Hi guys, Todd here. It’s taken me a week and a half, but I’m finally ready for the Super Bowl. Like the majority of the fans across the league we’ve seen our teams bounced out of contention, week by week. A season’s worth of hopes, rooting, agony, and aspiration whittled down to two teams, neither or which most of us call our own.
It’s not that I don’t like the Ravens or 49ers. In fact I love their coaches, respect both teams, and if the »
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It’s cold, unforgiving, and can bite to the bone sending shivers throughout the body. Sometimes you just want to wrap yourself up and hide from it. Somehow seeking warmth and comfort from its ugliness. Oh yeah, and the weather can be bad too.
Too much lately have we been reminded of the ugliness of life. We all approach life differently, savoring the sweetness and swallowing the bitterness in our own ways. For Diane and I, we struggle with the seeming pointlessness of writing about food »
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By Friday, the fever pitch is nearly at its bursting point. The workday’s best day of the week, the harbinger of the weekend, and it seems like the day lasts for an eternity. After all, it is almost game day.
For me, football fan-aticism is a fairly new emotion. You see, I grew up in northeastern Oregon. The state has no NFL team, and even though many will be quick to chime in, “but you have the Ducks”, referring to the University of Oregon’s furious »
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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 »
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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 »
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It’s safe to say that regardless of how many tacos we eat, we can always find room in our stomachs to fit more. Layers of fresh salsa, pickled vegetables and warm chile heat make tacos so exciting to eat. Each is unique, customized and no two tacos are alike.
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Are you ready for some football and more chicken wings?! Ahhhh!!! More than likely you are probably sick of hearing about football and the Super Bowl. “If I see one more Super Bowl round up….” Ka Pow!
And I can hardly blame you. Between the analysts blabbering non-stop about every nuance between the teams, the journalists laying down words depicting anything interesting or not about the players, even the length of their hair, to the food bloggers gearing up their sites trying to capture every »
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go ahead, make a mess.
Hold on tight, you’ll be pleased to know that these chili cheese fries are fresh, home-made, hand-made and fried with only the best yukon gold potatoes and grape seed oil. No need to sneak through the drive-through to satisfy your greasy cravings. You can do that in the sacred privacy of your own home.»
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(violins & cellos in the air… Masterpiece theatre sets the stage…)
Crusty, charred Lines of Black
Gentle crumb singed Golden. Soft.
Day old. Resuscitated.»
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For 10 years my working life was swallowed up by a cafe/market where we made some of the most badass garlic knots around. Those combined with an espresso were my regular sustenance on countless non-stop, never pause for a breath days. Screw the labor laws with required break-times, as a GM there is too much to be done in too short of a time. The garlic knots were the perfect grab-&-go nosh. I never got tired of them, never even tired of their beautiful »
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There are few things which declare California summers like grilled shrimp and tequilla. Usually in separate moments, or side by side… Margarita anyone?! However in an instant of lazy brilliance, we combined the twoto form an intoxicating bit of deliciousness.»
Read the full story → As promised, “Voila!” the mango salsa recipe that toppled over our teriyaki burger post a few days ago. And we’re thrilled that we actually wrote about it, as promised, considering how behind we’ve been on everything else! The office is a mess, the bathrooms need cleaning and we have 2 other projects behind schedule, but at least we wrote out the mango salsa recipe!
The feeling of accomplishment is sincerely overwhelming.
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Read the full story →A while back, we were lamenting about how overly sweet and artificial some bottled teriyaki sauces were. With the exception of one that we liked on our teriyaki burgers, most were too sugary. Fake tasting. Processed. Yuck.
With the grilling season underway, we wanted some teriyaki variety to our bbq menu and it was always a struggle to search for a bottle that didn’t look like a goop of sugary, sticky brown blue. We needed to think outside the bottle and needed to be quick »
Read the full story →A rare day off, the sun was out, and the air springtime warm. A day peacefully spent meddling about in the garden, harvesting the last of the sugar snap peas and planting tomatoes and veggies in their stead, throwing in the occasional play session with the dogs. Video it and soundtrack in some music, and it becomes one of the moments to be shown at a birthday or funeral which evoke the crowd’s tears reminding how great life can be.
Extra crunchy charred prawn eyeballs. »
Read the full story →My little brother is man of few words. Indeed, he’s grown-up, a man who is only a few years my junior, but he’ll always be a little brother to me.
Since childhood, his silence was often overlooked because with so many frolicking kids in one household, all the loud chatter and squabble over the one television was usually ignored. With 6 high energy kids between the ages of 5-16, my parents became selectively deaf to all our loud obsessions and disputes over the Atari game »
Read the full story →I’m often impatient in the kitchen when it comes to having to use the oven to bake a simple dish. Just the thought of having to pre-heat the oven makes me cringe at the waste of time and energy it takes to create a simple meal. It’s a relief for me to be able to adapt a dish that is traditionally baked in the oven to be cooked on the stove. My impatience enjoys the fact that it doesn’t have to wait for the oven »
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All right folks, hold on tight because you’re going to be blown away at how amazing these sriracha chicken wings are. If you’re a lover of Sriracha hot sauce, or any sriracha brand of hot sauce for that matter, these chicken wings will fly off your platter. The first test batch of these sriracha chicken wings almost disappeared within seconds of coming out of the oven. We literally inhaled eight of these chicken wings in 3 minutes because the sriracha sauce was so good. So »
Read the full story → There are some dishes that resonate with such deep memories that they will be forever associated with someone or something. Oftentimes they will be simple dishes made by someone close to your heart. For me one of those dishes would be potato pancakes.
Potato pancakes were of my favorite sides that Grandma occasionally served with her dinners. She’d have a small gathering of friends over and they’d all start with Scotch on the rocks, wine or other beverage of choice; some appetizers, maybe a crudites »
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For the longest time, we’ve been making the best darn hamburger on the face of this earth (insert personal bias.) We’ve never had a specific name for the recipe until someone tagged it as the “magic meat”, but not as in “mystery meat” or “I can’t tell if this is chicken or beef.” Rather, it was to describe the magical flavor sensations that everyone experienced when they bit into one of our patties. That “magic meat” term described the juicy, flavorful and savory burger patty »
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I’m admitting that I have an eating issue when it comes to anything warm, rich, cheesy and gooey. Add a bold red glass of wine and a crusty baguette, I’ll inhale a big bowl of any cheese dip that was accidentally left in front of me.
I’ll even confess to the fact that I troll all party buffet tables until I can be the last one to scrape the bottom and the edges of the dip bowl. That’s where the best part of the charred, »
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