In Print: Clips from Food Sections

5. – The Chicago Tribune Baking Tips “Peeking into a baker’s pantry is a lot like peeping into someone’s refrigerator — it yields a glimpse of their individuality and personality. I poked through my own pantry for must-have items and polled other home bakers and local pastry chefs to compile a baker’s dozen of items we just can’t live — I mean bake — without.”

4. – The Boston Globe Inside H-Mart for a cooking lesson like no other “Since it opened its doors, H Mart has been jammed. (H stands for hanahreum, literally “armful’’; the company says it means “love and care for the customers.’’) The tall, slim Chung, 46, who owns several Jae’s enterprises in Boston and Western Massachusetts, is drawn to the store, to the bins of spicy kimchi, crocks of salted seafood, sacks of grains. Chung is touring the mega-market to explain ingredients and tell us how he’d cook them. One of his chefs, Yeong Sohn, joins us.”

3. – The LA Times Food-focused walking tours in LA “The story of Los Angeles can be told through its food. Neighborhoods, cultures and history come into focus through a bite of bread, a nibble of cheese or a sip of tea. But it’s impossible to learn all this through a speeding (or barely inching along) car window. Like most of the world’s great food cities, L.A.’s gastronomy is best experienced on foot.”

2. – The NY Times The Silver Screen Palate “I’ve had more time than most to read hidden meanings into the film. My older son, Dexter, watched the movie nearly every day for about six months before and after his second birthday. Some days, we watched it two or three times. I know every line, every angle, every cut in this film. I probably know it better than Scorsese or even the editor who scoured the footage frame by frame in order to disappear what looked like white powder on Neil Young’s nose.”

1. – The Washington Post Cask ale is making a comeback “Which leaves a crucial couple of hours to hunt for an aesthetic experience that’s much harder to find: a taste of the beer known as cask ale. Served “live,” without pasteurization or carbonation, it offers way more for the senses and brain to work on than any of its cousins merely served on tap. As far as I’m concerned, cask ale is to standard draft what raw-milk cheddar is to Kraft Singles, or an Andy Warhol to a Thomas Kinkade.”

photo from The NY Times

Sweet Potato Chips

Like most people, I love all things fried.  Whether it’s a snickers bar or potato, I’m more than willing to give it a go.  This weekend at the Dupont Farmer’s Market, the beautiful sweet potatoes and beets were calling my name, so I brought them home, not to roast, but to fry.  Here’s take on turning them into chips.  The secret is to use a mandoline to slice them so they’re thin enough to get crispy, but not thin enough to brown.

Sweet Potato Chips
1 tablespoon fine or flaky sea salt
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, very finely minced
vegetable oil
1 large sweet potato, scrubbed clean but not peeled

Sayonara Halloween Candy

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to stop eating the leftover Halloween candy.  It’s sitting in a beautiful silver bowl on the table in the entry of my kitchen, calling to me everytime I walk in the door.  First it was the Almond Joy, then the Peanut M&Ms and now I’ve dipped into the candies that I don’t even like, I’m just eating them because they’re there.

I did some searching to find the perfect use for all the leftover empty calories, hoping desperately to find something I could make and drop off at a neighbor’s house, so they could eat it instead of me and came across this candy pie (via Serious Eats).

It’s a CANDY PIE!

How do you make this ridiculous indulgence you ask?  Simply bake a pie crust, fill with candy and bake at 350 until the candy is duly melted.  Remove from oven and let set.  Serve while still warm with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

3 Exciting Years!

I’m headed out for the weekend and just wanted to send Haute Papier a birthday shout out.  I’m off to find almond flour to make macroons and then headed to Thai X-ing for dinner tonight to celebrate.   Happy Friday!

In Print: Clips from Food Sections

5. – The Chicago Tribune Stuffed Acorn Squash Makes a Hearty Entree “Acorn squash stuffed with apple-almond-cherry basmati pilaf”

4. – The Boston Globe Kids’ Menus? Oh Grow Up! “Down the street at the Japanese restaurant GinGa, Jack Broomhead, 5, is gleefully sucking down salmon sashimi and shrimp tempura. And at Dok Bua Thai Kitchen, Hannah Siegenberg, 10, and her sister Julia, 17, are drinking tea and sharing a Thai appetizer of dried shrimp, lime, chilies, and Chinese broccoli wrapped in spinach leaves. Hannah’s choice for where to celebrate her recent birthday: the Japanese restaurant Fugakyu.”

3. – The LA Times A Toast to the Caipirinha “Now that Brazil is slated to become the first South American country to host the Olympics, maybe Americans will pay more attention to one of its finest exports: cachaça. Made from fermented sugar cane juice, the clear, fiery liquor puts the defining kick in Brazil’s national cocktail, the caipirinha.”

2. – The NY Times A White House Chef Who Wears Two Hats “His name is Sam Kass. And when he’s not grilling fish for the first family or tending tomatillos in the White House garden, he is pondering the details of child nutrition legislation, funding streams for the school lunch program and the best tactics to fight childhood obesity.”

1. – The Washington Post Country Cook “Michael Psilakis needs a goat. He reserved one, but there was confusion about when the famous chef from New York would pick it up, and the village butcher sold it to someone else. Without it, Psilakis could not make the braised goat, the moussaka, the pasta with goat ragu or the traditional Cretan wedding rice, which is cooked in goat broth. Most of the menu he has planned to show me would be ruined.”

photo from The NY Times

Hip Hydrangeas

From the Kitchen of: Joe Raffa

Through November 2^nd, join in the Day of the Dead celebration at Oyamel as Head Chef Joe Raffa invites guests to experience one of the most important holidays in Mexican culture with a special menu featuring tasty tamales, specialty handcrafted cocktails and a tamal cart on the Oyamel’s patio. When you’re there be sure to check out the custom-made altar adorned with candles and marigolds, the flower that is often used to decorate gravesites in rural Mexico – it’s pretty amazing!  Click here for a coupon for a FREE Sloe Dead Fizz, one of the specialty cocktails being offered during the event.

What is your favorite kitchen gadget?
The Vita Prep XL. It’s the Godzilla of blenders, and we love it in the kitchen. One of my sous chef’s hugged it the day it arrived. It makes our moles so much easier to puree. Besides that, I have my knives. I converted to Japanese knives several years ago. A knife is the most important tool a chef has. A good Japanese knife raises that tool to the level of art. It’s inspirational to work with something that an artisan has devoted substantial time and energy to create, both in terms of food and tools.

What is the most overrated food/technique in restaurants today?
My answer is more of a philosophy. Cooks are easily excited with new tools and techniques. Take sous vide for instance. It is an amazing cooking technique when used where it makes sense for the food. Unfortunately, you find people using the technique for everything just for the sake of using the machines. The important thing is the food. Whatever techniques bring the best flavor out of the food is what you should use. Not necessarily the newest fads.

If you were to open a restaurant with a different type of cuisine than what you are cooking now, what would it be?
Food from my home!!! I’d love to open a Hawaiian restaurant and introduce people on the mainland to the flavors of the islands. One of my fellow Hawaiian chefs in ThinkFoodGroup and I cooked a luau for Jose Andres a few months ago. We had so much fun and became so homesick all at the same time.

What is your favorite local product or purveyor to work with?
Bev Eggleston from Eco-Friendly Foods. I really respect the traditions of small farmers that he is trying to promote. And his meats are just SO good.

What is your biggest customer pet peeve?
That they don’t all come in to Oyamel every day!

What do you drink/eat after work?
Rum. In a good Mai Tai. Heaven.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?
This is the hardest question. My favorite thing depends on my mood. When I cook food from Hawaii it just pulls on my heartstrings. My wife is from Alabama, and her grandmother, aunt and mother taught me a lot about Southern cuisine, which also makes me very happy. I just can’t bear to claim a favorite thing, because there’ll be so many other things I want to eat!

Click here for Chef Raffa’s recipe for butternut squash soup…

In Print: Clips from Food Sections

5. – The Chicago Tribune A Bit of Vampire History for your Halloween Bash “This vampire thing goes back, all the way to antiquity. Old blood indeed. The trail begins in ancient Persia, where someone discovered a vase depicting a man struggling with a blood-sucking creature. The Aztecs, too, got in on the sanguineness, convinced that offering a victim’s blood ensured fertilization of the Earth.”

4. – The Boston Globe Someone’s Gotta Do It “There are 50 of them, four of us, and the task seems a bit daunting. Over the next two hours, we will taste 25 white wines and 25 reds (identities unknown), compare impressions, and take notes. What we hope to find are a handful of wines that deserve to be called the best at $12 and under – the Grand Cru of Plonk.”

3. – The LA Times There’s a New Taste for Quince “Neglected for decades, the quince seems an improbable candidate for revival today, when consumers demand sweet, ready-to-eat fresh fruit. Why is it, then, that in recent years three books of quince recipes and lore have appeared, the fruit increasingly is featured at high-end restaurants, and half a dozen of these have even been named after it?”

2. – The NY Times Tater Tots for Two: It’s a Date “And thus is born false hope. Because dating in New York, as countless sitcoms, magazine articles and resolutely plucky blogs can attest, is no picnic. But let’s say that, through some quirk of dinner party seating or online profiling, you manage to meet someone. Where to take them?”

1. – The Washington Post Take Stock: There’s an easier way to do it “Bouillon, or stock, or broth, is the foundation of a range of dishes, not just French ones. It is the essence of a risotto. It is the heart of a soup and constitutes the body of a stew. Few chefs could imagine a world without it. A restaurant kitchen without a large pot of simmering stock feels barren and soulless. But one of the first things you learn once you have graduated from the University of Food Writing and enter the Real World is that people don’t make stock. Even many food writers and chefs don’t make their own stock from scratch, at least not on their own free time. Stock should be just a matter of knuckles and dimes. Yet it seldom is.”

photo from The LA Times

Halloween Desserts

LOVE ‘EM!

Here’s where they’re from…
1. Creepy Crawly Spider Brownies from Paula Dean
2. Owl Cupcakes from Real Simple
3. Spider Web Cupcakes from Bakerella
4. Ice Scream Sandwitches from Martha Stewart
5. Tombstone Cookies from Sunset Magazine
6. Mouthless Mummies from Bakerella

Pumpkin Paperie

I know, I’m posting a ton related to ghosts and goblins, but I can’t resist.  I just LOVE the creativity surrounding Halloween!  Yesterday we shared a plethora of pumpkin-inspired papier on Haute Papier’s Blog including templates you can download and print out on your own computer for a Halloween Party.  Here’s a sampling of the cocktail menu.  Visit the Haute Papier Blog for much much more and the downloads!