Basic cooking written for my daughter starting out in her first college apartment. Helpful for beginning cooks as well. These are a collection of my favorite recipes and special guest recipes from friends and neighbors and a few chefs. Enjoy!
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Homemade Food
When I see packaged food and interesting appetizers at places like Trader Jo’s or Costco, I hesitate to buy it if I can make it myself. Most of the time I don’t end up actually making the dish, but in my head I try to. It is like my favorite show “Survivor”. I tried out for the show on paper but ended up breaking my leg in Lake Tahoe so I used that as an excuse not to do the show. Anyway, on “Survivor” they are always getting a live chicken or a rat or a small animal and killing it and eating it. Gross, but in an emergency you would do it. So I bought a whole chicken at Target for $3.00 and decided to cook it myself. Who needs all of those pre packaged sliced chicken breasts? I cooked it for hours in a big pot on the stove and scrounged up a recipe from one of my favorite chefs in the OC, Bill Bracken, and his famous tortilla soup recipe. It is all from scratch and of course I had onions, carrots, celery, garlic, fresh tomatoes, and spices. I saute’d all of this in another pot. Bill’s fabulous start to this soup recipe is to cook smoky bacon and use the grease from the drippings as your “oil” for the simmering veggies. This makes the flavor of the soup awesome. I added fresh dill and basil and probably some other spices (poultry seasoning and chardonnay sea salt). Of course I added way too much chipotle spicy seasoning. Because it was so spicy I added a bunch of small red cut up raw potatoes to the soup. The chicken was WAY cooked well done and by the way, I never did remove the giblets or neck. They had no paper on them and were not tied so I just left them in the chicken for flavor. I only added salt and pepper and a bit of poultry seasoning to the chicken with about 8 cups of water. The chicken stock was perfect so I just scooped it all out with a glass measuring cup and added it to the big soup pot. I then de boned the chicken a la “Survivor” and had a huge pile of fresh chicken meat. I only put half of the good shredded chicken into the soup and let it simmer a few more hours. It was great, served it with fresh guacamole, chips, shredded mexican cheese and sour cream. I also made a big salad and brussel sprouts. I used the bacon again to make the brussel sprouts. You cook the sprouts first for 5 minutes in the microwave, cut them in half and cook in a bit of olive oil. Add the bacon and cook until crispy. Then add a bit of maple syrup, cook, and you have the most awesome dish that is similar to the ones they make in Catalina at the Avalon Grill.
The day before I made a homemade Angel Food cake for my dad’s birthday. I could not find a store bought one so I made one with 12 egg whites. It also called for sifting flour and powdered sugar three times. Kind of a pain but so light and fluffy. You have to have a mix master to do this right. My mother said her mom would make homemade Angel Food cake when she was a girl. It was so perfect and went into the oven without a hitch. Unfortunately, the cake fell the minute I pulled it out of the oven to “invert” it. Whoever made that recipe was a loser because I should have never inverted that cake! It was flat but tasted fantastic so my daughter Caroline said to just go ahead and ice it with this weird no gluten no wheat chocolate mix from Sprouts. My dad and even Andrew loved the cake so it worked out. Did I mention that we also went looking for stray dogs at the OC animal shelter? What a disaster that almost was! I don’t really want a dog but maybe I do. We’ll see about that.
How we helped the Angels win the 2002 World Series
We were in our seats with waiter service at the Angels game in 2002. It was spring and the Angels were performing as usual, not very well. We brought our 6 year old son Reed to the game and 10 year old daughter Caroline. Caroline was a real ham and outside of the stadium she sang “God Bless the USA” at full vocal capacity for the AM Disney Radio Channel’s Karaoke contest. She did an outstanding job, the crowd loved it and I was so proud of her. She was a chip off the old block, not afraid to stand up before a crowd and perform at the drop of a hat. After all, she had been the baby on the “Murphy Brown” show for two seasons and was no stranger to show biz.
We ordered food and drinks from our funny looking waiter. He had a strange haircut and a great personality. Almost like a character from a movie, he did his job well, but you could tell that he was only there to watch his favorite team, the Angels. The Angels were losing and we made some sarcastic remarks about their lousy hitting. Our waiter then told us the creepiest thing. He said that the Angels were cursed and that the reason they will never win the World Series is because they built the Angels Stadium on an Ancient Indian Burial Ground. I told him, “Well, it is a good thing that we can undo that curse with these Indian Rocks.” My son and I had just been to Sacramento, our State Capitol, and we had purchased some authentic souvenir rocks from the Sacramento River up there. Reed was obsessed with rocks in those days and he carried them in a little leather pouch in his pocket. I handed our waiter, I think his name was Bobby, a river rock and told him that it would lift the curse from the Angels. No kidding, right then David Eckstein was up to bat and he immediately hit a home run! It was so weird. Apparently Eckstein was a small guy and usually was not known to hit home runs on a regular basis. It was amazing and we all jumped for joy. The Angels continued on to win that game and the rest is history. The Angels went on to win on a regular basis, hitting run after run and WINNING THE WORLD SERIES THAT YEAR!
We went back to a game the next year and we ran into our waiter Bobby. He agreed that Reed and his ancient Indian River rock did indeed remove the curse on the Angel’s stadium. He had kept the rock in his wallet and he removed it to show it to us. It had broken in half and the Angels were actually struggling a bit, but no worries. They had won the World Series and could move up in the ranks of Major League Baseball as a legitimate team. Old Gene Autrey would have been proud of his team. I am going to try to dig through our attic and find that little bag of river rocks in the leather pouch. I rarely throw things away. We also used those rocks to get rid of a long dry spell at the lake house of my in laws in Texas!
This Week
Busy week. Made dinners at home in honor of Valentine’s Day. Decorated the house with fresh flowers from Irvine Flowers on Jeffrey, reallly nice selection. Made Salmon Cakes from fresh Costco Salmon out of the “Crab Cake” recipe from William Sonoma but used my own ingredients, including the Panko Bread crumbs. Made the aioli sauce from the back of the box. Had Noel stop at Costco because I did not want pork chops I NEEDED FILET MIGNON! He grills the best steaks and that is what he did that night…I also made a couple of side dishes, some Rice Pilaf and asparagus of course. Dessert was lemon cheesecake bars and another chocolate marshmellow treat that was kind of gross. Reed did not like them because I made them out of cinnamon cereal instead of graham crackers. I also substitute ingredients if I don’t have them. Oh well sometimes it does not work out. I worked on my cookbook all week and the gals at Office Depot did a great job. I love Drew and Liz at the business center. They put up with me and my several drafts of this little ridiculous cookbook. Anyway, it has been very fun. Went to my PBS committee meeting Wednesday, we are done with the tastings thank goodness. Then I hopped on over to my Christmas at the Ritz wrap up committee meeting at the Island Hotel. We had fine champagne (the best in my opinion Vieux Cliqueo or however you spell it) and fresh strawberries that were huge from our chair, Anne Manassero’s, farm. After we all went to the bar for amazing appetizers and Sonoma Curtrer chardonnay. The new General Manager and Barbara Eidsen let us sample the truffle popcorn, beef sliders, pizza margherita, tuna tartare,etc. Anne hosted the meeting and gave us all crystal candle holders with a cute artichoke in them as a thank you to our committee. We raised about $200,000 at the event for the Chapman University film school. After this event I stopped by the Doubletree to see college pal Dabney who was in town for the night on business. They just happened to have a huge USC OC alumni event so I was able to buy two KJ chardonnay’s for us from the cash bar, ha ha. Too much going on this week so maybe I will start another blog for the next few days!
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