Pine Nuts - - Page 7

by BS

Who Cooked It Better? National Goat Cheese Month

First of all, many apologies for slacking on the Who Cooked It Better front. I was off eating in the Holy Land for awhile (much more on that to come), and was then distracted by Olympic foods, and I let our weekly feature fall by the wayside. Well, August is National Goat Cheese Month, as I’m sure you all knew. So what better time to celebrate one of the best ingredients there is?

Unfortunately, goat cheese tends to get an un-versatile rap. Sure, we all know by now that it goes great with fig jam, can be mixed in with pasta, or baked in a tart with onions. But as the most malleable type of cheese, we sometimes forget that goat cheese can do anything! Seriously people, name something I wouldn’t put goat cheese on/in – I challenge you.

So in honor of National Goat Cheese Month, I scoured the Internet for the most creative uses of goat cheese – recipes that really push the boundaries. Now it’s up to you all to pick the best of the best.

The goat cheese salad on the top left is from Chriesi at Almond Corner. Now, I know what you’re thinking: goat cheese in a salad is hardly original. But wait ’til you hear the total mockery AC makes of salad. It’s goat cheese, wrapped in prosciutto, fried, and then served in a salad. Full details and more pictures over at Almond Corner.

Next up is a video recipe from Chris at realmeals.tv, who adopts a similar wrapped-in-pig motif but ditches the green stuff. Chris first covers his goat cheese in bread crumbs that are cut with — be still my heart — pine nuts, then rolls the whole thing up in bacon and deep fries it. He looses a point for calling the dish bacon goat cheese nuggets (nuggets is on my bottom five least appetizing menu words list), but other than that, these babies are pretty close to heaven. Full recipe and video instructions at realmeals.tv.

Plenty of people have discovered the art of stuffing chicken with goat cheese, but I’ve got to hand it to the Beantown Baker for having the guts to stuff it in fish. Her goat cheese stuffed salmon steaks are on the bottom left, and while I never would have thought of this, how could it go wrong? Goat cheese strikes again. Recipe at Beantown Baker.

Lastly, here’s one for you veggie goat cheese lovers. Joe at foodie nyc offers up this fresh and original appetizer. Joe juices some fennel fronds (woooah, wha?!?), then whips it up with lemon juice and extra virgin to create the sauce the goat cheese is wading in. The goat cheese is then topped with fried leeks for an extra onion-y bite. Directions: “Simply slice off a bit of your goat cheese, bath it gently in the fennel juice vinaigrette, and smear it onto a cracker or piece of toasted crostini.” The “simply” part is a lie, but way to go, Joe. Full instructions at foodie nyc.

Your votes, por favor.

[poll id=”20″]

by BS

Momofuku You, Too

Check out my article over at Wired about the pure craziness surrounding getting one of the 12 seats at Momofuku Ko.

So much has already been written about the food at Momofuku Ko, so I won’t bore you with yet another full rundown of the 10-course tasting menu. But I did manage to snag a reservation (don’t ask how!) so I do of course have a few points I just have to share.

– The first thing they serve you is an English muffin. I shit you not. They even call it that. Of course it has pork fat slathered on top. Naturally.

in Uncategorized 6 comments

by Russell Warnick

My Beach House and I; Killer Tomato Edition.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before but I have a second home. It’s nothing glamorous, just a small house on the beach that I go to with my friends every weekend in the summer, as one does, I suspect you have one too? While at the house my friends and I tend to cook a little more than we usually would while at our primary residence here in DC, as the restaurants can get a little boring down at the shore. Sometimes our cooking adventures are noteworthy and other times they are not. Over the course of the summer I will write a series of posts about my beach house cooking adventures, providing they are ES-worthy. This past weekend one of my friends, BJ, who I share the house with, whipped up something in a matter of moments that was indeed worth sharing.

As you may have read, tomatoes are on their way out. Apparently there is something called salmonella that has struck down tomatoes in the US. The source is not yet known but as a precaution red tomatoes are off the menu. BJ decided he was not going to be put off by this nonsense so he invested in some orange tomatoes. Daring, I know. He made a superb orange tomato, artichoke and pine nut bruschetta–his recipe is after the jump.

in Veggie 11 comments

by BS

Who Cooked It Better? Washington Post vs. Today Show

Miranda ruled the roost in last week’s SatC-themed Who Cooked It Better, taking home a winning 36 percent of the vote for her pomatini. We promise not to mention this over-saturated media event any further, and this week have returned to a much manlier theme.

As pre-summertime kicks into full gear, everyone is taking it to the grills, so we weren’t surprised to see two of our favorite MSM food sources cover the same topic this week: grilled pizza. As an added bonus, both of ’em went interactive, offering up a video and slideshow, so we couldn’t resist giving this to you as a Who Cooked It Better?

Over at WaPo, Tony Rosenfeld put together this handy slide show, with audio instructions on how to grill that perfect pie. Tony gives a great explanation about how to make a perfectly crispy dough that won’t fall apart on the grill (hint: restraint with the toppings, while difficult, is crucial). He tops it up with crumbled fontina, chicken, asparagus and red peppers over a pesto base. Certainly a little healthier than us NYCers are used to seeing our pizza come out, but hey, this is grilling, so it’s a whole new ballgame.

Over on NBC’s Today Show, Elizabeth Karmel brings us the below video, which really is worth a watch.

Elizabeth starts out in the minus zone with her decision to use a gas(p!) grill and suggestion to cheat your way through the crust process, because “grilling the dough makes all dough taste great.” She quickly wins me back with her polenta and olive oil base, and then it gets interesting. Elizabeth tops her pizza “whimsically,” and this is not an understatement. Among her suggested combinations: ‘cheeseburger pizza’ with ground beef and american cheese, a dessert pizza with ricotta and berries, even a cream cheese, lox and chives pizza. Holy crap!

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in Cheese / Desserts / Fish 3 comments

by BS

The Gansiefication of BS

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and cook an entire meal without pork or pine nuts.

The problem with this whole food blog thing is that every time I cook a meal, I feel like I have to do something really original and different – or at least put a new bloggable spin on it – so that I can share the results with you guys. It’s a lot to live up to. Every time I make a plain old quesadilla or just boil up some noodles, I can’t help but think that I’m wasting valuable cooking time on something that isn’t good enough to blog. It’s kind of stressful actually. See what you people are doing to me?

I recently realized that because I’m always trying to do something new, I never even think to make everyone else’s great recipes that appear on this site, which really was the whole point of this thing in the first place. So when I had a half-empty fridge and no original ideas goin on recently, I decided I should try out one of gansie’s more delicious looking creations, Eggplant and Chickpea Lasagna.

Before Gansie says wait, wait, wait, that pansy little slice looks nothing like my beautiful hearty lasagna, I did make a few modifications, just so I would have something to write about. Details after the j.

in Veggie 8 comments

by BS

Kids in the Halloumi

I first discovered halloumi cheese in South Africa last year. A trendy SA chain called News Cafe serves an avocado salad with fried halloumi, grilled brinjal and peppadews. Since I didn’t know what any of those things were, I had to try it. I ended up making several return trips for this amazing fried cheese.

For the record, brinjal is just eggplant, and peppadew is a spicy red pepper native to South Africa. But that’s beside the point, because halloumi was the real discovery. This super-salty, extra-firm-but-slimy goat/sheep’s milk cheese is actually from Cyprus, and if you try to say otherwise, the Halloumi Police will get you.

I’m not sure why it’s so prevalent in South Africa, but I have never noticed it stateside before, so when I spied it at the co-op last week, I jumped for it.

In taste, it’s probably most similar to a queso blanco, and like that Mexican cheese, it’s most exciting because it can be fried or grilled. A few recipes around the web recommend dipping it in flour, but I just tried it straight up and got this nice golden brown after frying thin slices for about a minute each side in extra virgin. The outside is a crisp golden brown and the inside is just a tad melty.

Since I didn’t have any peppadews lying around, I made my own version of the salad, with roasted red peppers, cucumbers, and of course, pine nuts.

*This post is tagged both Greek and Middle Eastern for redundancy’s sake, not as an attempt to fuel any cheese-related territorial conflicts.

in Cheese / Recipe / Veggie 12 comments

by BS

Don’t Worry, That Duck Bacon Hasn’t Gone Bad Yet

So I have to admit, I’ve been less of a crazy chef since moving back home to New York. When not surrounded by 10 like-minded culinarians living on the same block, I’m a lot less likely to come up with insanity like hot dog sushi. If I’m just cooking for myself, I often end up preparing a non-blog-worthy sandwich, salad or stir-fry. Which kind of sucks, because, you know, I have a food blog.

But this week, I finally got around to watching the Top Chef Holiday Special on DVR. In addition to such scenes as Padma playing Dirty Santa (not nearly as exciting as it sounds), it got me right back into the mood to be running around my kitchen, hastily throwing random ingredients together in attempts to semi-invent something semi-fancy. Remembering I had some awesome leftovers like duck bacon in the freezer, I put together this quickfire dinner.

If I was Rachel Ray, I’d call it a gourmet 30-minute meal. But then I would have to tell you dumbass things like its OK to substitute baloney for prosciutto, so let’s just call it a tortellini explosion.

in Bacon / Cheese / Fowl / TV 7 comments