Raise your hand if you’ve received the email forward about the woman who ate a a cookie at the Neiman Marcus cafe and asked for the recipe, the waitress said it was “two fifty”, the woman thought it was $2.50 and then saw her credit card was charged $250, so she mass distributed the recipe [...]

As an added bonus they have a restaurant which serves breakfast and lunch and even has a Vegan menu! We ate lunch while we were there, and it was fresh and delicious! I can’t wait to go back for breakfast!

This was my haul for the day, believe me I talked myself out of many many items!

Challah Bread
2 Sourdough Bread Starter Mixes
Cute teaspoon and tablespoon measurer
7 Grain Hot Cereal
Barley Malt Syrup *(for making Bagels)
A cool little brush for cleaning my cupcake pans

It was a great trip and I cannot wait to go back!

As an added bonus right across the street (literally) is the manufacturer of the best bread I have ever eaten, seriously!

It is called Dave’s Killer Bread and we could smell it the minute we pulled into the parking lot. They have a great variety of whole grain breads and some sweet ones too. His newest bread is called Sin Dawg and holy moly it is the best thing I have had in quite some time! (it is a whole grain Cinnamon Bread)

Dave has a checkered past but turned his life around and makes the best bread in the world. I am not a fan of nutty, whole, good for you bread, but this is the SHIT! Trust me, delicious! If you can get some, do so, and it freezes beautifully!

One final note, you can order from either place online!

September is tomatillo season around here. Little green lanterns hang from our tomatillo plants like ornaments on a well decorated Xmas tree. Do you ever cook with tomatillos? They look like smallish green tomatoes, and are even called “tomate verde” in Mexico, and are used for making salsa verde and chile verde. Tomatillos are typically boiled with some chiles to make the green salsa, but roasting them, as I’ve done in this recipe, will bring out more flavor. If you don’t have access to fresh tomatillos, you can use canned salsa verde for the sauce (sort of like using canned tomatoes versus fresh).

Continue reading “Tomatillo Chicken Stew” »

I have some great vintage and out-of-print cookbooks on my shelves and I thought I would highlight recipes from a few of them in the coming weeks. There are also some exciting new releases out there as well, and I’ll try to highlight some of those too. But I thought I’d start off by building on an idea from The Vegetarian Compass written by Karen Hubert Allison, published in 1998. This was the only cookbook written by Karen, and it is full of unexpected and unique combinations of ingredients and flavors. Her roasted squash is filled with corn, milk, anise seed, and chopped scallions. You then bake until the filling has set, and finish with white cheddar cheese.

Let me back up and tell you a bit about the book overall. It’s not flashy. It is photo-free, and printed with gray and purple ink. And yet, this is a book I’m inspired by each time I pull it from my shelf. It is full of sophisticated ideas, techniques, and flavors. Many of the recipes have a little story attached, and each recipe in the book seems to have real intent behind it. Said another way, you get the sense that she felt strongly about every recipe she included.

I was too young to know anything about it at the time, but Karen (along with her husband Len Allison) was the former owner of the three-star New York City restaurant Huberts. She taught at the Culinary Institute of America. The Vegetarian Compass was published posthumously after her death from breast cancer in 1997. Josh Wesson was a young sommelier at Hubert’s in the 80’s and is quoted in Karen’s obituary saying,

”Before there was a Greenmarket, there was Karen Hubert and Len Allison seeking out little growers and artisanal makers of cheese and bringing them down to this restaurant.”

Clearly she was ahead of her time. I could go on quite a bit more, but mostly I just wanted you to know that I find inspiration in this book - and I thought it would be nice if Karen’s recipes and ideas lived on in more kitchens. If you see a copy in a second-hand store, be sure to spend some time with it.

I’ve adapted today’s recipe from the Acorn Squash filled with Corn Pudding in The Vegetarian Compass. It involved roasting, making a filling, filling the squash, and roasting some more. If you don’t have an hour and a half to dedicate to roasting, here’s an alternative approach that came to mind as I was making it. Roast the squash until it is cooked through and beginning to brown a bit on top. Then sprinkle each half with grated white cheddar cheese and use the broiler to brown the cheese on top. Serve topped with hot, buttered corn and some scallions and/or herbs.

Continue reading Roasted Corn Pudding in Acorn Squash…