Cheesesteak Cream Puffs

Cheesesteak Cream Puffs

cream puff gougeres made from pate a choux dough filled with a cream cheese based cheesesteak filling.

Five Things to do With Totchos

Five Things to do With Totchos

A totcho collaboration between The Food in my Beard and The Vulgar Chef. Totcho Burger, Totcho Pizza, Totcho Taco, Totcho Skins, and Totcho Stuffed Shells.

Vietnamese Cous Cous Salad

Vietnamese Cous Cous Salad

I decided while I was away that when I came back I would make sure to stick to a more regular posting schedule. Instead of sometimes posting 4 or 5 times a week, then only posting twice some weeks, I would just always post 3 times, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I am going to try and stick to this for the time being, with Wednesdays usually featuring my most recent Tablespoon post, and see how it goes. Of course, there will still be theme weeks from time to time, where I post every day so I think the frequency will be pretty much the same as in the past.

Seems kinda weird to tell you all that info on a Tuesday post. But since I’ve been away so long, I figured I would give you guys a bonus recipe this week. It’s a good one too! I had some marinaded meat leftover from these burgers, and decided to cook it loose in a pan and serve it with a cous cous salad that was based on one of my favorite dishes, Vietnamese Bun Vermicelli. I ate this for lunch one day while getting some serious writing done and it really got me through the day! In fact I went back for more every hour or so…

Hot Dog Carbonara

Hot Dog Carbonara

After messing up another recipe pretty bad, I made this trashy carbonara on a whim and it was fun, easy, and delicious.

Vinegar Powder

Vinegar Powder

One of my roommates used to live in Toronto, and after going to the movies here in Boston she was complaining that they didn’t have salt and vinegar powder to sprinkle on the popcorn that is apparently ubiquitous up there. Immediately my brain started spinning and next thing you know I was looking up everything about vinegar powder. The varieties available, where you can buy it, and of course how to make it. I sort of regret becoming so obsessed with the idea, because there wasn’t exactly a specific guide or recipe out there. I tried a few things I saw that were similar to what I wanted, and after lots of trial and error I finally came up with a powder made from mostly vinegar.

The problem here was that this powder wasn’t exactly the punch you in the face vinegar kick that I know and love from modern day salt and vinegar chips. It was more the wimpy dull vinegar from chips that used to be popular 10 years ago. I’m not a scientist but I do know from years of cooking that the chemical that makes the vinegar flavor actually burns off at a temperature that is slightly below boiling. This is why when you boil vinegar it smells so crazy in your house (You might have recently smelled this smell dying Easter eggs). This is also why a balsamic reduction has a stronger “balsamic” flavor, but a mellower vinegar bite, and why a recipe tastes much different if you add the vinegar at the beginning or at the end. I think that the way they make this powder commercially is to reduce the liquid without actually heating it. I was thinking of trying this again by putting the liquid on a large sheet pan with a fan on it, but I don’t have a million hours to wait for it to reduce to one tenth its volume!