’ve been exposed to a much broader range of foods, but salmon still is one of my favorites. I’m not really sure what to think about news of a genetically modified version that could possibly be approved soon, and I’m often torn on whether we should really be eating any seafood at all given issues with all forms of fish populations.
We do eat fish a lot less frequently than when we were living in the States, if for no other reason than Switzerland is a land-locked country and so seafood always has to be imported in, making it a bit more expensive than local poultry or saucisson. But when we do, frequently I like to do something that involves little effort and yet imparts a lot of flavor – I love using a tamari base for marinades, because the salty umami flavor just blends so well with the quite distinct tasting salmon. And on a warm summer’s day, what could be easier than a marinade and then a quick pan-fry? Placed on a fresh bed of greens and topped with some onions made this a nice light, refreshing summer dinner
How do you like to enjoy fish in the summer?? What are your favorite marinades?
Continue reading Marinated Pan-Fried Salmon
I don’t usually write about my failures in the kitchen – after all, who wants to try a recipe that didn’t work? However, at the risk of sounding cliché, I’m learning the slow lesson that life is not always about the end result, but about the process that one went through to get there.
Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.
Daring Cooks always post on the 14th of the month, but I made this attempt over two weeks ago. So it appears a little out of order if you remember it was just last week that I had a miraculous find of guar gum in a natural foods store. This attempt happened before I had guar gum and before I found gluten free bread mix. We were charged with making baguettes, and after finding an awesome gluten free baguette recipe to try, learned that it would not happen without xanthan or guar gum. So, I took one of my sandwich bread recipes, and made a go without any binding agents by adding in some extra eggs and playing with the ratio of flours a bit. I have also since learned from one of my favorite gluten free chemists that gelatin or agar agar should never be used in baking, because they turn the products too brittle. I guess when making pitas or pizza dough it hasn’t been a problem for me because they are pretty flat to begin with, but for a crusty bread, brittle is definitely not a quality I’m looking for.
Continue reading Smoked Salmon Pâté
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