Cooking from Scratch
This past Sunday, we had a new — to us — version of risotto that involved fresh lemon juice (you’ll read about that in tomorrow’s post) and we needed a side to go along with it. Preferably a really simple side, since we would be spending a lot of time stirring and cooking the risotto. As it turned out, Green Beans Amandine fit the bill perfectly. Easy and tasty, plus it also uses just a touch of lemon, which would help tie everything together.
Continue reading “Green Beans Amandine”
Here’s something that we bet you haven’t noticed before. If you go to the store to buy creamed corn, you really can’t buy any. Sure, you can buy cans of cream style corn, but not creamed corn. Why, you may ask? We’re here to tell you: because that would require cream, which is more expensive than starch and water. Fortunately, making creamed corn is nearly as easy as cooking plain corn, and the following recipe makes fantastic creamed corn. Far, far better than cream style corn that comes in a can.
Continue reading “Creamed Corn”
It seems as though every time we get some greens in the CSA share, we talk about how we are going to use some of them to make Greens Latkes, and how we’ll write up the recipe “soon.” Well, today is soon. We’re writing.
Continue reading “Greens Latkes”
When we first joined the CSA about six years ago — while we knew it was the right thing — we were sometimes daunted by the produce. As we found out, you get a lot of produce that you might not buy at the store, or that we weren’t buying, at any rate. One such example is fennel. Sure, we’d seen it at the store, but we didn’t know what to do with it, so why buy it? With the CSA, you get fennel sometimes. Sure you can trade, but we toughed it out and figured, hey, people eat this, let’s learn how. At first we’d use it along with a bunch of roasted vegetables, or maybe dice finely into a tomato sauce to give it a fennelly flavor, but it never got to the point of actually looking forward to fennel. Continue reading “Fennel Gratin”
Some people say that making good buttermilk biscuits is an art, and so they pick up those poppin’ cans of “dough,” and think that those are good biscuits. While it’s not necessarily an art to make light flaky biscuits, there are a few things you must keep in mind when you’re making the dough. First, work the dough quickly, gently, and knead it only a few times. Second, when you work in the butter, it must be cold (freeze for 15 minutes, if you want), and don’t try to get the butter mixed in uniformly. With these two things in mind, let’s bake! Continue reading “Best-Ever Biscuits”
It seems as if there are dozens and dozens of brands of tortillas in the stores these days. And do you want to know why? In two words: high profit. Think about it, eight tortillas take about 30 cents worth of flour, shortening, and salt. And, that’s the retail price of the raw ingredients; wholesale, it’s probably closer to a nickel. Now look at that price on the bag of tortillas again. Think they’re worth it? We don’t; that’s why, when we’re going to have tortillas, we just quick whip up a batch. It only takes a few minutes, and hot fresh tortillas taste great.
So let’s do it!
Continue reading “Scratched Tortillas”
You and I both know people who buy hummus. And while that may work for a quick little snack (it’s difficult to make just a small batch of hummus), when you’re going to need enough for a few dozen people you’ll want to scratch it up yourself. Fortunately, it’s easy. Continue reading “Scratched Hummus”