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09 Apr 2015 27 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Food, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’m one of those fancy chefs who serves small portions, treats the plate like a canvas and uses flowers and ingredients you’ve never heard of. But I’m also a fan of shortcuts.

Many of the world’s best chefs will readily admit to resorting to shortcuts when they’re cooking.

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While we were staying at the Casa Tres Coronitas in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, last October, I asked the house chef, Marilu, to show me how to make her famous salsa. She was giving me a lesson and it was nothing out of the ordinary — tomatillos, onion, garlic, chiles de arbol, salt. And then she reached into the cupboard to pull out her “secret ingredient” — Knorr powdered chicken bouillon. Sure enough, when I tried it at home (with the bag of Knorr powdered chicken bouillon Marilu picked up for me at the supermercado), it contributed a salty umami depth that was missing before I added it. Couldn’t have been the MSG, could it?? More

Dinner with My New iPhone 6

13 Feb 2015 4 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Video Tags: , , , , , , ,

Food Trends for 2015

30 Jan 2015 9 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

On the more or less one-year-later heels of my wildly popular “Food Trends for 2014” post of a year ago — okay, it was Freshly Pressed, which meant I got about 12,000 page views I wouldn’t have normally gotten — I present my thoughts for what may be on the horizon in the coming year for the foodie universe.

Here are some of my predictions:

• Detritus
Where last year I predicted an explosion in foraging, with well-meaning chefs and hipster home cooks appearing hunched over in woods, urban parks and even unsuspecting back yards, this year I imagine a new trend in plating where chefs scatter dirt, leaf duff, twigs and other miscellaneous detritus they discover over the top of their dishes. I did read an article recently about a chef in Tokyo who was actually using dirt in his food. I tried to make it up, folks, but I couldn’t — it had already happened.

Tokyo chef Toshio Tanabe trying to explain why his dirt tasting menu is a good idea

Tokyo chef Toshio Tanabe trying to explain why his dirt tasting menu is a good idea

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A Feast of Friends

26 Dec 2014 14 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Observations Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Christmas is a lot of different things to different people — a celebration of the birth of Jesus for Christians and Catholics around the world, an orgy of consumerism for most Americans, a reason to eat Chinese food and go to the movies for Jews.

Der Weihnachten eve

Der Weihnachten eve

For me, like most holidays, it’s about food, family and friends. We had my wife’s family for dinner and presents Christmas eve, a tradition of theirs, celebrated this year at our house. I had enough to prepare for between Christmas dinner and our annual New Year’s Eve dinner, and might’ve done a stew or chili. But opted instead for a German dinner — homebaked rye bread, potato pancakes, house-fermented sauerkraut, spaetzle with roasted matsutake mushrooms and duck cracklings, duck confit, pan-grilled bratwurst and crispy duck breasts, paired nicely with a Swiss cheese fondue my sister-in-law, Laina, had made. More

Leftovers

02 Dec 2014 14 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , ,

For a lot of people, one of the best things about Thanksgiving is having leftovers. My stepfather loves to make sandwiches with leftover turkey and stuffing, which is just plain wrong in my opinion.

Turkey hand pie made with Thanksgiving leftovers

Turkey hand pie made with Thanksgiving leftovers

We received several invitations to “Leftover” dinners in the days after Thanksgiving. As I mentioned in my previous post, my friend, Vic, had the idea to do a gourmet-ish small plates dinner with Thanksgiving leftovers on Friday (which necessitated our regrets to a subsequent leftovers dinner invitation from our other friends, Bob and Shoba, for the same night). More

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