Owner: Kitchen Warfare URL:http://www.oo.com Join Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:05:40 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A humorous and unpretentious look at what’s happening in the world of food and food news. Site statistics:Click here
Outstanding Pizza From Scratch In 50 minutes 2007-04-15 02:30:00 One obstacle you may encounter when scratch cooking for other folks is the time quality food prep can and often takes. Consider that in a mind powered by a starving stomach you and your raw ingredients, sharp cutlery and expensive cookware are up against a 1500 watt microwave and a box of frozen Stouffer’s (NO of COURSE I can’t make a Lasagna from scratch in 3 minutes
and 20 seconds!). Now I can’t say I know for sure that the people I cook for wouldn’t rather eat frozen dinners but I can say with absolute certainty they know not to bring the subject up.
Two other things we’ve been experimenting with more recently is our ban on grocery store bread and take out pizzas. Now to be clear there are fine pizzeria’s that make outstanding pies but in this case we’re talking about the franchise on the way home. A good homemade pizza just plain hands down smokes any of those guys and if you haven’t yet proven this to yourself you should.
(more&h Read more:Pizza
, Scratch
Recipe: White Garlic Sauce Pizza 2007-04-15 02:27:14 This pizza is referenced (with picture) in the article ‘Outstanding Pizza
From Scratch In 50 minutes’
The motivation for this pie was to see how quickly I could prepare a pizza from scratch. What started as an Iron Chef sort of effort ended up as an excellent pizza I’ll make again and again.
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Read more:Garlic
, White
Our Orange Rum Cake Does Not Suck 2007-04-09 04:03:04 When I was a kid growing up in Florida one of our holiday favorites was Orange
Rum cake. Its a little different than the typical hodgepodge of cakes and besides it was just fun to make. I liked helping to shave the orange and lemon zest (peel) and there was something cool even then about a cake that needed to sit for a few days before you could eat it. And it had RUM. No matter that its hardly a trace amount, as a kid it was just a fun cake and we looked forward to it every year at Christmas.
Once we were grown and out of the house the Orange Rum Cakes became less and less frequent. I really missed this cake especially during the holidays and in fact the effort to preserve the ‘traditional’ Orange Rum cake was one of my first culinary ‘quests’. I pestered my family for months for the recipe which was in a lost book scratched on an index card by some distant relative in barely readable scrawl. Finally after a few years someone stumbled on the book, the card dropped out and the
Italian Herb Bread 2007-04-01 04:01:50
When I decided I was in an Italian
mood the first thing I did was to select a bread because bread usually takes the longest amount of time.
I wanted to try something new so I googled around and settled on this Italian Herb Bread
I found on AllRecipes originally from Ann Barr.
In spite of the momentary lapse of reason on my part, it came out very well. The first loaf didn’t quite rise as well as it should have during baking but that was in no doubt because of the lasagna and the oven temperature not being steady. But once the lasagna was done the 2nd loaf rose to perfection.
Other than using the KitchenAid stand mixer to do the kneading I followed the recipe. However I think next time I’ll increase the seasonings a bit, at least the herbs. But then I really like to taste my herbs and spices, if you enjoy things a bit more subtle then leave it as is. Either way its a delicious addition to your table.
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A Momentary Lapse Of Reason 2007-04-01 03:58:50 When I started thinking about dinner tonight I started to think Italian and that evolved into Lasagna and Italian Herb Bread. About half way through both projects I suddenly remembered I only had one oven.
Sigh . . .
Kitchen Warfare and not the good kind.
Calculating everything out there is no way of getting everything done and plated on time without the bread and lasagna occupying the oven at the same time. I had to transfer the already risen dough from a large flat pan to a section of aluminum foil to get it to fit in my small oven. This worked out really well all things considered but in the process of making space the oven temperature dropped which ultimately caused the bread to only rise about 75% of what it should have. It was still very good and the subsequent loaf baked properly was perfect.
Read more:Lapse
, Reason
A Most Excellent Lasagna 2007-04-01 02:51:28
The nice thing about Lasagna
other than its lure to commit deadly sin #2 is that its very easy to make an outstanding dish of it, you just need a good recipe.
Here’s why.
Generally speaking a successful effort in the kitchen requires 3 things-
A good plan (recipe, imagination, etc)
Using the best ingredients you can reasonably/affordably obtain
Proper execution
So assuming you have a good recipe (we do) and you get good quality ingredients it comes down to execution and if you can brown meat, cut vegetables and beat an egg you can make an outstanding lasagna.
While the bread dough for the Italian Herb Bread was rising and the sauce for the lasagna was simmering and before I had the momentary lapse of reason I thought I’d learn a little about Lasagna. The most disturbing thing I learned was the original root word meant ‘chamber pot’ and the funniest thing I learned was that the British and Italians have been scrapping over who can lay claim to the first Lasagn
First Honorary Kitchen Warrior: Guy Fieri 2007-03-27 04:43:19 Who?
Guy Fieri, host of Food Network’s cooking show ‘Guy’s Big Bite’ has the dubious honor of being named our first official KitchenWarrior
.
Before we go too far with this, lets be clear. 1) Guy has no idea he has received this honor if for no reason other than 2) I just made it up this afternoon and 3) there is as good a chance as any that even if he DID know about our award he wouldn’t want it. I know I wouldn’t.
But it’s our award and we can give it to anyone we want. So why you ask not someone more obvious like say Alton Brown, my grandmother, your grandmother or my hillbilly friend who cooks 365 meals a year in a pressure cooker?
Well first off as far as Kitchen Warfare goes (the concept, not the blog) Alton’s an icon. The dean, the godfather. His likeness is everywhere on campus. Calling Alton a Kitchen Warrior is like calling Emmit Smith a football player. We all already know it. Grandmothers are out, lest we be accused of nepo Read more:First
, Honorary
The Year Is 1932. The Recipe Is Toast. 2007-03-25 09:52:37
Another hobby of mine is collecting ephemera which if you don’t know is collectable paper. Letters, papers, bookmarks, postcards, recipe cards, advertising pieces, stock certificates, basically all kinds of paper. Some people say it includes pamphlets and magazines. Some say not.
What does this have to do with cooking or even Kitchen Warfare you ask? Well probably not as much as it should. But hang in there, we’re still going to learn to make toast.
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Read more:Toast
Bun There Done That: Yeast Rolls In 80 Minutes 2007-03-23 03:02:39 For the last few months we’ve been completely boycotting store bought breads.
Initially it was more of a challenge (game) just to see if we could do it but it didn’t take long for us to become pretty accustomed to high quality (most of the time!) baked goods. I don’t mean this in the sense that I’ve mastered baking because that’s far (far) from true (really far) but rather in the sense that pretty much anything you manage to get baked (heh, he said ‘get baked’) using fresh ingredients in your home be it in your oven, bread machine or solar heated stone pile is going to be better than the $3 loaf of over chemical saturated dough that you find in the grocery. Its really true, I swear it. Get just about any dough pile together stick it in a hot oven and when it reaches 190 degrees in the center take it out slice it up and you’re going to be ahead of the game. And your house will smell great!
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Read more:Rolls
, Yeast
Kudos’ KitchenAid! 2007-03-23 03:01:57 We’ve barely had time to learn the nuances of our new mixer and the $30 rebate check showed up. We sent the rebate in on 3/6 and had a check in the mailbox on 3/19th. That’s got to be a record for a rebate, it usually takes most companies 6 months to get you .50 cents.
Read more:KitchenAid
Breakfast - It’s What’s For Dinner 2007-04-23 22:14:50 There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for breakfast any more. I don’t mean your daily high fiber whole wheat muffin and slice of mango. I mean a good down home traditional American breakfast. The breakfast meals of our my youth were high calorie high fat affairs that would drown a kitchen in oil, grease and batter before the sun was even up. Eventually however my mother joined the workforce and by the time I was in high school like everyone else I was eating pop tarts and frozen waffles on my way out the door. Nowadays breakfast has been served up as a sacrifice in the war on fat, the war on calories and the war on getting to work and school on time. And for good reason, it’s probably not the best thing to have our daily allotment of calories and fat before noon.
So what is a traditional American breakfast?
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Read more:Breakfast
, Dinner
The Warfare Scramble 2007-04-22 22:18:21 The Warfare
Scramble is sort of a breakfast stir fry of potatoes, eggs, bacon or sausage, and cheese. Or swap the meat for your favorite veggies. Or add everything you can think of. Good stuff.
Note: The method we use here for our potatoes is an easy and healthy way to fry potatoes ANYTIME.
The Warfare Scramble
Serves 2
Time to prepare: 25-30 minutes
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‘Will It Blend?’ and more Blendtec Blender Blather 2007-05-05 07:05:24 When I first saw Tom Dickson turn a rake handle into sawdust with a blender I thought he might be a candidate for our dubious prestigious Honorary Kitchen Warrior award. But as it turns out he’s just a guy trying to sell blenders.
But what the heck, overall commercials are a lot more fun to watch nowadays than they used to be. And the ‘Will It Blend
?’ series is no exception, its so much fun watching Tom blend everything from marbles to cell phones that its easy to ignore that someone’s trying to sell you something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY8MqWBIHvo
The first impression after seeing your first video of the Blendtec is bound to be ‘My gosh that’s a powerful blender’ (assuming you think in family friendly expletives). Then once you get the idea you’ll want to see them all (see end of article for link). Completely pulverizing stuff, it seems more like a shop tool that a kitchen appliance.
More power! Somewhere Tim Allen grunts. My Read more:Blender
Light Oat Bread 2007-05-12 19:44:07 This is one of my favorite ‘white’ loaf breads, it has a wonderful taste and texture. Don’t read oats and think lumps because they just disappear in the finished loaf and all that remains is a hint of flavor. And to top it off this bread has a beautiful crust and a sturdy rise so its a great one to bake when you want something you can count on to taste AND look good.
Also like most basic breads its also quite versatile. I first saw this recipe as a highly regarded bread machine recipe in a MasterCook collection in the 90’s. I’ve never actually made it in a bread machine and have always just doubled the recipe and made it conventionally by hand or with a stand mixer.
This one is highly recommended, you’ll not be disappointed.
Here are both the conventional and bread machine versions, as you can see it wasn’t rocket science.
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Read more:Bread
Garden Warfare 2007-05-19 20:48:01 As you know here at Kitchen Warfare
we’re a big believer in quality ingredients and there just isn’t anything fresher, tastier and healthier than what you can grow in your own garden.
Or as our indigenous rural neighbors say, ‘Food for the Table’.
You may not think you have the space to make growing your own food worthwhile and while more is definitely better you don’t need a lot of space to get something you can use and really appreciate. Even on a window sill or apartment balcony you can generally grow a few herbs, spices or tomatoes that I guarantee will take your food up a notch. One easy to grow basil plant would make a BIG difference in every dish that called for it.
Additionally many herbs can be grown indoors just like any other house plant except you can eat them. And what if you forget to water and care for them and they wither and die? You still get to eat them.
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Read more:Garden
BBQ Chicken Stir Fry 2007-05-23 12:00:47 When the fledgling Kitchen Warrior first begins the transition from the freezer to the pantry often the biggest ‘gotcha’ is that a little more time and planning is required. Folks don’t always appreciate this and just assume we’re always ready to whip something up even in THEIR kitchen regardless of what ingredients they have on hand. I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me ‘Hey you’re a good cook have a cooking blog’ can’t you just MAKE something?
To that end its definitely a good idea to have a few quick and simple dishes in your arsenal and this recipe could certainly be one of them. And even better you don’t have to let people in on how simple it is. Simply explain that recently you’ve been exploring the subtleties of BBQ
<-> Stir Fry
fusion and this is one of your latest creations. Trust me it doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does. Throw in a few ‘explosion Read more:Chicken
Hot! Hot! Hot! Red Beans And Sausage 2007-05-29 16:17:39 Sometimes the food we fix has a great story. This one doesn’t.
I mean I’m sure it does for some folks but for me my grandma never made it when I was a kid, I never lived in Cajun country and I never found a lost recipe for it in an old family cookbook that I parlayed into Uncle Chowhound’s Famous Homemade Long Lost Original Classic Family HomeStyle Red Beans
and Sausage
(available at grocery stores near you!).
Pretty cool how I can get a whole paragraph out of ‘ no story’ isn’t it?
Of course there always is a story of some sort and this one is that I was asked to make this dish so I tracked down a few recipes and found this well reviewed effort. We fix Northern beans quite often which is a long day with a crockpot (slow cooker). Typically so are traditional red beans but this recipe that calls for 3 cans of beans took less than an hour and was surprisingly good. Next time out we’ll try a crockpot recipe and I’m sure we’l
Ain’t No Cure For The Summertime Blues(berry Cobbler) 2007-06-05 15:26:12 With acres to mow and our large garden getting started it seems we have a lot less time to spend in the kitchen this time of year. So to that end we’re always up for good quality food that doesn’t involve a drive thru (of course I say the same thing during football season). Nothing against fast food mind you, it has its time and place but where we live it’s a 45 min round trip to the nearest Burger Doodle anyway so any quality food we can fix in under an hour is as our First Honorary Kitchen Warrior Guy Fieri says ‘money’.
Enter that summertime favorite, Blueberry Cobbler.
Of course you can use a lot of different fruits in cobblers but blueberries have always been my favorite. Because fresh Blueberries are a bit pricey I’ve looked at adding them to our garden but as it turns out they’re a PITA to grow in our area because not only do they take 3 years to bear fruit (and 6 years to reach full production) they also require a highly acidic soil which isn’t found in here wh Read more:Blues
, Summertime
OXO Comes Through 2007-06-14 18:12:53 Just to follow up and give OXO their props I just got a brand new replacement for the broken garlic press. To be fair to OXO it arrived in our area a few days ago but because we’re on a private road in rural Can-Tuc-Kee any time we don’t get our regular UPS/FedEx/DHL driver the completely confused replacement person circles the hill once, maybe twice and then either leaves the package at a random house just to get it off the truck or at the home of the areas oldest resident who lives on the main road with a HUGE address sign making his the only house in the area that is clearly NOT the right place for the package. At least 2-3 times a week we see him puttering around on his ATV delivering packages ‘mistakenly’ left at his house.
So today he brought the garlic press and actually apologized because it sat at his house for a few days because he’d been away visiting his grandchildren. I had a few loaves of Light Oat Bread just out of the oven so at least he l
Spicy Chicken Soup Not Your Typical Summer Delight 2007-06-24 17:47:16 I’m not sure what first attracted me to a spicy soup recipe during the hot summer drought we’re experiencing on our part of the rock but for some reason I wanted to try this one the moment I saw it. Perhaps it was that I like most things that include the words ’spicy’ and ‘chicken’ or maybe it was the eclectic ingredients list but for whatever reason it ’spoke to me’ right off the bat. The original recipe has you boiling and shredding chicken for an hour, the approach we took was a LOT simpler so don’t let the long ingredients list put you off. Basically I cubed the chicken, stir fried it with the onions and garlic then just added everything else to the pot and simmered for an hour. As Darth Vader would say, ‘All too easy’.
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Read more:Chicken
, Spicy
, Summer
Reality Bites - Hell’s Kitchen vs The Next Food Network Star 2007-07-13 04:30:55 Ever since Iron Chef of Japan became a cult classic U.S. television has been experimenting with cooking contests (including Food Network
’s excellent American version of Iron Chef itself). From cakes to risotto we all want to know whose ‘cuisine reigns supreme’.
Allez Cuisine!
Two of the most popular are ‘Hell’s Kitchen
’ which has even made it into the primetime lineup on a decent network Fox and The Next Food Network Star which is Food Networks effort to get into the American Idol business of validating your talent’s popularity before engineering their stardom.
On the surface you’d think a blog called Kitchen Warfare would just love a show called Hell’s Kitchen.
Hell’s Kitchen - From Our Garbage Can To Your Table
If you’re expecting to watch a cooking competition or learn something about food I’ll save you an hour of your life. Much to my surprise popular chef Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen isn’t really about the food.
Grocery Store Bread: Now With Metal Chunks! 2007-07-29 15:56:50 At least 27 different SUPERMARKET BRANDS made by Sara Lee could be effected and have been recalled.
From the ‘Why We Like To Make Our Own Food” Dept: According to Reuters and other news sources a Sara Lee factory in Meridian, Mississippi has been spewing out loaves of bread potentially laced with chunks of metal. The company recalled the bread after they realized a flour sifter was damaged and possibly some metal had made its way into the bread. I take that to mean there were chunks of metal missing they couldn’t find. Not on the floor, not in the sifter(?) . . . D’oh! I guess its in the bread . . .
Even if you don’t think you’re a Sara Lee customer it may be important to understand and keep up with the recall. This is because Sara Lee made this bread for both regional and national groceries. The recall includes supermarket brands sold by Publix, Foodland, IGA, Wal-Mart and Piggly Wiggly among others. Plus as you may know with the recent dog food r Read more:Bread
, Grocery
, Grocery Store
, Metal
, Store
On The Road With Kitchen Warfare (Day 2) 2007-09-02 19:29:59 Today we reached our rental property in Old Town, FL which was essentially abandoned by the tenant. We’ve got some great friends in Old Town who have been looking after our interests and today we spent the day connecting with everyone and getting the utilities transferred et al. By the time dinner time came around we were starved and really looking forward to a meal at BBQ Bill’s in Chiefland, FL just down the road a piece. I don’t recall exactly when they opened (mid 90’s?) but over the years I’ve had many a breakfast and a few dinners at Bill’s and its always been pretty darn good.
Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way this time. I’ve always enjoyed Bill’s and I hate to say anything negative but it is what it is. We both had a sampler type platter - the ribs and pork were fair but the chicken breast was terribly dry, a real pet peeve of mine. Salad bar was adequate but the choices weren’t outstanding. On the other hand Read more:Kitchen
, Warfare
On The Road With Kitchen Warfare 2007-09-01 17:46:27 Road Trip! Sounds great right? I’d love to tell you that some megacorp was sponsoring an insightful journey into the American heartland and back roads in an amazing culinary adventure (you know, like our hero Alton Brown does) but that would be about as far from the truth as is possible. Instead we’re taking a trip 800 miles from northern KY to my home state of FL to check out the condition of our rental property in rural Old Town that was abruptly and mysteriously vacated by the last tenant.
Normally I prefer a road trip to any other method of travel. I absolutely love Americana - from our food to our divergent local cultures and staying off the highways and on the back roads is my real idea of the prefect vacation.
But this trip is nothing like that. It’s a grueling 13+ hour drive down the most monotonous stretch of highway as can possibly exist in a large populated country, I-75. All my life I have had to travel up and down this ugly stretch of asphalt and I simply dread the Read more:Kitchen
, Warfare
Sad Food Fact 2007-08-20 17:01:03 U.S food producers currently dedicate about 4 million acres of land to organic production, which is only 4% of al U.S. farmland.
I know this is true because it was on TV I paused the Tivo and wrote it down word for word but then forgot to note the name of the program. D’oh!
Kitchen Warfare’s Cuban Bread (Tampa Style) 2007-09-20 19:59:43 Background
The problem is I am addicted to Cuban
bread. Blame that on the fact that I was born, raised and lived in Tampa
, FL for 40 years. My grandfather’s house was in old Ybor City on 26th Ave, just down from Tampa’s premier Cuban bread producer, La Segunda Central Bakery and as a product of Latin heritage I was raised on a steady diet of Tampa style Cuban and Spanish food. But a few years back a professional opportunity took me from the Sunshine State to hill country. Now there is some real good chow here and I’ve learned a lot of new things but no Pan Cubano. There are a lot other things I miss, like empanadas, guava pastelitos, stuffed potatoes and a few other favorites. But with the accessibility of key ingredients from online Latin groceries I’ve gotten pretty good at making a lot of these foods right here at home. But Cuban Bread
itself has been elusive.
The Challenge with Cuban Bread
In my opinion the problem with some of the baked goods like Cuban bread is Read more:Kitchen
, Style
, Warfare
On The Road With Kitchen Warfare (Day 8) 2007-09-08 22:42:09 This was mostly a really boring driving day, once again on the dreaded I-75. We got a few chores done before leaving town for our 13 hour drive home and I doubt I would have even mentioned today if the nicest thing hadn’t happened.
We ran out of gas (us, not the car) in Georgia between Atlanta and Marietta, at exit 261 (Delk Rd) to be exact. We found a motel and by the time we got settled it was just after 10pm which without a lot of hunting around surely means a dose of fast food.
But it was not to be. I popped open the trusty laptop and got the # for a place called Chinese Wok (same name as on day one!) just down the road from our room. It was about 10:15 and I was fairly sure they’d be closed. And sure enough, the friendly voice said they’d just closed but when I asked if he could recommend something other than fast food still open he offered to take our order as long as we’d get there in 15 minutes. We found it easily and ended up having a really nice conve Read more:Kitchen
, Warfare
On The Road With Kitchen Warfare (Day 7) 2007-09-07 21:01:32 Today we’re back in Old Town and its our last full day before heading back home. Mostly we ran errands and got the property mowed but we left time to try two local eateries that had been on our list since we got into town.
The first was the Homestead Restaurant, a locally owned spot in Fanning Springs that wasn’t here the last time I was in town. We drove past this place a dozen times and it was always packed with locals. We already had our dinner planned so we decided to try the Homestead’s Breakfast Buffet. As anticipated it was quite good, a real cut above the low quality breakfast buffets often found at institutional restaurants.
The 2nd spot on our list was Ralph’s Burger House which has been in Chiefland ever since I can remember which goes back at least 20 years to when we first bought our property. Chiefland itself has changed almost beyond recognition but Ralph’s still remains, undaunted by the surrounding glitzy fast food franchises that have moved into town. J Read more:Kitchen
, Warfare
On The Road With Kitchen Warfare (Day 6) 2007-09-06 21:12:17 After a few days of visiting family in Kissimmee and eating great Cuban food in Tampa we headed back towards Old Town, FL to spend a few more days working on our property before heading back to our present day home in the hills of Can-Tuc-kee. On the way out of town we stopped at La Segunda yet again for a stock of bread to take back home and a hot loaf to enjoy on the way out of town.
This time our route took us up the west cost of the state and at the insistance of our 14 year old Bichon we took advantage of this and stopped at Honeymoon Island State Park to spend a little time on their Pet Beach. This little beach is one of the few public beaches that allow dogs on the west coast of FL. Unfortunately mid summer its entirely too hot (100F+) so we didn’t spend too much time.
After a few hour drive we arrived back at our home away from home and ate yet another Cuban sandwich from our ‘supply’ from Tampa topped off with a guava pastelito. I’m telling you this food is addictive Read more:Kitchen
, Warfare
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