I just watched a video on the most amazing food processor from Cuisinart. Its almost as good as an iPod! It has 2 features that are such an improvement over any other processor you will want to get rid of your old ones and get this one. First it has (3) different bowl sizes. You can do anything from mashed potatoes to pie crust in the large bowl to celery or carrots in the medium bowl to herbs and basil pesto in the small one, and the top has a rubber seal. There is no need to ever worry about overflow. The second is the blades lock into place! Now when you’re pouring you don’t have to take the blade off, dripping sauce all over you and the countertop, and it won’t fall into the bowl. Watch the video at the link below to see it in action.

With all these improvements, it will definitely win a permanent spot on your kitchen countertop, and you will be able to eliminate a few of your old small appliances. What a great holiday gift or bridal registry item for the person that has everything or nothing in the kitchen! Click on this link to find one at your local kitchen wares store.

Check out the video here.

I have two Myers Lemon trees on my balcony in Uptown Dallas. Yesterday I had my second harvest. Last year I only had two lemons, but this year I had six (I ate one before I took the picture)! Click Here to find a place to buy the beautiful bowl. It’s the 12” Bermuda Bowl by Pacific Merchants. Happy Harvesting. Be green and don’t forget to compost!

It’s gonna make you hungry — here you go, visual learners:

It happens. Sometimes you can’t cook something fancy … or, well, you really would rather not cook at all. On those nights, “cooking” really ends up meaning “arguing over which menu to order from.”

Tonight could be one of those nights. It’s almost Thanksgiving, and it’s the time of year when big changes happen for a lot of businesses and individuals. Moving, beginning the end-of-the-year wind-up… it’s time for all those last minute, “I’ll do it do tomorrow” things to start piling up at work and at home.

Dinner can seem like one more chore after an especially busy day of work.

Of course, it can also seem like a pleasant, relaxing oasis of creativity after a long day of doing things someone else’s way. On most nights, we want to encourage you to think like that.

But it doesn’t always work out that way. So let’s say tonight is one of those nights. How should we handle it? Do we just get out the takeout menu? Do we buy a bucket of pre-fried chicken-product on the way home?

No way.

Tonight, at our house, we are having roast beef sandwiches. We cheated on the roast beef and bought it at the store, but this is better than that bucket ‘o’ chicken we mentioned for a couple of reasons. First off, anything roasted is almost always a better option than anything fried. Second, getting something prepared from the grocery store that is sealed and then incorporating it into a meal is  lot safer bet than getting something pre-prepared that’s been sitting, unsealed, under a heat lamp since before dawn.

On one of those future days when you’re feeling creative, you can prepare your own roast beef and freeze it for just such a meal. You know, just if you feel like it… When that day comes, (and it will, my friend, it will) be sure to let your roast rest, just like you would if you were serving it for dinner right away. When it’s ready to slice, go ahead and cut it into to pieces with sandwiches in mind. Ask yourself if you like the kind of roast beef sandwiches that have big slices or small, soft chunks, and slice accordingly. Put the slices into large freezer bags, and add in some juices — you’ll want them when you heat the roast up at a later date.

The plan is just to gently heat the roast beef, then add to some nice soft buns and, ta-da!, sandwiches. That you kind of made yourself. If you prefer the roast beef sandwiches with soft, gravy-soaked chucks, heat your roast in a small sauce pan with some brown gravy. If you prefer the kind of roast beef sandwiches that feature thin slices with a barbecue or juice-based sauce, you can place the slices in pan with a spoonful or two of water and reheat in the oven until they are the desired temperature.

To go with our roast beef sandwiches, we are doing oven baked french fries. Here, again, there are two ways to go. You can get the frozen fries at the store when you pick up your roast beef. Again, this is a much better option than fast food fries, because your  fries are really going to be “bakes.” And, not to beat up on the heat-lamp thing… but it’s a risk you take when you go the fast-food route.

For the “not quite cheating option,” you can pick up some nice, long potatoes instead. Peel them, slice them into beautiful, thick (but not too thick) “fries,” and then place them on an ungreased cookie sheet or shallow baking pan. Sprinkle them lightly but evenly with salt and pepper, then bake on 450 for about 30 or 40 minutes, or until they are golden brown and crispy on the edges. For extra flavor, try sprinkling them with seasoned salt or lemon pepper instead.

When cooking pasta, remember to salt your water, but only add the salt after the water has come to a boil. 

Adding salt to the water your pasta is cooking in allows the pasta to absorb some of the salt as it plumps, so that it’s not bland when it’s done. This seasons your pasta from the inside out, in a way that can’t really be accomplished after it’s finished cooking. A good rule of thumb is to add 1 to 2 tablespoons of salt to a large pot of rapidly boiling water.

Salt, however, does not keep pasta from sticking together. For that, give your pasta a stir or two in the first few minutes after you’ve gently placed it in the pot of already boiling water. (Some people advocate adding in a spoonful of olive oil for this purpose, while others say doing that also makes it harder for the sauce to stick to your pasta. We think this is personal preference.)

Salt also won’t keep your pot from boiling over (a common rumor). Though salt does raise the boiling point of water, allowing it get hotter before it boils, it will still get back to a rolling boil fairly quickly. (This is one reason why you want to let your water get to a boil before adding your salt.) Once your pasta is in the pot, turn the stove down to medium or medium high, keeping the water at a boil, but not boiling it over.

A note on knowing when pasta is done: A lot of people think al dente, because it means “to the tooth” means pasta that’s cooked “authentically” should be very firm. This is not the case. It means pasta should still be somewhat firm, not fall apart like mush. It should be pliable but just firm enough to need to be chewed.

A good rule of thumb for knowing when pasta is done: Cut a piece in half and look at the cross section. If the center of the pasta is a different color than the outside, it’s not done yet. If the pasta is one color and texture all the way through, it’s done.

We talked yesterday about polenta and its special preparation needs.

If you are a visual learner and want to see polenta done right, check this out:

Or if you want some hands-on learning, take a look at these cooking classes — they all offer a learning experience involving polenta :

Cooks, Pots & Tabletops – Eugene, OR
In Good Taste — Portland, OR
In Good Taste — Lake Oswego, OR
Kitchen Window — Minneapolis, MN

My first mouthful of Polenta seemed to me to be a heavenly cross between cheese grits and cornbread stuffing — two of the most perfectly delicious dishes in the world (especially to a Southern girl.) From that one scrumptious bite, I was hooked — and you will be, too. That’s why polenta will play a part in what’s for dinner tonight.

Polenta has a reputation for being difficult because it takes some time to cook properly (no, you can’t use the instant stuff — that’s not learning how to cook; it’s just learning how to open packages). And tradition holds that it must be stirred constantly to acquire the proper texture without scorching.

However, with a nice, low, even heat under a sturdy pan, you can let your polenta simmer gently while you prepare something to accompany it, giving only the occasional stir to keep things moving along smoothly.

We’re going to let this meal be a little bit more freeform than usual. We suggest your favorite roast or chop with a nice, savory sauce (a mushroom glaze, perhaps?) served over our delicious, creamy Gorgonzola Polenta. For a vegetarian version, serve it alongside Oven-Roasted Asparagus with Dijon Lemon Sauce or Roasted Root Vegetables. Or go spicy with Arroz con Pollo.

Following the Gorgonzola Polenta recipe will help you get a nice grasp on the basic process for making a classic creamy polenta. When you’re ready to branch out, you can start adding in your own flavors and additional textures.

Here are some basic tips, though, that hold true for any polenta attempt:

• Keep an eye on it! Even though you don’t really have to keep stirring continuously if you keep the heat low to medium low, you still need to watch the liquid level.
• Don’t microwave it.  There seems to be a big push lately in favor of microwaved polenta. But anyone who’s ever microwaved anything knows things just don’t turn out quite right when they’re nuked. They may still taste OK, they may even be delicious … but microwave foods rarely taste like the real thing. At least give your polenta a chance the first few times, and clear off a stove burner.
• It’s not grits. I love grits. You (should) love grits. But polenta and grits are two different things. Polenta still retains a husk in a way that grits do not, and it requires a slightly longer cooking time. You can serve the two dishes in similar ways. But respect their differing heritages when learning how to prepare them.
• It doesn’t have to be bland. People will tell you polenta is nothing but cornmeal mush, and that they ate it as kids and hated it. But don’t judge a food by someone’s else’s (or your own) childhood impression of it. One of the reasons why people feed bland foods to children is because kids often reject usual or intense flavors they later grow up to love. Tired parents default to feeding youngsters foods that are inoffensive yet boring … and those kids grow up to hate those same boring foods. (You often can feed kids interesting foods by getting them involved in the process… but that’s fodder for a different blog.) Your polenta can be creamy and intensely flavorful. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Once you’ve mastered the basic polenta recipe, you can move on to more interesting textures and uses. Try our Polenta and Tomato Lasagna. Or find your own creative ways to work it in — we’ve even seen mention of firm polenta as a “crust” for a pizza-style casserole.

Happy Eating… and Pleasant Polenta!

Always crack your eggs against a flat surface (not against the edge of a bowl or the counter), to avoid introducing bits of shell and bacteria into the egg. Also, opening the eggs into a separate bowl, rather than on top of other ingredients, means you can easily see any shell pieces or other egg problems that may try to creep into your dish.

So, we talked about gnocchi and how to avoid ending up with flavorless lumps. If you need a little bit of visual reinforcement, this may help:

And for an even-simpler step-by-step look, check out our tutorial, here.

“Don’t they all get cooked into pies?” you ask. Oh, naïve child of the modern age – we don’t put actual pumpkins in pumpkin pie these days. We get our pie filling from a can, and that product is almost always made with butternut (or some other variety of) squash.

So what to do with all these pumpkins lolling about at the grocery store, in danger of getting soft and stringy with old age? We could tell you to make real pumpkin pie with them … but that would be too expected. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we want you to think outside the pie dish (see how I took that cliché and turned it over? Get it? Turnover? Dessert? Never mind). So tonight we recommend a dinner menu that features a savory pumpkin side or soup.

We’ll start by offering other dishes to accompany your pumpkin goodness on the plate. Pork is often well-paired with items that have a hint of sweetness, so our protein recommendation is a nice pork chop, alongside another harvest favorite: cornbread. This leaves our pumpkin presentation free to be the “wow” part of the plate, while still offering filling, tried-and-true dinner sides. (Cornbread could – and will – be the focus of a blog all its own, but that’s for another day.)

Now it’s time to choose a part for our star. We could start the meal with a delicious pumpkin soup. Flavors popular with pumpkin soup enthusiasts range from subtly sweet and buttery to spicy and rich. Or, for something more substantial, we recommend lentils with pan-roasted pumpkin and pears. And if you’re just looking for something with real wow factor, try making Gruyere stuffed mini-pumpkins – simple but sure to impress.

Some tips for preparing pumpkin:

• Tough-skinned pumpkins tend to be the most resilient and fleshy when cooked (those are good things). To test for this resiliency, lightly press the pumpkin skin with your fingernail. If your nail leaves a mark, that pumpkin isn’t ready.
• The kinds of pumpkins you carve and the kind you cook are different. While cooking a pumpkin that was intended for carving won’t hurt you, it won’t have the full meat and flavor of a real “cooking” pumpkin. The best varieties for cooking are all named after edibles: sugar, cheese and milk.
• Once a pumpkin has been carved, it is no longer safe for cooking. It becomes a haven for all kinds of scary things, and we don’t mean ghosts and goblins … we mean bacteria.
• If you’re working with pieces of pumpkin (for example, in a recipe that calls for cubed pumpkin), you’ll want to remove the pulp in the middle before trying to work with it or cook it in any way. If you’re looking to create a pumpkin puree, bake the entire, uncut pumpkin at 350 degrees for 90 minutes or until tender, turning occasionally. Then gently peel it, remove the stringy pulp and puree the flesh with a food processor or mash it with a potato masher or ricer.

The last method works great for another dish you might want to try: Mashed potatoes with pumpkin! Just combine 3 cups of cubed and peeled fresh pumpkin and 3 cups of diced and peeled potatoes with 1 cup milk, 1 can chicken broth and 2 cloves of garlic. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Finish up by mashing the mixture till smooth and then adding in a half-cup of sour cream.

And if you just have to have that classic, delicious pumpkin pie, here is the recipe. (See instructions above for making pumpkin puree).

Have we inspired you to stop by the grocery store on the way home from work? If so, have another helping of pumpkin, Pumpkin – and happy eating!