Cooking

This isn’t really a cooking tip so much as a neat way to use food items to make your clean-up after that big dinner party easier, but I thought it fun enough to share nonetheless. According to Real Simple magazine, you can use Kool-Aid to clean out lime deposits and iron stains from your dishwasher:

Pour a packet of lemonade Kool-Aid (the only flavor that works) into the detergent cup and run the dishwasher while empty… The citric acid in the mix wipes out stains, so you don’t have to.

It’s an excuse to buy Kool-Aid anyways, though the comments thread here indicates that Tang and Crystal Light work equally well, as long as you use citrus flavors!

Link via Lifehacker, Image and Tip via Real Simple

Kool Aid, Real Simple, Dishwasher

Because there’s nothing better than celebrating holidays that have no presents but much food, we had corned beef and cabbage for dinner in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day. More innovative, however, was our dessert plans.

My mom makes a dessert that is always in demand whenever she takes it to parties, even though when I make it, it never even makes it off the pan before consumption. It’s an almond pastry, which has three parts but isn’t really that complicated, and is called Swedish Kringler. When I looked it up on the web, I learned that it’s pretty specific to Minnesota, which makes me love it even more.

For Saint Patrick’s Day, I dyed all three of the parts green with food coloring and renamed it Irish Kringler. It turned out pretty spectacular, and, although it’s not exactly low-fat, I recommend it as a fancy but not hard dessert at any time.

IRISH KRINGLER

Part One: Dough
1/2 cup butter, cold and cut into pieces
1 cup flour
1-2 T. cold water
green food coloring

Cut together butter and flour (I use a pastry blender, which is why the butter is suggested to be cold- it makes it easier to do, but you can use a fork); sprinkle water and food coloring over mixture and stir until dough holds together. Form into a flattened rectangle and roll out on a floured surface into a 9×12 rectangle. Cut into 3 strips, lay onto 2 cookie sheets, and set aside.
Note: This is really similar to pie dough, and good pie dough should be handled as little as possible. This means you shouldn’t worry about getting the food coloring evenly distributed; better dough is worth swirls of green instead of green throughout.

Part Two: Topping
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour
1/4 t. salt
3 eggs
1/2 t. almond extract
green food Coloring

Melt together butter and water. Blend in flour and salt, and cook over medium heat until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and is smooth. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition until smooth and glossy. Stir in almond extract and food coloring. Spread 1/3 of mixture onto each strip. Bake at 350 degrees for 44-65 minutes.

Part Three: Frosting
1 T. soft butter
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1-2 T. milk
1/2 t. almond extract
green food coloring

Mix together ingredients with a mixer, and frost while warm.

Swedish Kringler, recipes, Irish Kringler, St. Patrick’s Day

Now that there are snowstorms all over the country even though it’s March, you might be thinking that you are so over winter foods like squash and mashed potatoes. One good way to get out of the winter blues: how about a little roasted pineapple?

After that thought, though, the folks at Lifehacker reference a good follow-up query: How do you Roast a Whole Pineapple? The answer can be found from the good folks at Whole Foods:

Serves 6

1 large pineapple
Rum for drizzling (optional)
ground cinnamon
1 cup whipping cream

Preheat oven to 350°F. Cut off the very top of the pineapple and discard. Place pineapple in a roasting pan and roast for about 1 hour. Meanwhile, whip cream in a chilled metal bowl with cinnamon to taste. Remove pineapple from oven and, as soon as it is cool enough to handle, cut it first into 8 thick rounds, crosswise. Cut these slices in half and arrange on a platter. Drizzle a tiny bit of rum over the pineapple and let sit a few minutes to absorb. Serve pineapple slices in a bowl (as this is a juicy dessert) topped with a dollop of cinnamon whipped cream.

Note: Pineapple will dry out if it is not roasted whole.

It’s gluten-free, and vegetarian, and the website has full nutritional information. And if the thought of cooking with pineapple makes you hungry for even more recipes, the comment thread after the question has a couple more fantastic-sounding suggestions.

Image via SBlog (with more instructions on what to do with Roasted Pineapple!).

cooking, pineapple, recipes

You know how there are certain times of the year where it just feels wrong to eat certain foods? For example, one of my favorite foods in the world is my mother’s recipe for Chicken and Dumplings, which I would request on my birthday, much to the chagrin of everyone else in my house. My birthday is in August, and apparently the hearty dumpling, potato and gravy concoction wasn’t everyone’s idea of the perfect Labor Day Meal. But why? Why does it matter what you eat when?

Here’s one reason: it’ll save you money. According to the weblog at Sound Money Tips, one of the best tips to saving money on food is to

Buy what’s in season. Even these days, not all food is available yearround. Food that is in season is going to be better tasting and likely cheaper than other foods.
According to website Seasonal Recipes, these foods are in season now: grapefruit, sweet potatoes and yams, kiwi, oranges, and asparagus. Not all the farmers’ markets reports on Seasonal Chef are up to date, but you can get a sense of what is likely to be fresh by looking at last year’s reports. It offers links and maps to farmers’ markets.

I did not know that grapefruit is a winter food, though I’m always up for a good winter sweet potato.

Link via Lifehacker.
Image via Restaurant Edge.

cooking, winter foods, money saving tips

My old deep fryer got tossed in the trash the other day. I happily purchased a new one, at a higher cost, but a better quality. The Waring Pro Deep Fryer, is like a dream machine in the kitchen. This handy deep fryer has a temperature control and an automatic timer. With a stainless steel removable oil container, it makes for easy clean-up after. My old deep fryer didn’t have this simple luxury, causing the oil to stick under the grooves, and into the lid.

Since I’ve purchased this new machine, I’ve been making my own homefries, chicken strips, and fish. The food comes out of the oil, in a nice golden brown. I haven’t tried frying breads, doughnuts, or onion rings, yet, but I think that will be next on my list. Now that I have an easy to use machine, I’ve been searching the web for recipes. For the cook who enjoys deep frying, check out the Crisco website. Under the miscellaneous section, they have a variety of recipes for deep frying doughnuts, dinner meals, snacks and side dishes. With so many recipes to choose from, I think I’ll put my new deep fryer to good use.

The new upcoming chefs are a thing to watch for the upcoming years. As years progress overtime we have seen new techniques, style, and flavors in the food industry. What will we envision to be the next on the list? What I believes to be hot that is coming up on in the industry is the use of molecular gastronomy in culinary. Its has been used many years in the past but now it has becoming more seen in dishes from these famous chefs and upcoming chefs of the future. Molecular gastronomy is combining food with scientific knowledge of food chemicals. For instance foams are becoming popular in the industry. Or the in capsule of vinaigrettes in incase shell sugar crystal. We have seen more scientific technology being used in the culinary industry. If you haven’t seen the episode in Iron Chef. Chef Morimoto vs. The technology chef that was a show that should be watched. When he had incase chocolate or was it a certain of filled chocolate cream in a balloon then settling it in water to dry, it was a different method to use in a kitchen but did it work? You would never have thought of seeing something like that being used in a kitchen, which I believe will become the new technique of the culinary world. As the world tends to change to become more technical and easier for the people of the world to use. This will change the evolution of the world and especially in the kitchen. The show Top Chef where Marcel is in constant usage of Foams tends to show that the culinary industry is well in its way to create a new technique in the kitchen. Given the food on your plate a more WOW factor. At the end of the show where he tries to encapsulate the vinaigrette in a dried sugar crystal for his salad would have been a WOW factor for me if it had even worked. Due to the humidity in Hawaii, sugar is hardest to dry in that type of weather but in any kitchen let alone. I think it would definitely work if it was in the east coast where weather here is cold and humid. Molecular gastronomy today is not used in most kitchens because it takes time to learn and the knowledge and skill to learn it. That is why some chefs today just stick to what they learn, using their experience, their own skill and knowledge and just cooking for the people. But some new chefs are challenging themselves because they want something new, so they are forever changing ways in the kitchen. On their spare time they experiment with techniques, style, flavors, and especially the use of molecular gastronomy. Only those who have the knowledge of science and the knowledge of food will be able to create something so beautiful, flavorful and WOW factor to your eyes. These are the chef’s to watch in the near future. As for me, I like to use trial and error and molecular gastronomy intrigues me too. But since I’m not great in the whole chemical, science I tend to just sway away from that. I like the ideal of using ingredients no one will ever think of using and making them flavorful. Like Chef Extrondinair Michelle Bernstein, she uses a lot of parts in the animals that no one would think to use and creates something great. But doing something like that I like to tend to find ingredients around the world in other countries and use them in dishes that will be WOW. I don’t believe in designing a plate to make it looks beautiful but to create a plate that will most influent your appetite and entice your flavor pallets. In this world we all know beauty sells, but what is in the inside sells as well.

What do you guys think?

I cannot imagine that these things are particularly good nutritionwise for you, but if you are just dying to know how to make a 7-11 Cherry Slurpee, have I got a website for you. Not only can you learn how to make them yourself with recipes, there’s some interesting information available on the history of how they went about determining exactly what goes into such delightfully sinful treats, like the Bloomin’ Onion. If you’re an information junkie like me, the part of the website called “The Sleuth” will appeal to you; if you just want to make a Cinnabon for dessert tonight, well, you can do that too. Some of the recipes are free; others will cost 79 cents. Seems reasonable if you just have to have that Cinnabon now, and don’t want to buy a plane ticket to get one at the airport.

Top Secret Recipes, via Lifehacker.