Bits Of Dust

Archive for August, 2007

I found this tonight while I was surfing ifood.tv.

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The other day I linked to Chef Tom’s site when he posted a recipe for homemade chips. I mentioned that I would have to experiment and see what I could come up with.

Well, the first one is really easy. Cinnamon Sugar Chips. The kids wanted to help me cook and if I made anything too spicy or “nasty” as they call it, I wouldn’t be able to get them to eat chips again for a month or more, so we made these.

We preheated the oven to 375, and took 5 flour tortillas (8 inch), and cut them into 8 wedges each. We sprayed butter flavored crisco spray on the baking sheet and placed the wedges on the baking sheet. We sprayed the wedges and the kids then sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. Don’t ask me how to make the sugar, because it’s super simple. You just mix some sugar and cinnamon til it looks and tastes right for you. (We keep ours in a salt shaker, to make it easy to put on toast or chips).

We baked the chips for 8 minutes and they were done.

Please note. It took 5 minutes to prepare them, 8 minutes to cook them, and 3 minutes for my rugrats to eat all of them. It was fun. Tomorrow I will experiment with some seasonings and corn tortillas.

On this second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, please take a moment to remember the victims. More than 1.1 million volunteers have responded to help but more are still needed, and many homes have still not been rebuilt.

Oh sure, everyone knows about the “refugees” of Hurricane Katrina, and many of us, myself included, have our own horror stories about “non-victims” who attempted to take advantage of the system or even demanded that people “take care of them”. But I am not concerned with those people now, as they have disappeared back into the slimy little holes they crawled out of. The people I am concerned about are the real victims of Katrina. The people who took all the proper precautions and fled when they knew the storm was bearing down on them.

Since the day of the disaster, Americans have donated over 14 million hours of volunteer service to help rebuild New Orleans and the other affected areas. This has been the single biggest volunteer response to a disaster in our nation’s history, but there are still many jobs to be done, lots of work to be completed, and many people who still cannot return to their homes.

Several people I know had homes in the affected areas, and luckily most of them have been able to return or have settled elsewhere around the country, but let’s take a moment out of our day and do what we can to help. Heck, I’m not asking you to volunteer, or even donate money, I’m simply asking you to help raise awareness so others will remember as well.

I spent some time this evening looking on YouTube for a good recipe to share with you. We had filet mignon and crab legs the other night, and I started craving artichokes.

You see, whenever I eat crab legs, my brain thinks I am supposed to eat artichokes as well. Why? Who knows, other than the fact that crab, artichokes, and avocados are my favorite foods, ever.

Oh, and what happened at YouTube? Well, I found an excellent recipe video for Crab, Artichoke and Potato Croquettes. The funny thing about it? It’s one of Chef John’s recipes. Man, that guy is going to start thinking I am stalking him or something.

Anyway, here is the recipe, which by the way, can be served with a half of an avocado (you’ll see at the end). Wow. Talk about a dream dish.

Just for the record too, here is the link to his blog, Food Wishes, where you can find all of his recipes.

Yesterday, Chef John posted a recipe for Wild Halibut Steaks with Warm Bacon Dressing.

Normally, I don’t like fish. But I love Halibut. I thought this would be a perfect dish to try on the kids. It’s difficult to get all three of them to eat new foods, but I thought, with the bacon and all that, I might just have a chance.

Do you know though, I drove around for an hour and a half looking for wild halibut at the grocery stores and the hell if I couldn’t find any. Dagnabbit.

Anyway, I will be trying this dish just as soon as I can get one of our local po-dunk stores to get some fresh wild halibut in stock for me.

I was first introduced to baklava by my grandfather. Delicious stuff I tell you. Here is Giada De Laurentiis’ recipe for simple baklava.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup almonds
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
1/4 cup plain bread crumbs
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
Pinch of salt
1 stick butter, melted, divided
3 tablespoons honey
12 sheets phyllo dough

Instructions:

Special equipment: 2 mini-muffin tins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the almonds, walnuts, apricots, bread crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, ground cloves, and salt in a food processor. Run the machine until the mixture is very finely chopped. Transfer the mixture to a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the melted butter and the honey and stir to combine.

Check out more of Giada’s recipes at the Food Network website.

On a dry work surface place 1 sheet of phyllo. Using a pastry brush and the remaining melted butter, lightly cover the entire sheet of phyllo with melted butter. Cover the first sheet with a second sheet of phyllo and brush with melted butter. Continue until there is a stack of 6 sheets of phyllo. Cut the stacked phyllo rectangle into 12 equal pieces (Cut lengthwise into 4 pieces and widthwise into 3 pieces.)

Gently press each cut piece of phyllo into the mini-muffin tin cups. Press 1 tablespoon of the nut mixture into each of the phyllo cups. Gather the ends of each of the phyllo squares and twist to make a sachet shape. Continue shaping the remaining sachets in the other mini-muffin tin. Bake until the edges of the phyllo are golden, about 20 to 25 minutes. When cool enough to handle, remove the baklava sachets and transfer to a serving plate.

Holy Mackerel! Chef John outted himself today! He had good reason though, and don’t worry, he’s not changing the style of his awesome free recipe videos.

By the way, just because I’m now using my real photo on the blog, the video recipes will not change. I will still never appear in the recipes, mugging for the camera nor doing puppet shows with an oven mitt. I will not deviate from my original vision of what these videos should be about…the food.

Good luck with the new deal too, John!

This is so cool! I make my own tortilla chips all the time, and I get razzed for it. But I prefer the taste of my homemade chips over the store bought ones, and they contain less preservatives and other crap that I don’t want to be eating anyway.

Well, today, Chef Tom has a “Homemade Spicy Tortilla Chips” recipe on his site. Now I never thought to add the spices to the chip (although I did use a touch of salt), so this is going to be fun. I am going to try out a bunch of different combinations and I’ll let you know how they turn out.

In the meantime, head on over to Chef Tom’s site. Be careful though, you could gain 10 pounds by doing so.

Some celebrities shouldn’t cook.

[Hat Tip: Food Wishes]