I’m working hard on tomorrow’s post(do you like the Beastie Boys?), Friday’s post, and all of next week’s posts (do you like pizza?) so don’t have anything to show you guys today! I was just going to skip a day, but as always the design team pulled through and sent me some pics of a meal they made last week! You know the deal. From now on it is not me talking, it’s Kim. Unless you see italics, then that’s me.

When it starts to get chilly, I start craving stew. I had a great beef stew last year at a little Irish pub, where they topped it with a puff pastry round. You break through the puff and all the flaky goodness crumbles into the stew making it a little thicker. It’s like having a roll that is already dipped. When the temperatures here in New England dropped below 35 degrees, I decided to try to make it on my own. Unfortunately, when I actually had time to make it, it was the warmest weekend in October. No matter, it was still freakin' delicious... and now I have a freezer full of stew just waiting for me.

I was asleep the other night and woke up in a cold sweat. FRANKINBURGER!!!! This creature came to me in a dream and demanded to be made a reality. FRANKINBURGER!!! When asked the age-old question, the decision every man must make at a BBQ, there is a new answer. FRANKINBURGER!!!!! I really did come up with this in the middle of the night, but the next day I googled burgerdog and I did find that someone had already made one. Oh well, it's still a fun post. And it came out pretty good. Mandi was a disbeliever, but upon first bite she changed her mind. This tastes EXACTLY how you would think. Like taking a bite of a bacon cheeseburger, and a hot dog at the same time. FRANKINBURGER!!!!!! It’s a hot dog dressed up like a burger for Halloween! FRANKINBURGER!!!!

This wasn’t very good, but I’m not calling it a failure. That’s because the flavor combinations were great, but the final product was a bit dry and could have been much improved. I wanted to make a mac and cheese with fall flavors, and my mind went right to brussel sprouts and squash. I wanted to brown these veggies first so the mac wouldn’t be a big mushy mess. My favorite way to eat brussel sprouts is the way heidi cooks them. I could eat a bunch of them like that as an after work snack or even as a popcorn alternative watching a movie (Realllly??? Yes!). I decided to start with this recipe, but crank the heat up so that they would brown but barely cook. That way in the oven they wouldn’t overcook and still have some of that yummy brussel crunch. P.S. I’m marking this as vegetarian because you could easily make it with olive oil instead of bacon and bacon fat.

We were both home on a rainy day scrounging around the kitchen for something to eat. Mandi found some turkey and decided to make turkey melts. “If only we had some chips” she kept saying. “Why don’t you go out and get some chips” she finally said to me. Wasn’t the point of all this to not go out in the rain? To not gear up in the whole pants and jacket wetsuit and drive the scooter in the pouring rain to the nearest store? I looked around and found a leftover sweet potato from our sushi experiments and decided to whip up some chips.  Sweet potato chips are all the rage these days popping up in stores everywhere. I don't like them that much, but these were another story. It took no time and was really delicious!

I want to talk more about the raw fish thing today. If you didn’t see part 1, its here. Anyways, you would think in Bermuda that fresh fish would be plentiful, but in reality you only have 2 options. The grocery stores where most stuff is flown in and/or frozen and thawed, or from a dude on the side of the road with a cooler. The problem with the side of the road guys, is that they aren’t there every day. It seems to me that every time I feel like eating fish I don’t see them in their normal places. When I have other dinner plans, I pass 4 or 5 guys on the way home from work. The other problem with these fish guys is that I have personally heard from a source close to one of these guys that they occasionally fly in fish and pass them off as their own! So it isn’t fully trustable. Today we are using raw tuna and raw salmon. The tuna is flash frozen to a certain degree that kills bacteria. It isn’t as nice as fresh fish, but I can trust it. The salmon is fresh and local from the gourmet store here (a rare occurrence) that posts what is flown in and what is local. The fish dudes there are friendly with me and very honest about the day things are caught so I trust that as well. The purpose of this previous paragraph is really just to say trust where you get your fish! I have friends that often make sushi and have never had a problem, but don’t take the decision lightly, have a trusted source.

I sort of wanted to make sushi for awhile, but hesitated for 2 main reasons. For one, I thought it would be kinda hard and not really turn out as good as it is in restaurants. The second reason was that I was worried about raw fish at home. I have cooked with “sushi grade tuna” before and I seared it, so I knew that stuff was pretty good but for some reason I still had reservations. Finally the opportunity came along and I couldn’t be happier with how things turned out. It wasn’t all that hard to do, and the taste was amazing. Far better then most places on the island. One way to judge how much we liked it was that normally at a restaurant we drench the rolls in soy sauce and wasabi. I found myself barely dipping these rolls into the sauce because the taste alone was just so great. Today I am going to show you the set-up, and the first roll. Tomorrow will be the 4 other awesome rolls we made!

I had a heavy lunch yesterday, so I knew I wanted something lighter for dinner. Mandi and I started bouncing around ideas towards the end of the work day. I sort of wanted pasta, but lighter, so I wanted to make it. Also didn’t want cheese so I thought it would be a good excuse to use seafood. Then I came up with the idea: wouldn’t it be cool to have a black colored pasta to contrast with the white scallops? We hoped we could get squid ink at the store to color the pasta because generally that’s what people use to make black pasta. At the store there was no such luck. The butcher/fish mongers response was actually to laugh and say “oh you guys, always coming up with some crazy request”. We brainstormed for a bit. What if we put spinach and tomato paste, that might turn it black? We sort of decided that it would actually turn it a gross brownish. What about food coloring? I said. Mandi shot me a look. She HATES food coloring except for in cake frosting. She cried when she found out the flecks of different colored rice in Indian rice was made with food coloring. She didn’t leave the house for a week when she learned the truth about red velvet cake. Suddenly it came to me. Black olives. The cool thing was that the flavor matched the flavor profiles we were going for with this dish. We grabbed the olives and headed to the checkout.

I like enchiladas. Thursday nights is usually tacos for Mandi and I, but occasionally we veer into other tex/mex/southwest foods instead. Last Thursday we did enchiladas for the premier of The Office. I realized I never posted enchiladas here, so here it is! We must have been in a baking/layering/casserole type mood cause we made lasagna a few days later.

Today’s post kills 2 birds with one pretzel. The soft pretzel is here to herald in the first day of October (Oktoberfest), and to welcome the beginning of the division series in baseball. I think pretzels represent both of those things pretty well. To elaborate more on the pretzel, I have asked Mandi for a paragraph:

I’ve always been rather proud of my Philadelphia food heritage. You’ve read my slice. You’ve seen my cheesesteak post. if there is one thing Philly knows, it's food. In my opinion the two foods they do the absolute best are the cheesesteak and the soft pretzel. I could live on soft pretzels. Happily. The pretzel cart in the airport is the first place i run when i land home. There’s absolutely nothing that makes me happier then a hot, fresh soft pretzel straight from one of their many pretzel factories first thing on a crisp Philadelphia morning. Recently I was home for a week visiting the family. I’d Estimate I had about three pretzels per day during that week. It was wonderful. Upon my return to this lovely island my body began to go through a soft pretzel withdrawal. I realized it was time to do something that Dan and I have been talking about ever since we saw Alton brown's on good eats. It was finally time to make soft pretzels.

Go Phillies!

-Mandoline

I am sure right about now you are saying to yourself... "But Dannnnnn didn't you just recently make manicotti which has practically the same ingredients as lasagna? And didn't you also already show us how to make sauce in that very same blog entry? What can I possibly gain from reading today's post?!?" This may in fact be true, but looking back I noticed that the pictures and instructions I gave you last time for my sauce, well they just were not that good. And it wasn't even my perfectly ideal sauce variation anyway. I make about 5 or so different tomato sauce varieties, this one is similar to the manicotti sauce. And although lasagna does share many of the same ingredients as manicotti, it is different and special and it deserves its own post! I also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that lasagna makes a great gift. It is easy to make a few at a time and then give one away. It tastes GREAT right from the freezer, it is fairly cheap, and people will always be grateful!

Over the past 2 weeks I have had a lot of strange and exotic foods on here, so I have decided to step back a bit with some awesome yet more basic dishes for the next week. I am starting today with a nice veggie soup. This soup began in my head as a healthier cream of broccoli, but sort of turned into a huge pot of veggie party. The reason was that I wanted a lot of mirepoix to kick up the flavor, and I also wanted a potato and some cauliflower to make it extra creamy. I wanted these veggies for the extra creamy factor because I wanted it to be healthy so I was using (not much) milk instead of (a bunch of) cream. I didn’t want to use much cheese either.

I find that when I have a failure, there are multiple things that fail at one time. Today we have 3 in this one little dessert. I had really wanted to make ice cream since we hadn’t in a few months. Mandi has wanted to make avocado ice cream since the day we got the ice cream maker and saw Alton make it. I figured the Peruvian party would be the perfect time because we weren’t cooking or prepping much for the night. I guess I figured wrong.If you are fairly new to the site, click the failure tab on the left to see some funny past errors in the kitchen.

This post is continued from yesterday. As I mentioned, just after we ate, Sebastian pulled up with his ceviche ingredients as promised earlier. He finally got out of his volunteer event (at the beach) and came right over. We were all full, but thought we could eat some ceviche in an hour or two, which happened to be the exact cooking time! Sebass assured us that ceviche is not like other foods and does not fill you up, but rather gives you energy and power! Mandi, Amy and I had all had ceviche a few times and were nervous about making it at home. We all kinda equated it to sushi and were nervous about getting fish that was fresh enough. Soon we all realized that this traditional ceviche is much different from the stuff you get at the swanky restaurants; only lightly dressed in lime and served almost immediately. A more traditional ceviche has much more lime, salt and onions(all cooking agents) and truly cooks after sitting for an hour and a half. What I ate that night was absolutely not raw fish.

A friend of mine keeps telling me he is going to make ceviche. He grew up in Peru, and the plan was to have a Peruvian dinner at my place. We finally planned to do it on a Saturday afternoon. Amy was making a potato side dish, and Sebastian would make his now infamous ceviche. Just before we were supposed to start, we all got a text. Sebastian was stuck at a volunteer event and was unsure if he would make it. We sprang into quick recovery mode and grabbed some meats and veg for the grill.

I have a quick post today after a longer one yesterday. What do you do with a tree full of cayennes that you know will go bad before you are able to use them all?? Make hot sauce! Another thing we did with some cayennes was cut them in half and put into a bottle of vodka seeds and all! A week later the vodka was spicy spicy. I don’t have any pictures of that though. Click through to see the hot sauce.

When I noticed all the banana trees in our yard, one of the first things I thought of was cooking with them. When we saw the place, there was actually a bunch of bananas growing off one of the trees. Unfortunately they were gone by the time we moved in (1 week later!? There are a lot of banana thieves in Bermuda). After looking up recipes online, I saw that Malaysian cooking uses the leaves often. I found a sort of tapas or dim sum of Malay cuisine called Pulut Udang that I was excited to try. Another way banana leaves are used is to wrap around and steam fish. I decided that these two dishes would make a great pairing. After going to several Pilipino and Asian sections of grocery stores here, I could not find the dried shrimp that goes in the pulut udang recipe. It was probably a good thing, because this dish was already a bit shrimpy tasting for our western palates. We substituted ground beef as the recipe says you can.

I enjoy wine from time to time, but it is definitely NOT my drink of choice. However, now that I am “growing up” there are events where wine is not only the sole option, but also the topic of discussion. I’m at a dinner Saturday night. A “grown-up” dinner with adults. I acted like a grownup as well. I did not drink more than I should, tasted the wines and wrote my observations, engaged in intelligent conversation over hors-d’oeuvres and dinner, and all in all was proud of myself for a respectable performance. Then it happened. In slow motion, the moment I hoped wouldn’t happen had arrived. I watched a full glass of red wine bounce off the tips of my fingers, tilt from the table where it was sitting and float through the air aimed at an unsuspecting diner’s white skirt. The act was over; the adults realized I was not one of them. Why wasn’t there a kids table? Someone should have brought keystone light for this amateur. Does this happen to anyone else? I know it has happened to me once before this occasion and to Mandi as well. Wine glasses are so easy to spill!! Click below to see a few ideas for better wine glasses.

Two curries in a row? Sorry if this bothers people, but my posts are kind of all over the place and I need to organize them. This was a random weeknight meal we decided to make as work was coming to an end one afternoon. It turned out to be a really simple and really great meal. The dumplings were not needed, and actually made the soup much more effort. If you still want meat, make the dumpling filling and cook it in the pot before adding the curry paste.

I haven’t quite put my finger on the word curry and its meaning. Wikipedia is no help really. For one, it’s a spice, but the spice is really a blend of other spices. Second, there are curry leaves which are a mystery to me, because wouldn’t you think curry powder would be made from this curry tree? Third, it is a name for hundreds of dishes from all over Asia that are completely different from each other! When I first started having curries, I only liked Thai curry, so as I made a few, I started to think that the meaning of curry had to do with mixing a blended paste with coconut milk, and simmering. After making a few Indian curries as well, my current definition of curry is: Curry: Any dish where you puree a bunch of sh*7 including lots of spices BEFORE cooking. Can anyone help me on that definition? I think it's pretty accurate, but I am guessing it will become even vaguer as I continue making curry from different areas.

Anyway, today I have a quick, healthful, and delicious weeknight meal for you to check out. I saw the recipe for the cauliflower on the food and wine website a few days ago, thought it would be good with fish, and made it that night.

Fajitas! I have always loved them. They were a common dinner at my house when I was younger. Fajitas are pretty easy to make, and when I was on my own for dinner recently, I realized it is a perfect meal to cook for only one person! Follow these 12 simple steps, and you can eat Fajitas in less then an hour, with very minimal effort, and NO CLEANUP! You only use one small dish, one large dish, one knife, fork, and spoon. If you don’t have a grill, you will also have to dirty one pan, skillet, or grillpan, to cook the steak in the center, and the peppers/onions on the sides. This quick one-off fajita was delicious, but not my ideal fajita. Stay tuned after the quick version to see the more involved one to make with friends.

I have a new quiz for you today. This is a tough one, but I am really happy with how it came out.

RULES: There are 2 points on each picture, 1 for naming the character, and one for naming their restaurant, or where they work. A perfect score is 32, but if I were to take this (before doing all the research and finding the pictures), I would get a 24. I watch a lot of TV, so lets say:

24 – 32 – Genius
15 – 24 – Pretty good
10 – 15 – Average
Less then 10 – what do you do with your time? Read? Pssh!

Remember, don’t cheat on Google!!!! I will find out.

Click Below to Start!

On a holiday such as Labor day in Bermuda, all of the stores are closed. On Sundays, stores are only open a few hours, so if you miss that short window, a Monday holiday can be tough. A lot of times we will go out to eat because we are unable to get any cooking supplies. Since we just moved, I was excited to see some new stores in the area. I called one and they said they were open. Considering that they have another branch near my old apartment that is one of my favorite stores on the island, I figured it would be a large store with everything available. When we got there it was tiny and had little to no fresh produce or meats. We had to pull together an idea of a meal with a meager selection. When I saw the ageing (not in a good way) meats, I immediately started thinking what I had at home. Some leftover bacon from breakfast, a few chicken tenderloins in the freezer, I can work with that. We went to the pasta section and my eye caught risotto. Lets go get some spinach! Nope, they had neither fresh nor frozen. Ok ok, hmmmm. We bought some canned artichokes, chickpeas, and surprisingly good feta and headed out.

Pasta Fagioli is my favorite soup. By far. When I get it at restaurants, it is much different then the version I grew up with, and when I see Mario and Giada make it, it is definitely different from either of those. So what gives? Well after doing some research, I realized that this soup started as a meal of leftovers. Whatever you had that was about to go bad, throw in the soup. Pasta Fagioli really just means pasta and beans, so if it has those two things, I think you are on the right track. Here is my take on my grandmothers version. She gave the recipe to my mother a few years ago after years and years of hiding it, and we were all surprised it was so easy. I changed a few things to protect the family secrets…errrr I mean because I like it this way! I know first week of September is still pretty hot for most people, but that chill is seeping into the air. If you make this on the first chilly or rainy day, you will be extremely satisfied!

Store hours in Bermuda have caused me to be pretty creative a few times before. When everything is closed, my fridge is empty, and I am hungry, my first thought is often flour. I remembered Giada making some donuts with leftover pizza dough and I set to work.

In college, my roommate Rich and I were developing ideas for a website called ‘eXactLy iNaccurate’. We had a ton of characters, games, designs, wallpapers, and interactive fun. At the center of this site was a comic strip called bootleg starring… well… us! As time went by, the site kept getting pushed aside; we were no longer able to sit in our dorm room blasting The Mars Volta thinking of hilarious ideas for comics. Work was calling and we answered the call, I moved to Bermuda, started getting really into the food world, and decided to make my own site. I asked Rich and another friend Kim to help me with the design, layout, and drawings(I was never the artistic one of the group(except for with my food)). Now a half year after my launch, Rich is ready to launch exactly inaccurate, not as our site anymore, but as his. The comic strip is there and the games will soon follow(as soon as I stop cooking for a minute to help out). Please TFIMB fans, check out www.exactlyinaccurate.com. A few other quick things before I send you off. 1. This site isn’t really for the kiddies like TFIMB is, there is mild drug references and swears. 2. I have added a new link bar on the left by my food blog links. Here I will put the link to exactly inaccurate, along with some other sites I frequent. Cool, thanks. Check me out in cartoon form with and without the beard. There are 2 particularly food related ones here, and here.

Fast food is a touchy subject in the food blog world. People love to hate it. The mere mention of a fast food joint on most food blogs causes 50 comment wars about corporations and global warming and McDonalds being the root of all evil. Such hostility! Well guess what folks, I partake in the occasional fast food indulgence and I am NOT afraid to say it! Sometimes, you just crave a dollar double cheeseburger or a cheesy crunchy gordita. There are a lot of commercials for fast food, and when its late night here in Bermuda and one comes on the screen, it’s hard to handle since there is no fast food on the island! One of the things Mandi and I crave most, is McDonalds breakfast, it’s a must when we are off the island. We recently tried to recreate a McDonalds steak egg and cheese bagel and have had near perfect results. I thought this would be a great recipe to share for all those college kids out there who love a hung-over McDonald’s breakfast but rarely make that 10:30 AM cutoff!!

Sometimes to me, being on a diet dosnt mean eating really healthy. I feel that I always eat fairly healthy including whole grains and plenty of vegetables into my diet. My main problem is portion size, and eating really late at night. If we are hanging out on a Thursday or Friday night we often wont eat until 10 or later! So what I try to do when I am being good is eat before 6:30. This may seem impossible to most people, but what we do is run to the store after work, get home, and frantically pull something together in a half hour, and be sure to only make enough to have a reasonable portion. A sandwich is a perfect option. Its fast, and it is a set portion. A few days ago we made chicken poblano panini’s that came out excellent!

Today I have some food wallpapers for all of your computers. You sit at your desk looking at so called food-porn, scour the web for recipes and images of your favorite dishes, and read about food all day, so why not pimp out your desktop a bit to show your foodie pride? The bottom 2 images do not have dual monitor versions because they didn’t look right, but the other pepper dual monitor wallpaper has both peppers in it, one for each screen! For dual monitor people- remember to set as ‘tile’ to allow it to span both screens, if you just right click and say set as desktop background it will be set to ‘center’ and will not look right. You need to go under display properties to change it.

I am really happy with the way this set of wallpapers came out, but if you don’t like any of these, be sure to click on the wallpaper tag on the left to look at some previous ones I’ve posted. Please comment if you use any of these on your computer!

 
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The word gyro actually refers to the way the meat is cooked on the vertical rotisserie and sliced into thin strips. In most places in the US however, it refers to the pita rollup the meat is served to you on, and the other fillings inside. This sandwich can’t traditionally be called a gyro because it is made with chicken, but I just love how the mild flavor of the chicken contrasts with the sharpness of the cheese and olives. We decided to make these when Mandi was craving olives and feta, but didn’t know what she wanted them with. We had just made naan and loved it and wanted to make it again, and that’s when I realized the naan is very similar to the Greek flatbread the gyro is served on. I loved the way these came out and the taste instantly reminded me of my first taste of a gyro not too long ago. At my last job, Mike, Bill and I would start looking forward to lunch at 9:15 AM. When we finally got lunch we would eat so much that we would often be in a food coma from 12:45 – 3 (I always wonder why that job didn’t work out in the end…) One of our favorite stops was Steve’s Greek on Newbury St. in Boston where I would get a gyro and onion rings.

Vindaloo is one of the more authentic dishes at your local Americanized curry house. It was brought to Goa by the Portuguese. One common ingredient that is actually not traditional is potatoes. The confusion came about because aloo is the hindi word for potato! When making curry, or generally any eastern or middle eastern dish, I think it is VERY IMPORTANT to get whole spices. The key to curry is the intensity of flavor and you aren’t going to get that from curry powder. You aren’t even going to get that from ground cardamom or cumin, you have to grind them yourself! The blender works fine for this. It is fun to me tasting and smelling all of these exotic spices! Go on a vacation with your senses. Travel to the market in Goa and pick through the cloves and cardamom pods, rip a piece of cinnamon bark off the larger stick. Watch out for the camel droppings. I guess all I am saying is what I say every day. Have fun cooking and take pride in what you make. The more “scratch” you start from, the better your food will taste!! If you are going through the effort of cooking, why not add the extra 10 minutes of using the whole spices? It will cost more in the beginning, but the spices will keep their flavor for a long time because they are not already ground. Ok enough ranting.