Party Recipes

A Week of Cookbook Shooting and Spicy Sriracha Garlic Knots

February 2, 2012
spicy garlic knots

This has been an incredible week at the Steamy Kitchen Compound/Resort/Farm/Retreat. Home. Diane and I red-eyed a flight across the country on Sunday night, arriving with the sunrise on Monday. Jaden is in the process of her next fantabulous cookbook and we came in for the week to help her power through a section of the photography. We rounded out the team with Jenna from Eat, Live, Run to complete our shooting posse.
This week flew by. Jenna and I prepped, seared, and sliced away in the kitchen while Diane and Jaden sistered up in Jaden’s studio to finish styling »

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Shredded Pork Banh Mi Bites- A Take on Tapas

January 15, 2012
Vietnamese Banh Mi Sandwich Recipe

Too much of a good thing is certainly possible. Take for example, my favorite sandwich in the world, Vietnamese Banh Mi. But wait, before you blame me for being biased (you’re absolutely right anyways), allow me to clarify a few things about my subjective love of this sandwich.

Yes, I’m Viet-Nam born, am Vietnamese at heart, and grew up eating banh mi for as long as I can remember when I started chewing solid foods. I often took this sandwich for granted as a grade school kid and was often embarrassed about taking it into my school lunch bag for »

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Curried Smashed Potatoes – Crispy Addictions

November 21, 2011
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Smashed Potatoes. Not mashed. Cooked whole, smashed to flatten and crack, then seared on a pan to crisp up. It is our favorite way to have a good potato, and that’s saying a lot considering how much comfort and love we have for the almighty tuber.

Smashed potatoes have been around for quite a while, but for us our exposure and love of smashed potatoes comes from some of our favorite ladies in the kitchen. Cristina Ferrare fixed us up a batch for her cookbook we photographed, A Big Bowl of Love. Then made them again for the cover shoot »

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Garlic Chicken Spring Rolls – My Un-Diet from Pleasantly Plump to Zip

August 21, 2011
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I know I’m not the only one who has gone through this, so I thought I’d finally say it publicly after 3 years of blogging.

Food blogging made me chunky-er, pleasantly plump or what ever you want to call it. My jeans didn’t zip anymore.

I’m not comfortable with the term “fat”. That F-word is so harsh and ugly. As true, blunt and effective it might be to get the point across that I need to get my ass on the tread mill, I don’t like “fat”.

I love chunky and pleasantly plump because it’s delicious sounding. These are yummy »

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Peach and Heirloom Tomato Salad – Summer Fest

July 6, 2011
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Summer Fest is a season long, bi-weekly event where Food Network editors team up with blogs to share tips and recipes about seasonal produce. During Summer Fest, we celebrate the the seasons explosion of fresh produce and inspired recipes.  This week’s theme are peaches and to participate, just share your peach recipe link in our blog on the comments below, as well as the blogs of all our participating friends!

Throughout the Summer we’re always staring at baskets full of heirloom tomatoes  and fresh fruit from the garden. This is definitely a good thing.  Not only do we get to »

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Seasonally simple garden Heirloom tomatoes. Celebrating Summer’s arrival.

June 19, 2011
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This consistently cool weather had us apprehensive, particularly as heirloom tomato gardeners. With almost 20 heirloom tomatoes plants that we’ve been nurturing over the last few months, all we were hoping for was some hot sun to get these plants to bolt out with tomatoes. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much of the sun!

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New Potato & Pea Salad from Melissa Clark

June 14, 2011
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Spring Fling is here and were celebrating Spring’s bounty with  Food Network,  Away to Garden, What’s Gaby Cooking and Food 52

This week’s theme is peas and to participate, just share your pea recipe link in our blog on the comments below, as well as the blogs of all our participating friends.

The end of Spring is fast approaching and we’re enjoying sweet peas as often as we can until the last pod appears at the markets. With another Spring Fling event planned for this week, we were searching for some interesting pea recipes to share. Nothing really unique came »

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Hardcore Vietnamese Bánh Mì- The “Bang Me”‘ Fried Egg Recipe

June 12, 2011
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A naughty conversation on Twitterled me to scribble this post in my head. My mental ramblings often distract me from daily priorities and combine that with the power of twitter chit chat, I was pretty worthless for the rest of the day. I adore twitter hard, really hard because it’s enlightened me with new friendships and stimulating discussions that reach the far corners of the world. #Twitter #Love

Bánh Mì, the Vietnamese sandwich that has become a cultural icon, was the topic that excitedly ensued when I put out this twitter tweet to my tweeps (twitter code talk for 140 »

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Chipotle Shredded Pork Enchiladas – Family Recipe from Muy Bueno Cookbook

May 5, 2011
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Happy Cinco De Mayo! Today we’re celebrating with a guest recipe from some of our favorite ladies. Please welcome our guest writers today: Evangelina, Yvette and Veronica, the lovely ladies from Muy Bueno Cookbook.

Today they are sharing the write-up for their amazing stacked Chipotle Shredded Pork Enchiladas!! They are home-cooks from El Paso, Texas who share their love of family, culture and food on their wonderful blog.

Photography by Todd & Diane (that’s us) and this fabulous Recipe is from Muy Bueno Cookbook.»

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Cucumber and Zucchini Carpaccio Salad – Cristina Ferrare’s Big Bowl of Love

May 1, 2011
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We love our job. Of course there are always challenges that come with each project we photograph or film, but at the end of the day we are always thankful for the wonderful people that we work with and Cristina Ferrare is one of those wonderous souls that help us love our job to no end.

Last year she selected us to photograph her new cookbook, Big Bowl of Love, which is also the title of her cooking show on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

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