Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

Recipes

24 Hours Without Power

kettle corn| dailywaffle We were on our way out the door to see Gravity around 11 am yesterday and Wolf went to open the garage door. Nothing.  It had been a gusty morning, with acorns and pine cones plonking on the roof and leaves blowing out of the trees, but it was otherwise uneventful. Then, literally the moment we went to leave, the power went out. With my car trapped in the garage. Having the power out on a not-a-work-day Saturday should have been a liberating experience.  No power means no doing laundry, no puttering around all day on the Internet, no TV. It also means, for the most part, no cooking. No access to my car also meant not going anywhere.  It meant sitting around and reading.  It should have been a good thing, right?

Toasted Coconut Spice Fauxnuts

"Two fingers," he'd say, holding two gnarled, deeply tanned digits up to his glass. Reaching into the sideboard cabinet, he pulled out a half empty bottle. He poured two fingers worth of brown liquor into the rocks glass and I followed, holding the carton with two hands and topping the booze with at least two more fingers of eggnog. Some years it was Wild Turkey and others Crown Royal, but always whiskey with eggnog. Like a lot of Japanese-American men of his generation, my grandpa wasn't a super talkative man, but he'd sit at the kitchen table and shoot the s**t over a glass of spiked eggnog, getting chattier as he got deeper into his cups.  Even now, there's nothing like a whiff of whiskey and eggnog and nutmeg to put me right back at that table with him during the holidays.

It’s All About the Butternut, Baby

ottolenghi jerusalem butternut onion2

One of the best things I've eaten in an airport was a roasted butternut and feta sandwich in Melbourne. Simple, earthy and salty all at the same time.  We're no strangers to the virtues of butternut squash around here, and in fact, my grinchiness about pumpkin this year has sent me straight into the arms of butternut squash.  Roasted, it makes great soup, salad, risotto, pasta, even pizza sauce.  Even with a good, sharp peeler, it may feel like prepping a butternut is taking your life into your own hands, but it's worth the effort.

Recovering from a Long Week…with Beets with Yogurt and Za’atar

beets with yogurt and za'atar | dailywaffle

Wolf was down in California finishing off Triathalon season over the weekend and I was back at the ranch prepping for the long week ahead. Food-wise, it was a hodge-podge, though I did cook Friday night after living off of enchilada casserole all week. It felt good to get back in the kitchen on Saturday morning and do something that didn't involve sitting in front of a computer. Kneading dough for pita bread and running some errands did me some good. But then that pita really needed something to go along with. Hummus?  Mmm, ok, but maybe something else?

Fig Ice Cream Sandwiches with Speculoos Cookies

fig ice cream sandwiches with speculoos cookies | dailywaffle

"Slightly Gingery. The Ed Sheeran of cookies,” says the sign at Trader Joe’s.  Can you guess? Speculoos, aka biscoff cookies.   Now, I’m late to the biscoff  cookie crazy. I’ve never really flown Delta, which is where a lot of people first encountered a 2-pack of those cinnamony, gingersnappy cookies. Long known in Belgium, those little cookies have been one of the positives airline passengers can point to about flying in the last few years.

Gingersnaps have been a favorite of mine since childhood, thanks to little purple bags of Pogen's cookies.  But I never paid much mind to speculoos. I mean, I’ve had a packet of them in my cupboard for the last several months, just languishing. So when I bumped into this blueberry mascarpone tart with a speculoos cookie crust, a light flicked on in my head. Speculoos cookies would be perfect for ice cream sandwiches.

Football Food: Hatch Chile Poppers

hatch chile poppers | dailywaffle

Peeling back the wrapper on a can of refrigerator biscuits and thwacking it against the edge of the counter takes me back to childhood. I’m not talking about the big flaky layer biscuits, I’m talking the cheapest ones – the skinny tube of “homestyle” or “buttermilk” refrigerator biscuits that come 10 to a can. I’ll eat them every which way, but not as baked biscuits. Most of the time, I plunk them on top of Chunky Chicken Noodle soup and let them steam up in a shortcut version of chicken and dumplings. It’s comfort food from childhood that still hits the spot to this day if I’m not feeling great.

Hatch Chile Time: Hatch Chile Masa Waffles with Bacon

masa waffles with hatch chiles bacon| dailywaffle It’s Hatch Chile Time. The moment to catch and enjoy them is so fleeting, chile heads across the country are grabbing them up by the case and throwing them into the freezer to last until next year. While we can get them fresh, take advantage. Don’t limit your green chile to lunch and dinner.  Go beyond the usual scrambled eggs & chile and give this waffle a shot -- a Masa Waffle with Hatch Chiles, Bacon & Cinnamon Agave Syrup. (That said, this waffle has brinner written all over it, so why wait until next weekend?)

Don’t Fear the Pho

chicken pho ga |dailywaffle

Is it possible to fear chicken soup? If it wasn’t fear holding me back from making pho at home, it must have been laziness, or the sheer number of pho shops in Seattle. Yeah, that’s it, there was no reason to make pho at home, when you can get it anywhere, even out here in the ‘burbs. Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup, most often made with beef broth, has always seemed like a dish to leave to the experts.  You char the spices and ginger and the broth needs to simmer for hours to fully develop its flavor. Then Taylor Hoang of Pho Cyclo made pho ga, chicken pho, at TDCamp and it was so easy and so delicious I knew I had to make it at home.

Back-to-School Black Bean & Sweet Potato Empanadas

black bean and sweet potato empanadas |dailywaffle The hand pie may be one of the world’s best food creations.  Whether it’s a piroshky, a Pop Tart, a beerock or an empanada, the idea of tucking something sweet or savory into a little pocket of dough is an idea embraced by food cultures the world over. It’s an easy way to have a snack or a meal on the go with relatively minimal mess, which makes these Black Bean and Sweet Potato Empanadas perfect for back-to-school and back-to-work lunch boxes. (I know, I don’t want to think about it, either, and I don’t have kids).