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by gansie

Jersey Shore: Converting Haters to Defenders

This past weekend I brought a few skeptics down the Jersey Shore. Many of my friends have only driven through New Jersey and bought into the crap spoken about this lovely state. Or believe what they saw from Snookie and crew on MTV.

But through our overwhelming intake of Jersey-style Italian food, I think I may have turned them into lifelong defenders of Jerz.

Speaking of food, with the pounds of pasta and side salads and creamy crab ravioli, we accumulated a ton of leftovers. Dedicating our fridge space to beer, I figured out a way to feed us all breakfast and get rid of the 4 rolls of garlic bread we still had from the night before.

Garlic Bread and Feta Egg Bake

Egg bakes are perfect for feeding a ton of people and anything can be thrown in, as demonstrated by my collection of baked egg dishes. [See here and here.] But this one was just straight awesome and didn’t need much additional seasoning because of the flavorful bread.

I cubed the garlic bread leftovers from Uncle Gino’s in Ventnor. Placed them in a buttered oven-proof dish and then poured over a mixture of eggs, crumbled feta, a few splashes of half and half (don’t make the coffee drinkers mad!) and salt and pepper. Let the bread soak in the liquid for 10-15 minutes before baking uncovered at 375 for about 30 minutes.

by BS

Checking in with the Cheftestants: Alex’s Chocolate Bread Pudding

We don’t care if they’re not a champ or a Padma — if they’ve been on Top Chef, ES is down for stalking them. Today, Kat from Good Bite checks in with nice guy/also-ran Alex Eusebio from season five.

I’ve always wondered what happens to the contestants who get voted off the shows like Top Chef and Next Food Network Star. My guess is they either open a restaurant, go back to working in a kitchen, or go back to their day job, the best of these three outcomes is transforming that 15 minutes of fame into an actually self-owned eatery. And that is exactly what has happened for Top Chef season five contestant Alex Eusebio who recently opened the adorable Sweetsalt Food Shop with his wife in Toluca Lake, California. At Sweetsalt guests can stock up on both sweets and savories like Coffee-Braised Short Rib Roll, Champagne Chicken Salad, and the Pack Your Knives Crème Brulee.

Today, chef Alex shares his recipe for a rich and creamy bread pudding, the ultimate comfort dessert, enjoy!

Recipe: Sweetsalt’s Chocolate Bread Pudding

in Desserts / Recipe / TV 0 comments

by BS

Indian Simmer: You Can Live on Bread Alone

As some of you already know, your humble ES editor has temporarily relocated, and I’ll be spending the next month eating and drinking my way through India. Hope you’re all fans of the food there, because I’ll be checking in frequently to report on my fav finds, brag about eating for $3 a day, and hopefully never complaining about Delhi belly.

First thoughts: OMFG this place is scary. Why do they think it’s OK to drive the wrong way on the highway? Or shove 13 people into one rickshaw? Or bring your baby on a motorcycle without a helmet? Somehow, this crazy “system” all seems to work out for them, but I have to admit it’s pretty freaking overwhelming.

Second thoughts: OMFG this place is a bread-lover’s paradise. If you have ever eaten at an Indian-American restaurant that offers just one simple kind of naan, let me tell you, you are being shortchanged. Every establishment here, big or small, has countless kinds of bread on offer. Garlic naan, butter naan, naan laced in layers of ghee and nann stuffed with potato curry. Paper-thin dosas rolled out to five-feet wide. Crunchy dosas smashed up and mixed in with every ingredient in the kitchen. Crispy papadum ready for dipping. I could go on. And on.

But my favorite (so far) is the batura. It’s a giant, puffy bread usually served with channa (spicy chickpea curry), as in the channa batura above at Kwality Restaurant in Delhi. It’s hollow inside, super-thin, and slightly greasy. It’s served hot and you break a piece off to pop it all open. Then you just go at it Ethiopian-style, tearing off pieces of the bread and using them to scoop up the chickpeas. So fun. They usually only offer batura with channa, but I think I may ask for every meal in India to be served this way.

in Food Travel 12 comments

by LB

Some Soda to Soak Up the Beer

Editor’s Note: New Contributor LB — a Boston-based chef currently studying for her Masters in Gastronomy — joins us just in time for St. Patrick’s day with this classic Irish recipe. Welcome, LB!

The smell of whiskey, green vomit, and shame is clinging to the air….just another morning during St. Patty’s here in Boston. We take our leprechaun-laden drunkfest very seriously around these parts– Patty’s isn’t only on the 17th; rather it starts the Sunday before with the St. Patrick’s parade in the mostly Irish South Boston. Swigging from a communal bottle of Jameson while sharing the sidewalk with nuns and priests is always a bit of a mind-fuck, but hey, where else can you start seeing double and confess at the same time?

All this day-drinking requires a serious amount of food, of course. Corned beef, cabbage and boiled potatoes, bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie, and my favorite, Irish soda bread. Aside from a big greasy basket of fries, nothing sets me straight in the middle of a bender better than bread. Bread that is slightly sweet, flecked with raisins, and both crunchy and soft at the same time is just gravy. So do yourself (and your liver) a favor this Patty’s and whip yourself up a loaf before you pour yourself that first green beer.

Irish soda bread has a million incarnations, but this one is pretty fucking delicious– and seriously easy. I’ve seen children make this recipe, so unless you are completely void of pride, quit complaining that baking bread is too difficult and make this. Now. Of course, don’t tell anyone how easy it was — just let them bask in all your flour-laced glory. And demand that they buy you a drink for all your labors.

It Ain’t Just Southern

Editor’s Note: Westcoast and I (gansie!) have been making the rounds to all of the hott spots in DC this season. Of course I’m talking about the farmers’ markets. We’ve visited three locations (Silver Spring, H Street–with sightings of Belmontmedina and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hoya–and Bloomingdale) and we have many left to scope out. Here’s Westcoast‘s most current inspiration from a market find. And please let us know where we should get our next seasonal fix.

You finally get something out of me…probably two years after gansie and I first discussed…so you know it must be tasty.

I chose okra (and wasn’t the first to do so here on ES). I almost couldn’t help it. Gansie and I were at the Bloomingdale Farmers Market, there was a lone section of okra staring at me. I hadn’t really done much work with it, and it seemed like a challenge. When I picked it up I think gansie lost the ability to speak for a few seconds.

Okra is perhaps one of the most misunderstood vegetables (well, it’s a fruit, technically) around. It is noted for its extremely slimy, gummy or mushy texture in food that is poorly prepared (read: if you are from the North, you probably think it is just one of those silly Southern things like deep fried pickles; if you are from the South, you ate fried okra at some point in your life with varying extreme reactions.) It is native to Africa and if you check out its cross-section, it’s in the shape of a pentagon.

There’s only one dish I have ever had with okra that really made me see its potential: bhindi (okra) masala. I scoured the internet for recipes, took a field trip to an Indian grocery (and nearly lost the liquid from my empty stomach as I saw a whole lamb, legs and all, being hacked up at the butcher) and ended up with something that was pretty phenomenal.

Intense recipe post jump –