Cooking At Home – Page 70 – Austin Food Journal

Hot and Cold Pea and Green Bean Salad

The title may have given this away; the ingredients for this salad are divided into two groups. Two of the four ‘hot’ side items can be prepped ahead of time: toasted pine nuts and thinly sliced caramelized shallots. Watch out for the pine nuts. I believe that they are the second most burned item in the […]

Pizza Night: Olive and Red Onion

I’m not sure why this works, but it does. Salty Kalamata olives with sweet red onions. It’s probably the whole salty-sweet thing all the kids have been talking about. Working with dough is very calming for me. The pace is set by the dough. Maybe it’s a submission thing. It’s possible I was a baker […]

Oyster Stew and the French

This was my first shot at an Oyster Stew and, since no one died, I considered it a success. Actually, it tasted pretty good. The flavors were balanced. Notes of the ocean along with fennel and green onions. To sexy it up, I topped it with a fried oyster, red pepper and shaved celery.

I am in love with the idea of Cajon and Creole foods. But here’s the rub, most of these historic recipes are heavier than hell. I’m pretty sure that the French had something to do with it. I don’t want to be labeled a ‘hater’, so I will go ahead and throw the Spanish under the bus while I’m here (flan?). I tried to lighten this dish up a bit, which is tough because is starts with cream, butter and flour.

Two Ingredients

If I had to pick just two ingredients, bread and cheese might just be them. See the cheese hitting the pan? Sure you did. That byproduct is almost as good as the original intent: grilled sharp cheese inside of homemade garlic rosemary bread. Shoot me now. It might not get any better.

The Hoax that is Baking

There are 3,546,561 bread recipes on the web. (It was a loose count. I could be off by one or two.) Why so many? It’s just flour, water and yeast, right? How many variations do we need? It makes me wonder if this baking thing is just a hoax, like the moon landings. I just have one recipe. I worked on it for a while, figured it out and it’s bullet proof. I use it for my pizza dough, bread dough and foccacia. Why stray? I could use that time for more productive things, like finally cracking that keychain Rubix Cube I got in sixth grade. And, no, I didn’t just peel off the stickers and put them back on in the right order.

Flavor Napalm

This was on the edge of too much: Pesto Scrambled Eggs. It was good, don’t get me wrong. But, if you are looking to distinguish the subtleties of eggs that have been grain fed verses field grazed, this is not the flavor kit. Earthy garlic herb heat. You know you are in for a rambunctious breakfast when you are putting sharp cheddar on a dish to calm it down.