It’s Alive!!!

10 Jun 2011 10 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Recipes Tags: , , , , ,

I eat a lot of kim chee. I usually have a jar in the fridge, and I find it makes a nice snack. Plus, it’s a Super Food — packed with antioxidants and other unquantifiable health-improving properties. During the avian flu outbreak in Asia, it’s said that Korea derived a good deal of protection from eating kim chee. My wife, on the other hand, is not so fond of it. “What is that awful smell?” she says whenever she comes into the kitchen after I’ve snacked.

My kim chee

When I stumbled on a kim chee article in an old issue my favorite cooking magazine, I took that as a sign it was time to try making it on my own. More

In the Burger Lab

07 Jun 2011 7 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Video, World's Best Sandwiches Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I like entering contests of skill. I won a big Le Creuset dutch oven recently in a contest where I had to write a semi-autobiographical essay about my childhood memories and how Le Creuset fit warmly into them. (There must’ve been one somewhere in my childhood, right? Anyway…) A recent item caught my eye in the Los Angeles Times food section: Best Burger Contest.

My entry in the Best Burger Contest — the Chorizo burger with Manchego, caramelized fennel and spicy sweet pimenton aioli

My go-to burger is sort of a knock-off of the now-famous burger from my old neighborhood dive bar, Father’s Office: thick medium-rare burgers, blue cheese, caramelized onions, bacon and arugula. I figured two thirds of the recipes submitted to the contest were going to be some variation on that theme, so I decided to enter the Burger Lab (my kitchen) and get to work on coming up with something utterly original, and unbeatably delicious. More

Paella

03 Jun 2011 10 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There are a few things you must know about paella:

• It originates from the region of Valencia in Spain, and traditional versions were made in the field by hunters and contained not seafood but rabbit and snails.

• The pan is called a paella, and the dish is named for the pan. While you can cook a reasonable paella without the pan, it won’t have the same theater (see the video below). Besides, it’ll only set you back around $20 for a 15″ pan from Spain. (www.surlatable.com)

• Paellas were traditionally cooked outdoors over an open fire. This is still the best way to cook paella. Although you can achieve just as good an effect on the barbecue. When our kitchen was being remodeled, I cooked outdoor on the barbecue for two months. We ate a lot of paella. More

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