Food recipies

I don�t often get requests for Polish food, but when I do, they�re usually for bigos. Which makes perfect sense, since this meaty stew is one of the most delicious dishes you�ll ever taste. It�s also low-carb, highly nutritious, and very simple to make, as long as you don�t consider having to wait a day to eat it, �complicated.� While you can eat this as soon as it�s made, and I bet most of you do, it�s much better the next day, as all the flavors have time to properly meld together. You can also really customize this to your personal tastes by changing up which meats you use. Traditionally, this is made with wild game, such as venison, boar, and other shootable animals, but is perfectly acceptable, if not amazing, using easier to find domestic livestock. Regardless of which meats you include, be sure to use a lot of them, as I think this stew should be at least 50% meat. Since you can, and should make this ahead of time, it�s perfect for feeding large groups, especially when the weath...

After seeing various versions of this Halloween-themed, zombie meatloaf on social media over the years, I decided it was time to post my very own. I�ve seen many approaches to this; such as covered in �blood,� or mummified in strips of pastry, but the ones wrapped in bacon always looked the most realistic, and the most appetizing. Ironically, �appetizing� is the last thing you want this to look like, but if we�re going to do some kind of gimmicky, holiday recipe, it might as well taste great, and this most certainly did. It�s been a while since I posted a meatloaf recipe, and I was very happy with how this one came out. You can use a food processor make chopping the mushrooms a bit easier, but don�t leave them out. They add a lot of flavor, as well as help keep the meat moist, and tender.  By the way, if you're trapped in one of these households where certain people don�t eat mushrooms, add them anyway, since they�ll never be able to tell they�re in there. Then, next week, after th...

I can understand certain recipes being relatively unknown, but this buttermilk pie is not one of them. Not only is this easy to make, and beautiful to look at, it�s also bursting with the kind of bright, tangy flavor that no other custard-style pie can touch. Like I said in the video, this is sort of like a vanilla custard, meets lemon meringue pie, meets very light cheesecake. Except better. I�ve never had much trouble finding buttermilk, even in regular, non-fancy grocery stores, but depending on where you live in the world, apparently that�s not the case. There are many �hacks� for making a substitute, usually using milk and lemon juice, or vinegar, and I�ll let you Google those at your leisure, but I�d be more inclined to try some yogurt, thinned out with some milk. I think that would be closer to the tanginess of buttermilk, but as far as the recipe �working,� one cup of any type of dairy product should yield similar results. Once your pie is made, it can be served �as is,� or top...

Potstickers (or Pot Stickers, depending on which style guide you�re using) are very fast and easy to make, unless you only do them once or twice a year, in which case they�re going to take a little bit of time to fold and shape.  Just for fun, find a video that shows professionals doing these, and marvel at how they come together in seconds. That's what happens when you do hundreds each day, for years. Having said that, every second spent producing these, is a second well spent. The play between the crispy, crusty bottom, and the tender parts, makes for a truly unique dumpling. They�re also very versatile, since you can fill them with anything you want. No matter what you use, you�ll know exactly what you�re biting into, which is not always the case when you get these out. Don�t get me wrong; I love the occasional take-out binge, and its associated mysteries. But, it�s nice being able to control the contents, as well as the generosity of the filling. There is nothing worse than bi...

Everyone loves a traditional turkey dinner with all the fixings, but because of the time and work involved, we usually only get to enjoy it once a year on Thanksgiving. So, what if we create a second holiday, called �Little Thanksgiving,� and feature this smaller, and much easier, Hasselback turkey?  By the way, when I say easier, that assumes we�ve figured out how to carve it significantly better than I demonstrated in the video. A thinner, more flexible knife would have been much better, as well as just slicing off one section at a time. I may try another one, but before stuffing, I'll go around the outside edge of the breast with a knife, cutting in about an inch, where it attaches to the bone . This would still leave most of the meat attached at the center, and probably make slicing simpler. I guess we could try using a boneless breast, but I really think the ribcage is important for keeping the meat, if you�ll pardon the expression, moist. If you�ve tried this sans bones, ple...

As promised, here is the rice-flour coated chicken wings recipe I teased in the mumbo sauce video. It�s hard to believe that this is the first fried wings video we�ve ever done, but that was the case, which is why I�m so glad these turned out as well as they did.  Besides being gluten-free, which is probably a big deal to a small, but enthusiastic part of my audience, this rice flour coating ended up being light, crispy, and extremely sauce friendly. The original buffalo style chicken wings are fried without any type of coating, and while I do enjoy them that way, they aren�t the best at holding on to a sauce. This is why people started adding some kind of starch to the outside, which creates a less slick, rougher surface, that really grabs onto whatever you�re dipping, or tossing them in. By the way, before your wings get coated with the flour, you�re free to spice these anyway you want. Other than the salt, everything else is up for grabs. I went very simple, as I usually do, b...

A friend of mine asked me recently if I�d ever heard of mumbo sauce, since she had just returned from Washington D.C., and said it was �everywhere.� I hadn�t, which isn�t a surprise, since unless you�re from the Capital, or select neighborhoods in Chicago, this stuff is virtually unknown. Apparently, this sweet-and-sour condiment came to Washington D.C. via Chicago, where it somehow became a staple in Chinese take-out restaurants, served as a condiment with fried chicken wings, among other things. That�s as much background as you're getting here, and like many other regional culinary specialties, the history is murky. All I know is that this was great with fried chicken wings, and I look forward to finding other uses for it, although I�m not sure French fries is going to be one of them. I�m a ketchup guy, and probably too old to change. Having said that, I can see this catching on, and for once, I�ll be ahead of a trend. They say every takeout place in D.C. has their own secret rec...

I just got home after some fairly painless oral surgery, and my troublesome wisdom tooth is now gone. That's the good news. The bad news is my mouth is currently stuffed with cotton, and doing a voice-over for the just completed mumbo sauce probably isn't a great idea. Hopefully, I'll be able to rock the mic soon, but in the meantime, thank you for your patience, and please stay tuned!  .

I�ve wanted to do a Canel�s de Bordeaux video forever, but just never got around to buying the specially designed molds that they require. After seeing a picture of them online a few days ago, I decided this would be the week, and headed out to the one store near me I knew carried the necessary hardware. Since it was actually a hardware store that also carries lots of kitchen equipment, I figured they would have the beeswax, as well. I�ve been in that store at least a hundred times, and I would anyways see the canel� molds beckoning me, but never pulled trigger, since I was usually looking for something else. So, you can imagine my shock when I walked down that aisle, as I�d done so many times before, only to find they were no longer stocked. Thanks a lot, Amazon. Anyway, purely out of spite, I decided to make them anyway, using a regular muffin pan, and the results were pretty amazing. As long as you cook them long enough, the muffin tin works great, assuming you don�t care about get...

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,� was definitely my favorite animated holiday special, and I suspect that goes for most people my age. I found the Christmas special a little heavy, and was bothered by the menu in the Thanksgiving episode, but the Halloween offering struck all the right notes. Back then, I probably wouldn�t have had much interest in this pumpkin seed spread, since I needed to save room for all those miniature Mr. Goodbars, but now, I can�t think of anything I�d rather eat. This straddles the fence between sweet and savory, and would be very easy to adapt to your tastes. I need to credit Cortney Burns and Nick Balla, from a restaurant here in San Francisco called Duna . They do a similar, albeit more savory version, which inspired this spread. If you don�t like the term �spread,� you could call it a pumpkin seed hummus, or pumpkin seed butter, but no matter what you call it, I hope you give it a try soon. Enjoy! Ingredients for about 3 cups of Pumpkin See...