Recipe: Party Hummus 23 September 2008 11:13 pm
Posted by Tracy in : advice, America's Test Kitchen, events, vegan, school, vegetarian, recipes, cooking , 2 commentsThere was a fantastic recipe titled “Best Hummus” in the May-June 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated, and I’ve been using it as a guide to improvise delicious chickpea-based dips for parties this summer, with great success. I had sort of been brushing aside the resultant compliments until I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the hummus offered at a few NYU orientation events (sorry, NYU catering!) Turns out I’d forgotten how mediocre hummus can be. On top of that, I realized that I could submit my post about hummus to the third round of My Legume Love Affair, a blog event created by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook and hosted this month by Lucy at Nourish Me. I mean, really, it’s about darn time I jumped on that particular bandwagon of beany goodness. But back to hummus. The following hints should help prevent disappointment in homemade concoctions.
First, everybody’s taste in hummus is slightly different, but when in doubt, I vote for a texture with more light fluffiness and less pastiness, and this recipe achieves that goal. If you’d rather have something suitable for home decorating projects (caulk, spackle, you get the idea), by all means leave out some oil and water. That said, it is possible to omit ingredients and still get delicious results. Just before our going-away party in Eugene, I discovered that our tahini had grown mold, and threw it out. The hummus turned out fine anyway; I used a little extra olive oil to make sure it got a nice creamy consistency even without the sesame goodness. At our housewarming party here at the Moon Monkey Bar, Grille, and Cocktail Lounge, I forgot the lemon juice and substituted a few extra cloves of garlic for pungenty goodness. If you do this variation, I highly recommend finishing the hummus the same day it’s made, because the raw garlic will get stronger with time and try to destroy you, even if you aren’t a vampire.
And now, on with the recipe. (more…)
Recipe: Cheddar-Scallion Drop Biscuits 22 July 2008 8:11 am
Posted by Tracy in : baking, America's Test Kitchen, cheese, recipes, vegetarian, friends , 5 commentsFun fact! Scallions are green onions; it’s just another one of those East Coast-West Coast dialect differences, or that’s what I learned from this nifty guide to the allium family on Culinate. Drop biscuits are a fun and easy variation on classic buttermilk biscuits, which I have only fairly recently learned to appreciate. This post is for Mom and Dad Boothe, who gave me the subscription to Cook’s Illustrated which brought me the recipe that produced the biscuits that were so delicious last Monday (as well as a different recipe, which convinced me that biscuits were worth eating at all). Here’s hoping good recipe-sharing karma spills over into our apartment-hunting these next few days! (This post was written early Tuesday morning and scheduled for automatic posting some time during our flights to NYC; I hope it worked.) (more…)
Another America’s Test Kitchen liveblogging. 26 April 2008 2:26 pm
Posted by Tracy in : geekery, America's Test Kitchen, cooking , add a commentHey, if I’m gonna watch it, I might as well write about it.
2 PM: Skillet chicken and potatoes, with a microwave trick; kitchen thermometers, parmesan-crusted chicken cutlets with Sandra? Who’s Sandra? Excitement!
2:01 PM: I doubt I’ll ever cook any of these things, but the thermometer thing could be useful.
2:01 PM: Chris gives an intro: roast chicken and potatoes takes an hour and a half, how do we do it in half an hour?
2:02 PM: Go Julia! And they’re working with chicken breasts, not a whole chicken… poo, although obviously that’ll speed things up considerably. (more…)
FAIL. 6 April 2008 11:28 pm
Posted by Tracy in : kitchen mishaps, food snobbery, America's Test Kitchen, dessert, cooking , 2 commentsSo I made my first attempt at testing a recipe for America’s Test Kitchen a few hours ago, and ended up feeling like a big loser. Behold the disastrousness:
The recipe was for butterscotch pudding, and I was really excited going in, and it all went sadly south not long after Peter and I had the following mini-conversation:
T: If there’s anything that smells better than butter and brown sugar —
P: It’d probably involve garlic and onions?
T: And I’d still want to rub it all over my body.
So. I’m not allowed to share the recipe (nor would I want to, lest any of you readers suffer my results) but I feel okay venting about the resulting debacle. Here goes! (more…)
Liveblogging ATK, 5 April 2008 5 April 2008 2:27 pm
Posted by Tracy in : geekery, America's Test Kitchen, cooking , add a commentHere I go again… it was fun last week, okay?
2 PM: Roasting a turkey without brining, differences between heirloom & supermarket turkeys, inexpensive roasting pans, green beans (with Bridget! yay!)
2:01 PM: Okay, so I’m a little less enthused by the content of this episode but Bridget’s back! Yay!
2:02 PM: Chris gives his intro: what if we do brine without salt?
Bridget Lancaster is so awesome. (more…)
