Food Pr0n: The Pioneer Woman Cooks

In reference to Food PrOn in general, I made passing mention of cooking blogs. One of my all time favorite blogs, of any sort at all, is The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I first learned about it from another blogger who raved about the site. The Pioneer Woman of the title is Ree Drummond, who fell in love with an Oklahoma rancher, and moved from Southern California to the wilds of an Oklahoma ranch. The basic Web site, which featured well-crafted lovely recipes that were carefully illustrated with photographs and step-by-step illustrations and a voice that might have been that of your sister or your best friend, grew into a complex of related sites, some by Ree, and some by friends, and a vibrant community. It also resulted in a fabulous cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, which I've written about here.

It's not enough to have super recipes; what makes this site absolutely fabulous is Ree's persona, and her fabulous photographs, and, perhaps the most difficult part of all in recipe blogging, her clear instructions for making the recipes successfully. That's not to knock the amazing photographs, or Ree's well-executed tutorials on taking your own photographs, and editing them in Photoshop. This is someone who not only has a forthcoming memoir The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels—A Love Story based on her own experience with "Marlborough Man," as she affectionately refers to her husband, but home schools her four kids (and blogs about it) and is about as genuine and honest as a writer can be.

The site, while huge, is well-organized; there's a browseable complete recipe index, which allows you to browse visually, based on the pictures of completed recipes, by date, or in terms of type of dish. Recipes are all clearly labeled, too, with Prep time, Cooking time, Servings, and a difficulty rating. All the recipes are carefully formatted to allow for printing, in your choice of 3"x5" Cards 4"x6" Cards Full Page.

This site is, in fact, in many ways, an ideal example of how to blog, and not just about food. It's attractive, well-organized, works with just about every browser (including iPhones and iPads) and it's dead easy to find what you want. It's a good site to browse when you want to cook something special, or something different, or are just interested in the pleasures of food pr0n. Some of my favorite recipes are her Cinnamon Rolls (read her Notes, too), her Homemade Ranch Dressing, and her Crème Brûlée. Yesterday, I discovered two more that I haven't tried yet, but definitely see in my future: Chicken Tortilla Soup and Sour Cream Enchiladas.

Quick Pizza Pasta

To Make Quick Pizza Pasta

I ordered some pasta last month over at Linda’s Diet Delites….(Along with many other things that I wanted to try out without spending a fortune to order them on some of the other popular sites by the case!) In with the group was Fiber Gourmet’s Mac & Cheese.  I have to say even on it’s own I really enjoyed it. See my article below for more information, and nutritional benefits to trying this pasta. I can’t tell this is any different than normal pasta. It cooks in the same time as well. I decided to mix it up a little bit when I had some leftovers, and I loved the result. I think this is a great base for casseroles. Tonight I made a fresh batch of the pizza pasta I have been loving.  Here is a loose guide to what I included in it.

-1 Box of Fiber Gourmet Macaroni and Cheese
(Prepared following the box directions, using fat free milk and 1 tablespoon of light butter, I truly like Land O Lakes light butter the best!)

-1 Cup of your favorite spaghetti sauce. I used Newman’s Own Sockarooni. (Newman's sauce in general is packed with flavor, but this one also has peppers and tomatos in it and taste just like I made it myself)

-2 Oz. Hormel Turkey Mini Pepperonis (Yes you can use regular turkey pepperoni, or just regular pepperoni. Cut it into smaller size pieces though so it doesn't overtake your pasta dish.)

Mix it all up… It makes 4 generous 1 cup servings. They are 4 points each on the old WW system, and 6 with the new.

I top mine with 1/3 cup of my favorite shredded WW cheese to have a 6-8 point filling pasta dish.

As I prepare this I think I will experiment with different things. I would like to stir in some mushrooms too or maybe spice it up a bit. I get bored easily with the same thing, so go ahead and tweak it to your liking. I like to serve mine in a bowl, it always makes me feel like I am getting more to eat, and I think it is far less sloppy! Steam some asparagus on the side or some nice roasted brussel sprouts, to get some veggies in with your evening. (Though I do count my sauce as veggies!)

Try different sauces as well, mine may not be the right pick for you, or maybe try skipping the pepperoni all together, and going with a higher calorie sausage or meat sauce. Let me know how it works!

No More Pouting About Pasta

Macaroni and Cheese? Penne? Rigatoni? Lasagna? Which overload of carbs is your poison? I of course love them all, who wouldn't ? Red sauce, white sauce, pesto sauce, I sure love to dress them up!

Your grocery store now carries numerous brands and styles for a healthier selection, for those of us avid dieters who thought pasta would never be "allowed" on the menu plan. Whole wheat, garden varieties, super plus, and many other nutritious varieties. You really have to be careful in reading the labels though, what may appear to look healthy may truly be misleading. Don't judge your pasta box by it's cover. Read the nutrition information. As a member on Weight Watcher's I truly have come accustomed to longer trips to the grocery store. I normally don't buy anything without reading the label first.

Recently online I came across an even healthier alternative pasta. This pasta has half the calories of your standard pasta. The best part is I can serve this to family and friends and they never know. It is delicious, and there are a few different selections.  They even have Macaroni and Cheese! (Check out my recipe above for the Pizza Pasta I have been making using that.) Fiber Gourmet has proven to be my favorite pasta alternative. No guilt, no weird textures, just plain good old pasta. I found a couple different sites that have great prices on this as well. Some big sites only offer this by the case, which to be honest is worth the purchase, but if you are looking to just try it, surf around to find the best price for a couple different single box purchases. The website offers a complete breakdown of the products, and shows you all the varieties as well as the nutrition information.

So the good news is your guilty pleasure is no longer off limits. Create your own recipes, and be satisfied knowing that that big plate of pasta is actually healthy for you! Add some veggies and some protein to really pack a powerful food choice. Adding veggies doesn't add many calories, and it makes it look like you have a lot more bulk to your meal. Have a family fun night, make your own mini pasta bar with different toppings. (Just like a sundae bar!) It's time to be positive about your pasta!

(Did I mention no soy or milk, and these products are good for about 2 years? Just another perk. Unlike many whole wheat pastas, these do not need any extreme cooking times either, just about 8 or 9 minutes!)

High Octane Hot Chocolate

It's been raining here a lot.

This is not unusual; it is the Pacific Northwest, after all, and January. But after a week of fairly steady warm rain and mist and frequent visitations of the pineapple express, it turned cold. I actually like the warm rainforest type rain we usually have, but on occasion it shifts to a brutally cold, hard steady rain with wind. It was like that, and my partner started reminiscing about Alpines; hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps.

Well, that did it for me, and we were off to procure provisions for Alpines. In some ways, the provision procurement may be the most important step. Yes, you could use a pre-made hot cocoa mix, but really, you're not saving that much labor, you're spending a lot more money, and the cocoa mixes have sugar, extra fats, emulsifiers and fillers. Why not get quality pure cocoa, and add your own sugar and fresh milk? We spent $3.39 for a 10 oz store-brand can of pure Dutch cocoa. You could use Hershey's or Green and Black, or any other brand you prefer, as long as it's just cocoa, without sugar or dried milk or other additives.

Peppermint schnapps is pretty easy to find; there are a number of makers. You want to make sure that it uses genuine Peppermint, not an artificial substitute. Don't even think about using Creme de Menthe instead; it's a little too sweet, and the green makes the cocoa look astonishingly vile. I occasionally try to be moderate in cooking, so we're using ordinary milk, and not adding whipped cream on top, but it is a lovely decorative touch.

To Make Hot Cocoa from Scratch

These directions make a single cup; multiply for more.

  1. Heat one cup of milk on the stove until it is warm but not boiling. Do not overheat the milk.
  2. Add two teaspoons of table sugar to the milk, slowly, while stirring with a wire whisk. You may want to add more for a sweeter cocoa; I've been known to use one gently rounded teaspoon, personally.
  3. Add one gently rounded tablespoon of cocoa, or two heaping teaspoons, stirring with a wire whisk while you slowly add the cocoa.
  4. Keep stirring with the whisk until the cocoa and sugar are dissolved and thoroughly blended with the milk, making sure that you don't overheat or allow the milk to boil.

To make an Alpine

  1. Add a shot of Peppermint schnapps to a mug.
  2. Pour the hot cocoa into the mug.
  3. Decorate, if you wish, with a dollop of whipped cream, and sprinkle some crushed candy cane over the whipped cream.

You can serve four people (or two servings for two people) by multiplying the ingredients and using a larger saucepan. If you absolutely must, you can use a microwave to heat the milk, but it's not nearly as good. The possibilities in terms of variation include substituting another liqueur (or even whiskey) for the peppermint schnapps. Cointreau or Grand Marnier, Kahlua, Bailey's Irish Cream, Creme de Cacao . . . lots of options.

Image Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
Used with permission.

The Canyons Restaurant in Redmond, WA

The Canyons Restaurant in Redmond, WA is good. For reference, Redmond, WA is a city on the outskirts of Seattle. There are three locations here in Washington State. Aside from the one in Redmond, there are also two others in Monroe and Bothell.

Canyons Restaurant has a lot of great deals to be had. For instance their happy hour menu selection and prices are a terrific deal. From the canyons restaurant website, “Enjoy specially priced appetizers, and $1 off beers, wines, and cocktails in our bar Monday thru Friday from 3-7. [Get] $1 off drinks, [this is] available 9 pm to close Monday thru Friday & all day Sunday.”

When my best friend and I met there for dinner a couple months ago, she ordered the chicken tortilla soup. I ordered the fresh Ahi tuna salad. Before we received our meals, the waitress brought out some freshly fried tortilla chips (they make them right in the restaurant!), fresh salsa and side of refried beans. We dug into this appetizer immediately. I found it to be very tasty and filling.

The Ahi tuna salad was featured on their gold’s gym menu. This is the portion of their menu for the calorie conscious and those just trying to watch their weight. My goal wasn’t to eat healthy or watch my calories that night. It just looked appetizing on the menu.

The waitress brought our meals to the table and we marveled at the presentation. The Ahi tuna salad looked perfectly prepared. There was a side of fresh wild greens in addition to the fish, topped with a light dressing and croutons. I tasted the Ahi tuna. It melted in my mouth. It was seared and seasoned perfectly. The dressing accompanied the fresh greens and tuna perfectly.

My best friend wasn’t very impressed with her soup. She barely touched it, while I finished everything on my plate. She found it to be very un-soup like. It had lots of pieces of chicken and tortilla chips and not much liquid; as in, not much ‘soup’ in the soup. We both found this to be strange.

Canyons Restaurant feature many different menu selections, including Hot Deals from 11am-3pm (nothing is over $7.99). They also feature a different special every night of the week. Of course there’s the classic Taco Tuesday where all tacos on their menu are 2 dollars off. On Saturday, you can enjoy a full meal of Fish and Chips or coconut prawns for just 11 bucks.

Late Lunch: Pecan Encrusted Salmon with Side Salad

A couple weeks ago my best friend and I got together one afternoon. We had a late lunch over at her house. We had salmon with a side salad that included candied pecans and blue cheese crumbles. Just to mention a few of the many tasty ingredients.

For the main course, I stopped by Trader Joes and bought a large salmon fillet. It was packaged frozen, encrusted with pecans. It was also topped with fresh sliced tomatillos and green peppers. I purchased this fish fillet for about seven dollars. This was quite the bargain, considering there are two hearty portions of fish in the package, about sixteen ounces worth. At thirty-two grams of protein per serving, my best friend and I felt quite satisfied with the meal.

Once I got to my best friend’s place, I covered the oven-safe packaging the fish came in with aluminum foil. Then I baked it at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Then I peeled off the aluminum foil and seasoned the fish with some fresh ground pepper, Celtic sea salt and Italian seasoning. I then placed it back in the oven, this time uncovered. I continued to bake it at 400 degrees for another 12 minutes.

When I removed it from the oven, it smelled fresh and delicious. I let it cool for a few minutes. Then I nibbled a little bit with a fork. It was evenly cooked inside and out and flaky to the touch. It melted in my mouth as I sampled it. I then plated a piece of the fillet with a serving of the sweet and savory salad we made.

The salad consisted of wild greens, dried cranberries, crumbled blue cheese, Italian croutons and candied pecans. We lightly coated our salad with Newman’s Own Balsamic Vinaigrette. The combination of the sweet flavors from the pecans and cranberries and the savory flavors of the blue cheese, croutons and vinaigrette was very satisfying.

Overall I enjoyed this meal, though I felt that the fish lacked a bit of flavor. This was probably because it was frozen before being baked, not fresh. Perhaps I will try making this meal again with fish fresh from the Fresh Fish Company in Ballard off NW 80th (between N Jones Ave & N 24th Ave). Ballard is a neighborhood in Seattle, WA. For reference, I refer to the Fresh Fish Company in this article as well, here on hungry blogger. Check out Mexican Mahi-mahi Topped with Chopped Zucchini. 

Cooking Lesson #1: Presentation is Everything


One commenter on another site about food let me know that presentation was everything when it came to the culinary arts. Since I was cooking dishwasher chicken for myself at the time, I ignored her very useful advice. This turned out to be a mistake of the highest proportions. I’ve since learned that unless I am cooking ginormous genetically-modified chicken breasts—the chicken equivalent of a boob job—if I present the food in a nice way, I can mask the taste of what I’m cooking.

 

Of course, this works the opposite way, too. If my food looks bad, but tastes delectable—something that happens approximately 32.6% of the time when I am put in charge in the kitchen—no one wants to eat my food, no matter how good it tastes. This is my downfall with muffins—and no I can’t help but think of Betty White’s SNL skit just at the very mention of muffins—because the muffins come out a little lumpy. El Chef will eat them and loves them, but I’m shy to pass them along to anyone else, even though I make a pretty good muffin if I do say so myself.

 

Presentation is easier when you have the expensive pots and pans at your disposal, but I don’t; mine are are hand-me-downs from my Grandma who passed away and old dishes from before I traveled abroad. The tools of the trade are everything, even in the kitchen; just like better ingredients make for a healthier, tastier meal, better pots, pans, baking dishes, and other kitchen gadgets can help you along with your presentation. There are notable exceptions to this “rule”: garlic presses and other weird chopping, dicing gadgets aren’t as necessary as late-night TV makes them out to be; usually, a simple blender or even a sharp knife will do the trick, so don’t waste your money on this crap.

 

So, I’m asking you, the kitchen expert who is reading this to laugh at me a little and feel superior to me for having great skills in the kitchen—and maybe elsewhere, but this isn’t that sort of site—to advise me on how I can make my food look better without breaking the bank on all the expensive dishes and bakeware that most cooks have on their shelves.

 

Are there any cheap brands that I should be using? Or should I start saving up for better pans? What do you think?

Image/Flckr user Kodomut

Advanced Pairing

Ever since Americans started drinking real wine, the concept of pairing has been a popular topic. Plainly, what food flavors play well with certain alcoholic beverages? Everybody knows the old standards of red wine for red meat, white wine for fish, maybe a rose for poultry. Intermediate pairing techniques start to veer into more adventurous territory, the red wine and chocolate crowd or the people who get fussy about the long-lost cheese course. This is all well and good, but the process is starting to get a little esoteric. The idea behind pairing is to make every element of a meal harmonize, to make sure you're getting the optimal experience out of whatever you taste. Pairing for the sake of pairing turns this search for pleasure into a game of challenging palates. The following pairing suggestions aren't intended to be novel or at all counter-intuitive. Like classic wine pairing, their one and only aim is to make a meal better.

Scotch and Chinese Food

This one usually seems a little out-there whenever I suggest it, but it never fails to impress. Though scotch comes from the opposite side of the world from China, it pairs remarkably well with the keynote flavors in Chinese cuisine. At the most basic level, Chinese food gets a lot of its character from strong peppers, rich oils and intense spices like ginger. Even the driest wine is going to be too sweet and too mild to really mingle with those flavors properly. The unique smokiness of scotch complements the sharp, hot oil notes in many Chinese dishes while the heavy grain flavors present in all whiskey bridge the gap between the sweetness of Chinese sauces and the necessary blandness of rice. Most importantly, scotch is, itself, rather insistent stuff. It doesn't want to play nice, so the resulting competition of flavors is lively without clashing.

 

Vodka and Cold Salad

A lot of the best vodka drinks are halfway to salad anyway, so pairing a plate of mixed greens and garden vegetables with the simple, acquiescent tones of a good vodka isn't that unusual. Vodka is one of the few liquors that work well with salt, and anyone with a culinary eye knows that a little salt goes a long way to liven up vegetables. Salt coaxes moisture to the surface of plants, releasing the essential oils that hold much of their flavor. Similarly, neutral alcohol also has a way of doing flavor-improving chemistry. Hell, a lot of Italian dishes hit tomatoes and tomato sauces with wine or vodka because certain flavor compounds in the fruit just won't activate without alcohol. A clean, chilled vodka with no extra flavorings is the ideal match for a proper, varied salad. It wants to share these flavors, so let it.

 

Rum and Salmon

This one is a simple matter of shared flavors. There are four things that make both rum and salmon better. They are, in no particular order: Butter, citrus, brown sugar, spice. A good, buttery, spiced rum (especially with a twist of fresh lime) will carry all of the flavors that make salmon, an already flavorful fish, the Prime Steak of swimmers. Also, because fish tends to be pretty light, pairing a drink with it is precarious. Beer may work with bland white fish, but something with as much character as salmon really wants something more nuanced. Most white liquors are just going to be too slight to really have a presence with salmon while most brown liquors will overpower it. Spiced rum is middle-of-the-road, which is why it succeeds.

The Disgruntled Food Critic: Frozen Dinners

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before: "I only eat fresh food. I never buy that frozen stuff." Bullhockey. If nobody ever bought frozen dinners, grocery stores wouldn't have to stock them in their own, specially designed freezer chests. Frozen dinners are for people who don't feel like spending the money or energy to make a proper meal, people who just plain don't know how to cook, and single people who have resigned themselves to how horribly, horribly single they actually are. There's an appeal to frozen dinners beyond the convenience, though. Sometimes you just want, like, a cup of corn, one chicken leg and what could probably be described as a dripping handful of mashed potatoes. If you can get all that for five bucks and ready to eat in 10 minutes, you sometimes give in to temptation. But not all frozen dinners are created equal. Let's run down some of the regulars, shall we?

Hungry-Man

Ah, the undisputed king of frozen dinners. The good folks at Swanson know what they're doing in the pre-cooked, flash-frozen food department. I recall one particularly lonely night in college when I popped in a rented movie, threw a Hungry-Man dinner in the microwave and tried not to think about how the individual pieces of chicken don't seem to come from any discernible body part until after you've eaten down to the bone itself. I was surprised how not-greasy the chicken was. In fact, I was so delighted that I hadn't been doomed to eat a sponge full of liquid fat that for the first and last time in my life I actually considered writing a letter to the company. I even composed it in my head. Should I be ashamed of the combined humiliation of this moment from my past? Yes, yes I should, but that doesn't change the fact that Hungry-Man makes the least offensive frozen dinners on the market.

 

Claim Jumper

I grew up in Ohio and now that I'm in Washington I generally avoid chain restaurants. I don't count fast food in that category, if only because the convenience trumps everything else when it comes to fast food. Sit-down chain restaurants are pointless if you live in a big city. They're no cheaper than local restaurants and the food is terrible. Consequently, I've never been to a Claim Jumper restaurant, a franchise that only stretches as far east as Illinois. Unlike other chains like Friday's that are content to only market their appetizers in the frozen food section, Claim Jumper has decided to foist whole meals on the eating public. Are they good meals? Hell. Freaking. No. They break all the rules of frozen dinners. Rubbery, over-salted and impossible to cook evenly, they take chain restaurant dishes and somehow make them worse.

 

Reser's

The people at Reser's have the audacity to call their products "fine foods" in an affront to both good taste and logic. Everything that company makes is substandard. Even their freaking lunch meat is inexplicably worse than any other lunch meat in the store. They're cheap, but that's about it. The Reser's frozen dinners are the absolute worst. It doesn't matter what meal you've supposedly purchased, they all taste the same. That's because they're all made from the same, deeply unpleasant composite meat product. They chicken-fry it, Salisbury steak it and Swedish meatball it, but that doesn't matter. Just imagine the worst possible proportions of fat, salt and, I dunno, fried hotdog meat to get an idea of what these things taste like. They're not just bottom of the barrel, they're digging into the damn ground.

Sriracha: Best Sauce Ever

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of condiments. They add so much flavor for so little cost, and so few calories! Of all the condiments out there in the world, Sriracha is definitely one of my favorites.

I have a low tolerance for spicy foods, so I use Sriracha judiciously. It can be used to dress up almost anything you can imagine.

In recent memory I added a quick swirl to the insides of a grilled cheese sandwich before cooking it, squeezed a little bit into a bowl of instant ramen soup to give it a little kick, and put a quick dash on a few slices of pizza.

This iconic clear plastic squeeze bottle, emblazoned with a rooster, is familiar to Americans everywhere. A New York Times article went in-depth into the Sriracha phenomenon last year, blowing the cover on this mysterious yet beloved sauce.

Sriracha is part of a category of hot sauces which are popular throughout Asia. These hot sauces are intensely regional, with each city - sometimes each neighborhood - specializing in a particular blend. It's difficult to appreciate the regional variety as an American, with so much of our food culture being so commercialized and nationalized.

Ketchup used to be like this, before Heinz and other corporations stepped in to nationalize the scene. Back in the day there were dozens, maybe hundreds of brands of ketchup. For the most part, you bought the ketchup that was made and bottled locally, because that is what your local grocery store carried. In the days before a nationalized food distribution system, a lot of things were like this.

In this scene, then, a single family can make its own special brand of sauce and become famous. Such is the case with Sriracha, which is named after a particular town in Thailand where this sort of sauce is popular. There are a few other brands of sriracha sauce, but for the most part, Sriracha is synonymous with Huy Fong Foods.

Huy Fong Foods began in 1980 in Rosemead, California with one man and a dream: to bottle and sell his family's famous hot sauce. Founder David Tran was born in Vietnam around 1945, and emigrated to the United States in the late 1970s following the Vietnam War.

Tran named his company after the freighter that took him to America, and used the rooster as his symbol because he was born in the Year of the Rooster. The rooster symbol is so iconic that some people - true fans - have immortalized it on their bodies as tattoos.

I recently learned that Sriracha has been the subject of a surprisingly vast counterfeit conspiracy. These counterfeit bottles are almost identical to the original, but they taste far worse (being made of inferior ingredients).

According to the company, there are three ways to tell you have the real thing:

1. Green plastic ring securing the cap to the bottle is the same size as the cap. (on the counterfeit bottles, the ring is smaller than the cap.)

2. The batch number and expiration date are laser etched into the plastic. (In counterfeit bottles these two lines are missing, or inked on with a stamp.)

3. "Huy Fong USA" is embossed in the bottom of the bottle.

Photo credit: Flickr/ilovememphis

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