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Recipes

OMG: Olive Oil Cake with Clementine Marmalade

  This week there were two desserts on Serious Eats I bookmarked to try -- first, this maple cake with brown butter apples and this olive oil cake with tangerine marmalade. I took it as a sign from the universe that just because it's only half way into January, there's no reason I shouldn't have dessert. And the olive oil cake is practically heart-healthy, on account of the olive oil and all. It's literally a single layer olive oil cake soaked with tangerine marmalade. And if you saw the Clementine-Ginger marmalade I made last weekend, well, it was kismet, or serendipity, or maybe just plain timely.
January 14, 20121Comment

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Recipes Salads Side Dishes

Cooking from the Pantry: Celery Apple Salad

apple celery salad Sometimes a salad is born of necessity, like when I ordered pizza on Tuesday night and then peeked in the fridge for a salad to go along with...and nothing really looked like a salad, including those two bunches of celery in the crisper. Celery rarely has a starring role. It's part of an ensemble on a crudite platter, it's a chaser (afterthought?) to buffalo wings, it's passed over on the salad bar for grated carrot, or jicama. Even when it does star, as in cream of celery soup, it's probably just going to end up in a casserole. But, last night, it was time to let celery be a star.
January 11, 20120Comments

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Recipes

Oh My Darlin’, Oh My Darlin’ — Clementine Ginger Marmalade

Over Christmas I kept meaning to buy a box of clementines, but the Satsumas kept coming in our CSA box, so we were fully stocked on citrus to eat out of hand. But when I stopped in at Trader Joe's this weekend, the clementines just looked so pretty, so I bought a 2 lb. bag and thought, I'll make marmalade. Well, refrigerator marmalade. These little guys were sweet, so I knew they'd be fantastic.
January 8, 20125Comments

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Recipes

A Proud Moment in 2011: Giada’s “Let’s Get Cooking” Photo Contest

image from GiadadeLaurentiis.com

2011 was the year my friend Nicole turned me onto Tastespotting and inspired me to get serious about the photography on this blog. Rather than just looking to the posts for culinary inspiration, I started studying the photos on the site, how people were styling and lighting the food. I started looking at food mags in a totally different way. I read about how hard it was to get photos accepted and I took my lumps with critiques on (under)exposure and composition, but once I managed to get photos accepted on both Tastespotting and Foodgawker, a light clicked on. All that led me to enter a photo contest Giada de Laurentiis sponsored on Facebook.
January 3, 20120Comments

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Appetizers Recipes

Dip, Baby, Dip: Muhammara (Roasted Red Pepper Dip)

  Happy New Year, folks! I'm not much for new year's resolutions, but coming off two weeks of insane indulgence, it's time to get back on the wagon. I won't be vowing to hit the gym only to poop out by the end of January, but I will be trying to eat more vegetables and get more whole grains into my diet. So let's start off the year with this gorgeous muhammara dip, shall we? Using a base of roasted red peppers, it makes for a pretty healthy snack with pita chips or carrot sticks and offers a nice alternative to hummus. It's fantastic alongside tzatziki for grilled chicken or lamb kebabs, too.
January 1, 20123Comments

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Baking Recipes

Yes! More Cookies: Anzac Biscuits Dressed Up for the Holidays

  Originally, I was thinking about making these No Sugar Oat Drops, but it being the holidays I decided they were maybe a little too close to a granola bar...a little too healthy (yes, I'm crazy). I even bought the overripe bananas at the grocery in anticipation of making them, but then settled on a batch of Anzac biscuits. Anzac biscuits are a brilliant invention all their own. Coconut, oats, brown sugar, butter, Lyle's Golden Syrup and a little baking soda and water. What's not to like? But since the holidays are all about gilding the lily, I thought I'd dress 'em up a little. By altering the recipe, it's not strictly an Anzac biscuit anymore, but it's an oaty, coconutty drop of delicious, that's for sure, and with a couple of additional tweaks, it just gets better. So coconut, oats...plus what?
December 14, 20110Comments

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