I've seen a few people mention the "rooster" chili sauce available at asian markets. Does anyone know what kind of peppers are actually in it? I loooooove this stuff, but the ingredients just say "chili peppers"....just curious.
Also, does anyone have any favorite recipies they use this in?

I'm beginning to enjoy being ill. Two-four of my friends arrive late afternoon and prepare dinner for me each day for the past week. Since last evening was Saturday (date night) four of my married friends arrived.

We started off with: Pear Champagne from Cafe des Artistes

"Lucius Beebe, the late, great journalist, reported the gustatory and social glamour of champagne concoctions in the 1920s, when the smart set first discovered them. The following champagne cocktail made its debut at the Cafe in 1977, when it was served to a pear-loving friend."

1/4 cp sugar
1/4" thick slice fresh ginger, the diameter of a quarter
1 fresh Bartlett, Anjou or Comice pear, peeled and cored
2 tbl William pear brandy
Dry Champagne (personally, I recommend Veuve Clicquot)


In a saucepan, combine sugar; 1/2 cp water and ginger. Bring to a boil. Stand the pear upright in the liquid. Cover and simmer until almost cooked. The fruit should remain slightly crunchy.

Quarter the pear and place each quarter in a champagne glass. Divide the pear brandy among the glasses and fill with champagne. Serve immediately.

It was divine.

Are you familiar with the restaurant? It has some of the most beautiful murals that sets the tone for the restaurant.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis always ordered a baked potato with caviar; Danny DeVito likes the Cafe for ham and cheese sandwiches; Brad Pitt was a waiter for a brief time; to name a few. Restaurant Critic Daniel Young of the Daily News suggested that the Cafe is "where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers would go on Valentine's Day."

The restaurant is located @: One West 64th Street off of Central Park West. The # is 212.877.3500

Take a look at their website. It is: www.cafenyc.com

It is beautiful.

I'll type up the rest of last evening's menu as the day progresses.

Catherine.

My friends made the following dinner last evening. They doubled it since there five of us AND to ensure that I had left-overs. :-)

It was very good.

Shrimp & Ancho in a Bath of Garlic -- 4 Servings

3/4 cp extra virgin olive oil
25 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced (we buy them already peeled. it is much easier)
1 3/4 lbs rock shrimp or medium shrimp, peeled & deveined (I would recommend the rock shrimp)
1.5 tsp salt
3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
3 lrg ancho chiles, wiped clean, stemmed, seeded and finely julienned
1 cp fish stock or clam juice
juice of 3 lrg limes
leaves of 1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the garlic slices and saute until tender but not brown. Remove to a paper towel with a slotted spoon.

Toss the shrimp with the salt and pepper in a bowl. Increase the heat to high and heat until nearly smoking. Add the shrimp and saute, stirring and shaking the skillet to prevent sticking, for 3-4 mins or just until shrimp are still slightly undercooked. Remove from the heat. Remove to a platter with a slotted spoon, reserving as many of the pan drippings in the skillet as possible.

Return the skillet to the stove and reduce the heat to medium. Return the garlic slices to the skillet and add the ancho chiles. Saute, stirring frequently, until the oil begins to turn orange from the chiles. Stir in the fish stock along with the shrimp and any accumulated juices on the platter. Add the lime juice and parsley. Bring to a boil and remove from the heat. Serve immediately over white rice. (We had jasmine rice).

This recipe is Chefs Susan Feniger's & MarySue Milliken's creation. It was published in the International Association of Culinary Professionals' "For the Love of Food" cookbook.

French Chicken Breast with Orange Tarragon Sauce, Roasted Potatoes and Carrots with Thyme, and Braised Leeks with Sel de Mer.


(Detail)

By far one of the prettiest things I have ever made. Thanks to Party Line with The Hardy Boys for the recipe, which I basically followed only I sed cut up potatos with onions and carrots instead of whole garlic.

Very cheap and it was amazing tasting.

so tonight if france wins the world cup, i'm going to make something french'ish. if italy wins. well. i'll probably still make something french. or just buy a baguette and some brie. haha

anyway, does anyone have any simple french'ish style recipes?

thanks in advance!

I just made a lemon poppyseed cake with dried blueberries. It was a very fluffy buttermilk batter (I'm at 6000 ft, and non-buttermilk cakes tend to dry out very quickly), and the blueberries all settled to the bottom of the pan. It still tastes nice, of course, but it was a little annoying.

The only cakes I've made with dried fruit before were fruitcakes that were essentially fruit held together with batter. Is there any way to convince the blueberries not to settle? Any alternate type of batter that would be thicker but still moist?

Yesterday I made a Serious Breakfast (I don't do this often, since it takes a couple hours): fried potatoes, Italian sausage from the local farmers' market, and pancakes. I usually make buttermilk pancakes with a little vanilla, but I decided to do something different this time: cherry cardamom pancakes.

No pictures, since they got inhaled rather quickly, but they were quite good, and definitely a change from the usual.

( Recipe )

We pureed the remaining frozen cherries and cooked them with a little honey and cornstarch to make a vaguely syrup-like topping. They're also good with honey.

I don't think fresh cherries would be noticeably better in this recipe, so I'd rather save them for eating raw.

I have an odd relationship with eggs.

While I find them utterly indispensable for cooking and baking, as a whole, I dislike eating eggs themselves.

When I was very small, my grandfather would feed me soft boiled eggs, mixed with torn up bread pieces and lots of salt. Being a salt fiend, this was the very bestest food possible. Especially because my grandfather would allow me to make them as salty as I wanted. Which was typically far too salty for human consumption.

And ever after, I see to make eggs taste like they did when I was a child. That wonder of putting a few humble ingredients in a bowl and getting magic.

In a sense, I guess my grandfather was a magician, because no plain egg dish has ever measured up.

Hi! I'm in the market for a food processor and I was wondering if people had any reccomendations?

Thanks!

When I was an undergraduate at the University at Buffalo (just over a year ago!), there was a restaurant on campus called Korean Express. (For all I know, it might still be there). My absolute favorite dish was Dak Bulgogi - chicken in a lip-singeing, also slightly sweet red sauce with onions. Yet all the bulgogi recipes I've seen (or other bulgogis I've eaten)have been beef, and the sauce hardly even borders on spicy. Has anyone else experienced (or better yet, does anyone have a recipe for) the kind of bulgogi I'm describing?

Raspberry season is in full force here in the Pacific Northwest. I went...uh...a little over board maybe.



( More rasberry naughtiness... )

I was pointed to this lovely community by sdragon and I have to wonder. Where have you guys been all my life?
I'm Joey, total food nerd, and I love cooking with chicken. It's the only thing I'll eat since I don't like beef, pork, lamb or fish. I'll cook them for other people, but I won't eat them myself.
Now, to properly introduce myself, I come bearing a recipe. This is from Nick Nairn's top 100 Chicken Recipes (Amazon.co.uk link) and if you're looking for a good book for ideas in how to cook chicken, this is it. It's a fantastic book with some awesome recipes. This is Nick Nairn's Chilli Chicken with Dark Chocolate sauce :)

( Picture and recipe behind the cut )

Enjoy!

The Muffins started like this :



( And ended like this... )

x-posted in cooking

I bought a duck to roast at my local Korean grocery store. It turns out it has the head and feet (complete with webbing) still attached. What on earth do I do with them? Leave them on? Cut them off? If I cut them off is there any point to keeping them?

So I've got these little basil plants that are just chugging away and I haven't had the time lately to make pesto, but I kept trimming it so as to promote growth. I put the basil I had trimmed off into the freezer thinking, "well pesto freezes just fine so the basil should be just fine to". Well I took the basil out to make the pesto today finally and the leaves are dark, kinda brownish, limp & wilty. I've observed this before in other frozen herbs and it normall isnt' a problem, but these just look so pathetic would making it into pesto be dicey on flavour?

your thoughts pornistas?

OK, our Korean friends brought a Korean dish to our 4th of July BBQ. It was FANTASTIC! It was a beef dish with onions, and it was sweet and very tender, so so so tasty. I tried to ask his wife for the recipe but she said the sauce was very complicated. I took that as "secret recipe" and left it alone. ONLY YOU GUYS CAN HELP ME! They called it "boo-go-ghee" or "roo-bo-ghee" or "something ooo something oh something ghee". What was it?

i made this for dinner tonight...

merci, zwee, for the suggestion and the recipe!

i used a chilean chardonnay for the white wine as it was the only white wine i had in the house...so there is a bit of chilean flair to it! ;-)

i'm very excited it turned out so well as i've never made french fare before....!

I know I made a post asking for help on how to make a good Pineapple Upside Down Cake, but I forgot to put it in my memories, so I'm asking again.
Next week is my husband's Birthday, and I want to make his favorate cake Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

Please give me yer recipes. Thanks.