Go Buy Some Apples

Apples are the most boring fruit out there. Compare one to a kiwi or a pineapple and it’s like ho-hum. Ubiquitous and present in every boring buffet, free lunch and hospital bed dinner, the apple is that fruit you leave on your desk for a week only to take a bite after it’s become grainy. Yuck.

Slap some into a pie dough with streusel topping and you’ll have my attention otherwise pass me a peach.

But then there is apple season. I bought one at Whole Foods, a.k.a., Whole Paycheck, the other day for an astonishing 12 cents. Let me tell you this piece of fruit was so crisp and juicy that I began to croon like it was a GD filet mignon smothered in mushrooms.

Since that day I have had an apple with every lunch and I suggest you do the same. Indulge yourself in a different way by actually taking the time to cut it into portions and remove the seeds. You’ll swear it’s better than Snikers.

Give your memory a break. Click here to have Traveling Tastebuds delivered to your email for free.

Whatever Soup

Below is a long recipe for a soup you will never make. It’s delicious, satisfying, low fat and perfect for lunch, but you will never taste it. The truth is that once this pot bottoms out, I won’t taste it again either.

Flung together from on-sale produce, thoughts of Mexico, and carb guilt, this soup was a custom designed never to be duplicated.

I torture you with this information because I want you to make a whatever soup of your own. Grab a big pot, pull out all your spices and go all mad scientist with wild hair, steam in your face and lids clanking to the floor.

Throw efficiency to the wind. I carefully dressed and roasted four on-the-bone chicken breasts just to shred them to bits with my bare hands.

Before you jump onto Mr. Toad’s wild ride, let me give you a couple of guidelines.

Begin with a broth or stock you really like. If that means using bouillon cubes, go right ahead.

Sweat your veggies before adding the hot broth. Letting them sizzle gently in olive oil will bring out the flavor.

Have a tasting cup or saucer ready. Don’t screw up a whole pot of soup with one bad spice selection. Instead put a couple of tablespoons in a small cup, season and sip. If your micro version works, you can safely upgrade.

Please come back and tell me how fantastic your soup was.

Whatever Pepper Chicken Soup with Beans

2 cups chicken (shredded)
8 cups broth or stock (heated)
1 medium onion (1 cup chopped)
2 celery stalks (chopped)
½ cup green pepper (chopped)
1 cup long Italian pepper (chopped)
¾ cup red pepper (chopped)
¾ cup carrot (chopped)
1 15oz can of corn (with juice)
1 can cannelloni beans (drained and rinsed)
2 bay leaves
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp all spice
½ tsp cayenne
½ cup milk
salt

Add onions and celery to a pot with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Cook on low heat until translucent. (about 8 minutes).
Add peppers and carrots sprinkling with salt. Continue to cook for an additional 5 minutes.
Add corn and beans.
Pour hot broth over vegetables.
Add bay leaves, cinnamon, all spice, cayenne and salt to taste.
Simmer covered until vegetables are tender (about 20 minutes)
Add chicken and milk

Make it easy on yourself, click here to have Traveling Taste Buds delivered to your email for free.

Pumpkin, Carrot, Ginger Soup- Who Does it Belong to?

I have this neighbor named Ago. He lives in a Brooklyn loft apartment that was converted from an old candy factory. Inside this apartment he has installed an industrial sized kitchen range and a stage where he performs magic.

To be clear this apartment isn’t one of those dressed up lofts you see in the movies with the bright white walls, mile-high ceilings and hardwood flooring. His place is long and narrow, has concrete floors and exposed piping. This is real deal Brooklyn stuff.

Ago the Magic Chef gave me this soup recipe and I’m having some trouble giving it a true country designation to fit the whole “recreating flavors from abroad” theme. Ago is Italian, but the pumpkin and ginger give me major Japan flash backs. Not to mention the first time I had the soup was at a tango party, held on a dance floor, that Ago and his neighbors had built on their roof.

For me this soup will have to be labeled Brooklyn. There are few places on earth where a twenty-nine year old women can have a recipe-swapping friendship with a fifty-something Italian magician who dances the tango.

Pumpkin, Carrot, Ginger Soup

½ calabaza pumpkin (just over a pound)
¾ pound white waxy potatoes (skinned and cut into chunks)
1 small onion (cut into chunks)
½ pound of carrots (skinned and cut into chunks)
salt
½ tsp cayenne
fresh ginger root

Cutting the pumpkin is the most difficult part of this recipe. I suggest cutting it into cantaloupe-like slices making generous cuts with your knife to remove the tough green skin.

Put pumpkin, onion, potato and carrot into a large pot.

Fill the pot with just enough water to cover all the vegetables.

Add about a tablespoon of salt to the water, cover the pot with a lid and set over high heat to boil.

When the pot comes to a vigorous boil, reduce the heat and simmer covered until all veg. is fork tender (about 40 minutes).

Put entire mixture (including water) into a blender, you may need to do two batches, and blend until smooth.

Return blended mixture to pot.

Add cayenne and additional salt to taste.

Grate about a tablespoon or fresh ginger into the soup and stir.

This is what I call an eyeball recipe. You really don’t need to bust out your scales, spoons and measuring cups. Use this recipe as a general guide, but trust your taste buds. Like I said, cutting the pumpkin is the tough part. The rest is super easy. BTW this is one of those accidentally low in fat recipes.

For more multi-culti soups and snacks, click here to have Traveling Taste buds delivered to your email for free.

Occupational Hazard

At 3:00am this Saturday I woke with sweat ringing my neck and a sharp violent pain in my abdomen. I was sleeping on my best friend’s couch and her six-month-old twin girls were sleeping fitfully in a nearby room. Just before going to sleep that night, my friend reminded me that her house was haunted by a child ghost. She said, however, that I shouldn’t worry because ghosts were common household pests like mice or roaches.

Ghost crap freaks me out, but let me tell you when I woke in the dark with that pain in my stomach all I could think about was getting to the bathroom. From there followed an unpleasant shuttle run between the couch and bathroom that lasted about an hour. I was being squeezed and contorted in good exorcist fashion. My body was emptying itself of some bad bug and it didn’t much care which exit was used.

That night I earned my stripes. I had been working on a review of a local Boston restaurant. Always the scapegoat, I feel inclined to blame a beautiful plate of garlicky mussels for my unfortunate state. Despite the pain I felt like a champ, like a hockey player who had lost his first tooth or a sailor with his first tattoo. I was a food writer with her first on-the-job case of food poisoning. That’s right people, I’m in the big leagues. Put my right hand on the French Laundry cookbook and swear me in.

Make Quiche Easy

Oui Oui my friends… Ok, my knowledge of France is limited to a three day trip in high school and a couple of layovers at Charles de Gaulle airport, but I do know quiche.

Quiche is a Brown-family function staple. From July 4^th BBQs to Christmas dinner, you’ll always find someone leaning over the kitchen sink eating a slice from their open palm. It’s our version of the amuse bouche.

Hard core foodies don’t kick my a##, but this recipe calls for a, say it ain’t so, frozen pie crust. For those of you who want to bring something tasty to your next potluck with very little work, check out my recipe. If you want the extra challenge and extra bragging rights, I’d say go with this one from Michael Rhulman. Bon Appetit.

Broccoli Quiche

1 frozen pie crust (deep dish)
½ pound raw broccoli (spears)
10oz cheddar cheese (shredded)
3 eggs
1/3 cup whole milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 tsp flour
½ tsp salt

Defrost the crust, prick with a fork and par-bake on 350 degrees until light brown (about 15 minutes).

Boil broccoli in salted water until fork tender (about 3 minutes). Drain and set aside.

In a medium bowl whisk eggs, milk, cream, flour and salt together.

Spread half of the shredded cheese in the bottom of the par-baked crust.

Layer broccoli on top of cheese.

Pour egg mixture over broccoli and top with remaining cheese.

Bake quiche on a cookie sheet on the lowest oven rack for 45 minutes. The cheese should be brown and most of the filling should be puffed up.

Let sit for 20-30 minutes to set and cool.

For more recipes that will bust your daily calorie intake, click here to have Traveling Taste Buds delivered to your email for free.

Food Hangover

My hair is wild, my coat smells of onions, and my stomach is churning. I have been on a three-day bender that began with a can of Wolf Gang Puck corn chowder and has finally ended with way too much Grimaldi’s pizza. I am suffering from a food hangover.

The shame and physical discomfort are similar to a regular hangover but rather than occurring after a single night of bad judgment, the food hangover is a result of several days of culinary overindulgence. Think of that last college friend reunion that turned into a string of brunches, dinners, coffees, cocktails and ice cream cones and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

It would be easy to blame my state on my friend Dawn’s White Trash party. I alone was responsible for the presence of taquitos. I also roasted S’mores over dollar store candles using take out chop sticks. If anyone thought I was crazy, they didn’t say word.

What was crazy were the Vienna sausages wrapped in canned crescent rolls. I never imagined people would flock to pastry wrapped canned meat with such vigor.

Two bubbling crock pots housed meatballs basted in grape jelly and chili sauce. And Dawn couldn’t refill the frozen fish sticks with shelf stabilized tartar sauce fast enough. So yeah, I’d like to blame the party, but I’ve been eating giant burgers, omelets, chocolates and chips like it’s going out of style for days. I blame the weather.

So no there will be no recipe with cute photos this week because seltzer water and dry salad do not photograph well.

To catch up with next week's recipe, click here to having Traveling Taste Buds delivered to your email for free.

Friday's Fried Rice

The one rule that trumps all other rules when making fried rice is “You gotta keep ‘um separated.”

I first attempted homemade fried rice while living in Japan and it was a nasty experiance. There was a rice surplus after school lunch so a few of us teachers took home the leftovers.

A few hours later I was standing in my matchbook of a kitchen hacking away at a corn studded, gluttonous mass, of rice. Each prod with a spatula sent it skidding around the frying pan. It wasn’t breaking down and it wasn’t melding with the broccoli spears and carrot rounds I had included. It was a hot mess and adding soy sauce did nothing but change the color.

That night I had an asparagus, bacon, potato pizza delivered.

Since then I’ve worked on my technique. Most importantly each component must be fried separately and combined at the end. This recipe it great for an end of the week fridge clean out because you can use almost anything. Just be sure you begin with that three-day-old rice because it works best. You also have to use small bits of vegetables and meat if you want that molded Chinese restaurant look.

Now go and turn that crusty old rice into something worth fighting for at the dinner table.

Vegetable Fried Rice

3 tbs vegetable oil
¾ tbs sesame oil
½ small onion (about ½ cup chopped)
1 cup frozen vegetable medley
2 ½ tsp fresh ginger (minced)
2 ½ tsp garlic (minced)
1 egg
2 cups (cold, cooked rice)
1/3 cup soy sauce
salt
1 ½ tbs honey (optional)

Before you begin be sure to have all ingredients prepped. This a quick cooking process.

Put half of the vegetable oil in a cold frying pan. Place the pan over medium/high heat adding the chopped onion.
Cook onion until lightly browned (about 4 minutes).


Add frozen vegetables and ginger then sprinkle with salt. Add garlic. Cook veggies until warm and tender (3-4 minutes).
Remove veggies from the pan and set aside.


Crack egg into the hot pan and scramble. Put aside with vegetables.

Add remaining vegetable oil and sesame oil to the hot pan. The pan should sizzle when splashed with water. Add rice, using your hands to break up any large chunks. Stir fry rice for about 4 minutes.

Return egg and vegetables to the pan adding soy sauce and blending well.

From this point you’re on your own. You’ve eaten fried rice one hundred times. Taste what you have and adjust by adding more oil, soy sauce... I like to put honey in mine for a bit of sweet.

Looking for more leftover magic? Click here to have Traveling Taste Buds delivered to your email for free.