Charlie Freedom » Cooking

Bomb Digs Tomato Soup

charliefrench — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:06:54 +0000

Double this and call it a day: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/michael-chiarello/homemade-tomato-soup-recipe/index.html

Spring Ro’ Fo Sho

charliefrench — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:52:26 +0000

These spring rolls are tasty little guys. Not amazing, but definitely fun to make, especially with guests. I’d serve it with Alton’s sauce at the bottom of the website below or a basic peanut sauce.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/thai-shrimp-spring-rolls-recipe/index.html

Oil Based Banana Bread

charliefrench — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:50:06 +0000

Wet ingredients

- 2 eggs

- 1.5 cups of sugar

- 2 teaspoons vanilla

- 2/3 cup of canola oil

- 1/3 cup of greek yogurt

Dry Ingredients (whisk into wet ingredients)

- 2.5 cups of whole wheat flour

- 2 teaspoons of baking soda

- 8 ripe small/medium bananas mashed. Heating them in the microwave briefly helps you mash them.

- Pinch of salt

Do the usual thing and bake at 350 until it is just right inside.

Carrot Cake Bread Pudding

charliefrench — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:16:03 +0000

On a recent vacation, I had the opportunity to eat the moneyest of bread puddings: a carrot cake version. I have no idea how the guy made it, but I’m gonna give it a go using this recipe as a base: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/the-best-bread-pudding-recipe/index.html. And then I’ll top the sucker with some vanilla mascarpone.

Italian Cauliflower What?

charliefrench — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:08:42 +0000

Tonight I watched an episode of Good Eats on cauliflower. While none of the recipes jumped out at me, the topic did remind me of a recipe I learned from my Italian host father, Fausto. It’s one of those Italian dishes that is so stupid simple that unless you actually ate it, you wouldn’t bother trying to make it. Well trust me, you should try this. And why wouldn’t you? It’s cheap and easy.

Take a chopped up head of cauliflower and steam it in a large pot with a few inches of water. While it’s steaming, take old crusty stale bread and toast it. Peel one clover of garlic for every piece of toast you prepare.

With the cauliflower steamed, place a piece of the toasted bread (aka toast) into a wide bowl. Then grab a clove of garlic and rub it into the toasted bread. It should rub into the bread as easily as butter. Now place a heaping pile of cauliflower on top and then pour some of the cauliflower water onto the whole mess so that the bread gets a little soggy. Finally, top it with the best olive oil money can buy and a little kosher salt. Bob’s your uncle.

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

charliefrench — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:00:12 +0000

Great ice cream – 1 cup cream, 1 cup half and half, 1 cup whole milk. 3/4 cup sugar. Make a custard with 7 egg yolks. Add spirulina for color and a half teaspoon of mint extract to give it its characteristic taste. And then just before hardening, fold in the chocolate chips.

Ants in Trees

charliefrench — Fri, 13 May 2011 03:54:30 +0000

Alton Brown pulled through for once. His Ants in Trees recipe, from a great episode on asian noodle dishes, was terrific. It’s not mind blowingly good or anything, but when evaluating the cost (amount of time and money) and benefit (taste) of the recipe, it’s well worth it. It’s pretty straightforward. Get a pound of pork or beef, 4 oz of rice or bean based asian noodles, and couple condiments and you’re good to go. Now that I think about it, there’s no point in me trying to replicate foodnetwork.com, so here’s the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/ants-in-trees-recipe/index.html.

Pot Stickers

charliefrench — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:29:00 +0000

When historians look back at the second coming of Julia Child, they’ll say that his career really took off after he posted a video on how to make pot stickers.

Keller Kills It Again with Kickin’ Kchicken

charliefrench — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:20:15 +0000

Every Thomas Keller recipe I cook is better than the last. I’m hoping it’s not just luck. The latest recipe was easy to make just like the pork chops. It required the following ingredients:

- 1 lbs of flattened chicken breasts

- 1 tablespoon of finely chopped shallot

- 1 tablespoon of your favorite curry

- Splash of white wine

- 1 tablespoon of finely chopped tarragon

- 1 tablespoon of butter

- 1/2 cup of chicken stock

- Salt, kosher salt

Start by applying the curry powder to the chicken. Wrap them cutlets in plastic wrap and stash in the fridge for an hour. When you’re ready, preheat the over to 200 and heat up my favorite pan (you know which one I’m talking about). Put in a generous amount of canola oil to coat the bottom of it and then throw in the cutlets along with a little salt. Don’t move them for about 2 minutes. Let them get brown and tasty. Then flip ‘em. After another two minutes, put them on a wire rack on top of a baking sheet (lining the baking sheet with aluminum foil means no cleanup) and place the whole shebang in the oven to stay warm.

Wipe the oil and blackened bits out of the cast iron pan with a paper towel. If your pan is still really hot, you could probably turn the heat off at this point. Otherwise, leave it on low. First, put the butter in the pan. Let it melt. Then put the shallot in. Saute it for a brief 30 seconds. Then pour in the white wine. It should boil off quickly. Then pour in the chicken stock and tarragon. Simmer it down until you have a nice thick sauce. To me it tastes like liquid fennel. Pour it evenly on top of the chicken and enjoy.

Keller’s Chicken Dumpling Soup

charliefrench — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 03:28:46 +0000

You may remember my previous post on chicken dumpling soup. Although my post didn’t convey it, it was another Alton Brown let down in terms of the finished product. (I’m still a huge fan Alton! I always learn something, I just don’t enjoy eating the meals produced by most of your recipes.) Well, it was time to step my shit up and get after it Thomas Keller style.

What is Thomas Keller style? Well, besides meaning cooking Thomas Keller recipes, it means devoting the whole damn day to a recipe. Blasphemy you say! No, I quite enjoy it, actually. So what did Keller’s recipe involve?

- A homemade stock (jury is still out in my book on whether this is worth it; I’m making another one today, so we’ll see.).

- Homemade dumplings (similar to Alton’s but with the addition of chives, which makes them money).

- Blanching the carrots and celery, which was my favorite part about this dish. Blanching does a couple things: 1) it produces great color, 2) it produces even salting, and 3) it can introduce new flavors directly to that single thing (and not to the rest of the dish). The celery was a straightforward salt water blanch, while the carrots were a salt, honey, thyme, and bay leaf blanch. It’s hard to truly appreciate good blanching until you take a carrot blanched like this and you taste the new complexity it brings to the party. I now think about a finished meal like this. You can either play a chord, where you bring a few notes together to create a single harmonized flavor (like Alton’s soup), or you can play a song where multiple chords (with the carrot being one, the dumpling being another, etc) come together to create a whole new meal of crazy depth and complexity (like Keller’s).

- A roux to create a creamery, thicker broth.

All in all, it was an excellent dish that I’ll be enjoying again.