There are a handful of recipes out there that people think are extremely hard to make, and it’s just not so. One of those is homemade cake — not hard, just a little time consuming. Another is pesto — quick, easy, and so delicious when fresh.

A third is roasted tomatoes, I think. I used to think that roasted tomatoes would be complicated, or at the very least require me to watch ’em. Something so delicious couldn’t be so easy to make, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Last week, I had a batch of tomatoes I knew wasn’t going to last until the end of the week, and I was having a quick, embarrassing dinner of mac and cheese. I wanted a vegetable…and roasted tomatoes quickly became my side! This was imperative to the end of the season of tomatoes, as I have been not so into them this season, and they definitely redeemed themselves in this delicious form.

 Take some tomatoes.

Doesn’t that tomato look like it has a ‘stache? Or is that just me?

Cut them in half!

Cut out the sees and the cores!

Little tomato cups! How delightful!

Cover with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, then sprinkle with garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper.

Roast ’em for like 20 minutes.

Then these babies will turn into…

These. Not so pretty. But oh-so-good!!

And there you have friends! An easy side with those extra tomatoes you don’t know what to do with.

What recipes do you make that people think are so fancy but really are so easy you could make ’em in your sleep?

As I mentioned, I cooked with Liz recently and was delighted that she did most of the cooking and I got to watch and take pictures.

One of the recipes she made was a no-knead bread that she had started the day before.

One thing I like about Liz is she always have interesting kitchen tools, such as this flour duster.

She used the flour duster to dust the counter and the bread – something that I find extremely interesting as I hate the feeling of flour. Yes, you’ve heard right: I hate the feeling of flour. I always have. I also hate the feeling of super-fine sand, especially between toes or on rocks. I’m hoping to get over it at some point (as it would make my life devoted to food easier) but for now, I think this flour duster might help me cope.

Anyways, after she heated the dutch oven and shaped the dough into a loaf, she dumped it into the dutch oven and slit three slits in the top.

After we let it cool, we cut into the delicious loaf.

Let me tell you – with butter, or with stew, or with whatever you have this bread was divine. I haven’t made it again, but I might…right now…see you later!

Hello Everybody,

So for those of you who live in most of the country, winter started many weeks ago.  The blistering cold, the heavy winds, the snow, etc. But for those of us who call Southern California home, this is a new development. Now don’t get me wrong, I love winter. I enjoy the cold and the wind and the rain, but one of the things I love most about winter is the fact that some of my favorite beers are currently on draft all over. Now I was considering writing about Sam Adams Winter Lager for this week’s post. It is a huge favorite of mine and something I look forward to pretty much during every other season, but I thought that would be a little too simple. So I kicked around a few other options. But it was quite by accident that I found the beer I am reviewing this week.

This week I chose to look at a brand I had never heard of before, specifically, the Telegraph Brewing Company. This small brewery is located in Santa Barbara, California and I look forward to sampling more of their beers in the future. But in the meantime, I would like to talk about their Winter Ale, which I had this past weekend in Echo Park at a small establishment called El Prado, on Sunset Blvd. For the local readers, this is a bar right across the street from Masa, which serves a mean deep dish pizza.The bar is small, but has a wonderful vibe. I would imagine it would get very tight in the later hours, but being that it was early we had no trouble finding a seat or asking the bartender what he would recommend. I told him that I was looking for a beer much like Sam Adams Winter Lager and he put a pint of the Telegraph Winter Ale in front of me – and I fell in love.

When the beer is first poured you instantly get hit with the spices emanating off the rim of the glass.  Take one deep breath before you take a sip, because it really is tremendous. Now, I enjoy a good ale, but I must say that I typically only drink them in the summer, because they are so light and on cold nights that doesn’t really fill that void inside.  But this ale seemed almost as though it wasn’t even an ale, besides the aroma it gave off, its color and viscosity, were that of a lager. The liquid was silky and the color was a enchanting crimson. There was a lovely earthy tone thanks to the hops used, but it was not overwhelming.  By serving the beer a bit warmer than is usual with a draft, the liquid is really allowed to open up.

When you take your first sip, you will get transfixed by its smoothness.  It flows so nicely going down.  The first taste to hit your palette is the cinnamon.  It’s not a chalky or musky tasting cinnamon either, it is more like somebody was evaporating a cinnamon candle in your mouth and there just so happened to be beer there as well.  But this lovely taste only lasts a moment because it is quickly complimented, not overpowered, by the overtones of chocolate. But just like my wine, my beer has to have a great finish and this one does. After you are no longer transfixed by the cinnamon or complimented by the chocolate, you get to close off the experience with a beautiful caramel, that makes the beer sliding down feel like hot chocolate in the best possible way.  Let’s just say I had a second glass for good measure and I will definitely be keeping my eye out for this draft again.  I may even have to make another stop to El Prado before the season is out.

If you would like to learn more about Telegraph Brewing Company and where you might find their Winter Ale on tap, check this out.

Until next time!

Good Spirits Folks!

I found this recipe many years ago when I started making cranberry pies for festivities and until recently had never made them.  Around Thanksgiving as I was already making a cranberry pie and knew I would end up with a surplus of fresh cranberries, so I decided to try these out; I (and everyone else that ate one) am sure glad that I did.

As I have limited kitchen supplies and not many occasions to make muffins, cupcakes, or the like I bought some of those standard foil muffin baking cups so I could make these muffins without investing in the correct pan.

The original recipe is from 1989 from the Wisconsin Cranberry Growers Association and is obviously therefore not GF.  However, my general rule of thumb is if a recipe calls for under 2 cups of flour I just substitute a basic GF all purpose blend.  For this recipe I used Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose Baking Flour (as well as BRM baking soda and powder).  If a recipe calls for more than 2 cups of flour I tend to find another substitute gf-oriented version.  This general substitution rule has more or less worked out in my handful of baking adventures, but I will keep you posted if one day it turns into some sort of unmitigated disaster, though I suspect it will not.

So this was a very straight forward recipe.  You mix in this general order: dry ingredients, butter, wet ingredients, and cranberries.  But first you have to cut a lot of fresh cranberries in half.  Perhaps time-consuming, but not terribly difficult…

Again because I do not have the proper kitchen tools I used the small side of a cheese grater to zest this orange (which was *gasp* my first independent zesting!)  I may have zested too much, but I ended up adding the extra to my cranberry pie for good measure!

I was worried that I had filled them too much, but the recipe said it made 15 muffins and I had 16.  (But you know how batter never ends up making the correct amount of cookies/cupcakes/muffins?)  I did not want to have to do another batch so I squeezed all of my batter in my 16 muffin cups.  But as it turned out they didn’t rise that much more or spill over like I feared.

Becca (who now lives in the same building, life upgrade!) happened to be over my apartment when they came out of the oven and we had a very hard time waiting until they were cool enough to dive in and eat them.  “Is it time?  Is it time?”  The muffins re-energized us enough to continue (or start) our pre-Thanksgiving cooking marathon and made my apartment smell delicious.

Overall, from what I can tell you can’t really tell that they are gluten free and I am confident they would also be delicious in a gluten-full manifestation.  All in all, a very delicious recipe that I found delightful enough that I have decided it is now time to invest in a muffin pan so that they can perpetually be in my life.

Morning, chickens!

I’m here with another near-disaster-turned delicious post to share with you all.

When Jennie asked me to post again, I once again reached for something a little out of the ordinary, but nothing so complicated it couldn’t be replicated easily.

I chose the elusive souffle.

First I watched this clip of Julia Child doing it, because she always cracks me up and also makes me believe I can do anything I set my mind to.

With a glass of wine in hand, to boot.

Once I felt fearless, I searched the internet and decided to use this recipe by Ina Garten (otherwise known as the Barefoot Contessa) because I knew she wouldn’t let me down.

Then I called Ky, asked her to bring me some ingredients, and poured us two big glasses of wine.

I find that to be the first step to cooking success.

When Ky showed up, she presented me with her ingredients, which included a fairly suspicious bag of cream of tartar from Whole Foods.

We laughed an immature laugh and then bravely took ourselves into the souffle abyss.

The thing about souffle, it turns out, is that it only actually has one part that’s actually difficult.

The rest just looks like this.

Cheese grating.

Egg separating.

Mixing.

This is when things got a little nervewracking.

The instruction was to beat egg whites into firm peaks.

Firm, but not stiff.

It took some experimentation, but what we came up with, in our wine-fueled assessment, was this.

Then we mixed that in with the rest of our cheese-milk-flour-egg yolk-spinach souffle goodness and put it into our souffle pan.

We used the spatula to draw a circle in the middle (Ky was muttering something about eliminating surface tension, but I was just following directions), put the souffle in the oven at 375 degrees for 40 minutes, and said a little souffle prayer.

When we got back, we pulled this out of the oven, as Ky made exaggerated hand movements every time I moved the souffle even one inch.

She had concerns it would fall, and I’m not really know for my grace and coordination.

It was delicious, spinach-y, and pretty light, and it puffed up.

But not as much as I had hoped, to be honest.

We attribute that, in our scientific findings, to the fact that we used unmeasured (read: too much) amounts of spinach and cheese, which may have weighed down our poor little souffle.

But since the results were delicious, we decided not to dwell too much- we’ll make the necessary adjustments next time around.

And there you have it- another sensationalized dish made easy (but not perfectly) in the Second City kitchen.

Enjoy, chickens!