Cheese - - Page 29

by BS

Shooting for the Sun

Back in the early days of ES, I once ranted about the trend of making every thing on earth into a pesto, thinking that the old-fashioned basil kind could not be beat. However, one of our first ever commenters, John James Anderson, set me right:

After living in Italy for over a year there are about half a dozen pestos out there for sale on the shelves of Roman grocers; all are defined by region. Pesto basically means something that is ground. So, anything can be made into a pesto. The walnut variety of which you wrote typically should be mixed with sun dried tomatoes, garlic and Parmesan cheese (piu olio, sale e nero, claro!). Others are made with olives, onions, spinach and ricotta. But, Pesto Genovese (above) will always be king.

OK, fine. I don’t really know anything. I just pretend to be a food snob. And now that we’ve had everything from arugula pesto to nettle pesto on the blog, I’m officially a convert — anything green is better ground up and mixed with cheese, nuts and extra virgin. So when I saw sunflower shoots at the far mar this weekend and bought them on impulse, I knew immediately what I was going to do.

by Roo de Loo

Top 10 Things to Eat Before the End of the World

It’s no secret that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day—the end of the world—as so eloquently articulated (or do we mean ridiculously predicted?) by Family Radio Worldwide’s Harold Camping. Here at ES, we think the best solution to eminent annihilation is to indulge at one of our favorite foodie destinations. And if some of us survive, at least it’ll be easier to get a reservation.

10. English Pudding All Night

The stickiest way to finish up your time on Earth is at the Three Ways House Hotel in Gloucestershire, England, where they have created the Pudding Club, an “end of the world” experience where you can indulge in a tasting of no less than seven puddings, from oriental ginger to jam roly-poly, and even stay the night in a pudding-themed bedroom. Talk about going out with a bang.

9. Salt-Baked Fingerling Potatoes with Bacon Butter and Anchovy Mayo

Chef Megan Johnson at Elsewhere Restaurant in New York City has created a deceptively simple dish combining the best of all things fatty, starchy, salty and creamy—all the palette pleasers you’ll miss when forced to live on dirt and ants if you’re lucky enough to survive.

8. Mexican-Style Street Corn with Cotija Cheese and Ancho Chile Powder

Austin’s La Condesa restaurant not only serves up more than 100 varieties of blue agave tequila (an essential for pre-Judgment Day partying), but also offers this signature south-of-the-border street corn side dish. If the world really were ending soon, we’d start covering every vegetable we eat in cotija cheese and chili. (Photo: Shelly Roche)

7. East Mountain Pork Live Paté

A beautifully decadent house-made paté is accompanied by onion confit and rye toast at Mezze, a classic bistro and bar nestled in the Berkshires with views straight to heaven. (Photo: Gregory Nesbit)

6. 1949 Chevalier-Montrachet Maison Leroy

Our bomb shelter of choice would have to be the St. Regis Deer Valley’s wine vault, stocked with more than 1,000 different rare labels. Acclaimed sommelier Mark Eberwein recommends popping one of these 60-year-old whites for your last night on earth. (Photo: My Wines and More)

Next: Top 5 Things to Eat Before the End of the World

in Bacon / Cheese / Desserts / Drinks / Featured / Holiday / Lists / Pig / Restaurants / Top 10 Lists 1 comments

by Miss K

Friday Fuck Up: Bobby Flay I’m Not

Sometimes, you can pinpoint the exact moment when a dish goes wrong. Other times, you get to the end, give the food a taste, and think, “What the hell happened?!” And then, there are the times when things are bad, bad, bad, from start to finish. And even though you see it coming, you are powerless to stop it. Yep, that was me in my attempt at a chile rellenos of sorts.

It began with a trip to LA Mart in Silver Spring, my favorite spot for out-of-season produce from exotic locales. I usually stop in sometime during the dead of winter when I just can’t eat one more carrot. This time, I picked up some pointy, green, poblanno-esque peppers, figuring I could stuff them, cover them in cheese and call it a dinner.

I got home and the trouble began. I roasted the peppers on the stove, where they got all blistery and black looking. Not sure if that was good or not, but I soldiered on. The recipe I used directed me to scrape off the black bits and core the peppers, leaving a nice, smoky shell. What I ended up with were several limp, slimy green sheets. But I continued. The filling would redeem them, I figured. Plus, they would be covered in cheese.

The filling was about what you’d expect—black beans, tomatoes, spices—with one addition: grapefruit. A bit odd, I thought, but I was willing to give it a try. It could be one of those surprisingly delicious combinations, like pickles and cream cheese wrapped in corned beef.

Nope. It was just bad. It was hard to nail down what exactly was bad about it, which means it was also impossible to correct. But I now had about four cups of the stuff, so I stumbled blindly on. I “stuffed” the slimy pepper sheets with the grapefruit-black bean blend.

in Cheese / Recipe / Veggie 3 comments

by gansie

Liz Lemon Food Fix: Working On My Night Cheese!

Enjoy your weekly fix of Liz Lemon singing, crying and dancing about her love of food.

More Lemon:
Liz Lemon's Top 15 Tips for Better Eating
Top 10 Liz Lemon Food Moments (in GIFs)
All Liz Lemon Food Fix

in Cheese / TV 3 comments

by gansie

Salvaging a Crime Scene

This time of year it’s hard for me to eat brunch at a restaurant. Instead of tired florentine or crab cake benedicts (or <gasp> buffets), I grab a bright red bike from the closest Capital Bikeshare dock and ride over to the farmers market. Asparagus bundles line the wooden tables. Bins of kale and spinach also take up plenty of space. But on Sunday, it was all about the strawberries. It was the first time I spied the sultry fruit this season and I couldn’t resist picking up 2 cartons (at $7) from the tiny Bloomingdale market.

The only mistake: riding my bike back home. The berries rumbled around in a box I borrowed from a vendor. When I opened it up at home, it looked like a crime scene as the berries stained the cardboard walls. I managed to save them and decided to use most of them up pretty quickly for a friend’s graduation party. (Congrats, El!) It’s a twist on strawberries and cream, and mostly all of the ingredients can be found at market.

Creating this still cheesy, but much fresher, dish makes me so freaking happy its spring! That was pretty lame, huh?!

in Cheese / Recipe 1 comments

by Russell Warnick

Revenge Served Cold: Nettle Pesto

Growing up in England nettles were a large part of my childhood, whether I liked it or not — and I generally didn’t. This wretched plant caused many a tear in my household, its stinging leaves leaving immense pain that lasted for hours, with little sympathy from my parents as I was usually up to no good in the garden or local park, causing said sting.

When I saw nettles at the local farmers’ market here in D.C., I jumped at the chance to fight back, to serve justice to this leafy plant once and for all. There’s very little you can actually do with nettles, the most obvious was soup, but in these late spring months it seemed a tad too warm for that. I settled on pesto, a simple and versatile sauce that I could use in many dishes.

We’ve cooked basil brownies and avocado milkshakes, now it’s time for the nettle pesto.

in Cheese / Fowl / Personal / Recipe / Veggie 0 comments

by Miss K

Strawberry Fever

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver talks about how, if you plan on enjoying your fruits and vegetables seasonally, you really have to go all in during say, asparagus season, practically gorging yourself in order to ~~hold you over~~ make you so tired of a particular produce item that you will be okay without it for the next 10 or 11 months or whatever, until the season comes around again. I understand her reasoning, and it might work for me with parsnips or eggplant, but for the most part, I rarely get sick of any particular form of farm stand goodness. Last summer I personally ate at least a hundred peaches. (I’m not exaggerating.) My son, born in September, came out with a good bit of fuzz on him, and I’m pretty sure I know why.

Now we are back around to spring, and I have already been enjoying plenty of arugula straight from the bag, much to Dear Husband’s bewilderment. Strawberries have yet to make it this far north yet, though, so yesterday my boy and I, along with some fellow fruit lovers, hit the road and headed south, specifically to Shlagel Farms in Waldorf, MD.

in Cheese / Recipe 0 comments