Aunt Toby believes that one of the problems with cooking in these United States is that we get stuck in a rut. We cook something because Mom and Dad cooked it or because we are familiar with it. Frankly, there are meat cuts out there that 99% of American’s have never eaten; never experienced in the kitchen, and frankly are scared to death of. (more…)
For a lot of folks out there (not the least are the chicken farmers), right now, there’s a whole lotta egg action going on. And it’s the same at Chez Siberia as well. With three dozen eggs staring me in the face in the fridge and guests coming for dinner, Aunt Toby needed to come up with something that was going to use up a lot of eggs. Although I was aiming for a dozen, I managed to get through eight and created two desserts, one of which you can eat right away and one which you can eat over a period of time or you can put the two together or what have you: (more…)
Like many folks out there, I’ve been watching the new reality show on ABC, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”. And no matter how I feel about how this has been constructed as a program (because it is 6 episodes long and they have to set up the dramatic conflicts and show Jamie suffering and not being successful at first so that they can have the victories later), there are a couple of things out of the two episodes that I have seen which I would like to discuss here that I think are very important (no matter who says them or where they are from): (more…)
As promised! True to my word! At one point over the past week, there were probably a half a million people either unable to leave their homes, travel, and/or had no power because of snow storms in the area between Virginia and New Jersey. Sitting home in the cold and the dark is bad enough; if you are running your kitchen on electricity, it’s cold, dark and hungry too. (and there is that whole ‘how long is the food going to last in the fridge and the freezer?’ thing) (more…)
Let’s put something to rest immediately (if not sooner): Stop dismissing eggs as ‘breakfast food’. In many other places on Earth, eggs are seen for what they are (concentrated protein) and are served at many different times of the day, with dishes to match. It seems that only in the United States is a dish of cold greasy fried eggs, with the ubiquitous accompaniment (now there’s a word) of fried potatoes, and some form of meat is deemed to be the very embodiment of breakfast. It is no wonder to me that there are people who will not touch an egg at all (much less before 11 a.m.). (more…)
Many times, Aunt Toby is off-season for a lot of people. It’s geography, you see. Chez Siberia is in Upstate New York and usually for the rest of the US below the Mason Dixon Line, my comments about gardening, the weather, dressing warmly, etc. etc. don’t really line up with their calendars.
This year, as we are reminded by our favorite weather prognosticators winter has come to the entire country. So, today I’ve got something for everyone.
Aunt Toby figures that by this point, most of the people in the US have got whatever form of heat they use cranked up about as far as it can go (or, everyone has unearthed their sweaters, hats, mitties, and long johns and are wearing them 24/7). And it has been that way for a while (for those of us who have had the heat turned on since November, this is not news; for those folks in the South, we feel your pain, truly). The air inside your house is dry and your eyes and your lips might be feeling dry too. (more…)
As some readers might recall, Aunt Toby and a friend went to the Philadelphia Flower Show last spring. I bought some potatoes that did very nicely indeed and made a ‘what the heck’ purchase of some horseradish roots because our son (aka ‘The Boy’) is very fond of it and asked if we could grow it ourselves. Horseradish is very tough stuff because by the time I got around to planting it (which was about May, I think – and considering I’d bought it at the show in March, those poor little roots had been hanging around in their paperbag for almost two months) they were dried up little things and not very promising at all. We watered them in well when we planted them and made sure they had plenty of water and the plants came up in a very strong way. The leaves are about 2.5-3 feet tall, wavy and about 7″ wide. (more…)
We’re talkin’ beans here, dried beans – navy, pea, kidney, garbanzo, etcetera, etcetera. But the queen of them all, the ones that tastes best and actually is the healthiest for us, is the little shiny black bean (aka black turtle beans). Beans are high in fiber and protein, phytochemicals and if nothing else, are filling. For more on health benefits of black beans, go here. black bean nutrition (more…)
Groan. Right about now, the thought of turkey anything is enough to make the residents of Chez Siberia lock themselves in the bathroom (and considering that there are only 1.5 ‘necessaries’, this could result in a rather interesting game of musical toilets..), but even the Siberians must eat. And, as luck (bad) would have it, The Boy had a birthday celebration intermixed in all this and asked for (hurrah!) a meal that actually hearkened back to a period when our family was…mmm…shall we say….how should Aunt Toby put this? (more…)
First, let’s get the housekeeping out of the way.
1) Ricotta is not technically a cheese. It originated as a way (whey?) for Romano cheese makes in Italy to harvest more protein out of the whey.
2) Ricotta is made by making the whey more acidic (either by adding something such as vinegar to it or allowing it to naturally ferment for a day) and then heating it up. This causes more protein to precipitate out of the whey. The liquid is passed through some sort of filter such as a fine cloth and the resulting curds (ricotta) are left behind.
3) Ricotta is NOT cottage cheese which is made from milk itself and is not cooked. One of the advantages of ricotta vs. cottage cheese in terms of cooking is that if you try to make things with cottage cheese which are heated, the curds will start to separate, releasing whey. This is why baked products such as cheese cakes, etc. are best made with ricotta rather than cottage cheese. This is one place where Aunt Toby (who is big on substituting) will have to draw the line. Don’t try it. (more…)
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