It’s Not the Super Bowl. It’s Chef Chiara! The Future of Food Network.

Five reasons why this kid is the real deal:

1.) Knows to cross from table to stove without breaking face from camera.  Not an easy talent to foster.
2.) Just like every chef host currently employed at Food Network, starts every sentence of instruction with the maddeningly condescending, “What you wanna do is…”
3.) Recognizes when it’s okay to give herself some major kitchen props (“My chopping skills are REALLY good!”).
4.) Recruits her best fans to be her audience (Note how Betsy Wetsy is so riveted by the proceedings, she doesn’t even notice the full baba staring her in the face).
5.) Already has her own catch phrase – “Tune in too-mah-woh!”

It’s true that little Chef Chiara might need to work on withholding reaction when her producer instructs her to throw to commercial, but this is a minor detail sure to worked out before her first weekend marathon.  Enjoy the birth of a future superstar.  And remember what website gave her her first big break!

Watch Chef Chiara’s Debut Performance

Superbowl Sunday Food: Bacon Stuffed Mushrooms

Can a man stand tall and proud when he’s hunching over to pull out baked stuffed mushrooms for him and his boyfriend to enjoy on a Sunday night while waiting to watch the one-hour premiere of Kirstie Alley’s Big Life? (I’ll leave out references to the powder blue oven mitt I got for Christmas). Two days later, I still am unsure of my answer to that question and would like to pass until the next round, Wink. I will say, however that there was not one bit of stuffed shroom left anywhere in my home within twenty minutes of turning down the oven and presenting them to a most-surprised and delighted MG. One might argue that it’s nearly impossible for anything to taste bad when slathered in a mixture of heated cream cheese, bacon, parmesan and Worcestershire sauce, but I would like to think that my ever-mounting kitchen skills had something to do with these coming out as awesome as they did.

I’m still not the biggest fan of the shroom, but the zesty aroma will make them hard to refuse. A definite must-bring to any pot-luck party. Just make sure your host has available oven space to cook them just before putting them out. (Geez, I sound like Martha Stewart! I’m tossing that powder blue oven mitt the minute I get home!)
Recipe for Bacon Stuffed Mushrooms

Superbowl Sunday Food: Prosciutto Pepper Puffs

Here’s a simple twist on the recipe for crab puffs I posted a while back to accomodate those heathens who dislike crab. There were more of them out there then I originally realized – my mother and father being two of them – so out with the crustacea and in with a hot and zesty one-two punch of prosciutto and serrano pepper that’ll keep these babies flying into your mouth faster than you can keep count. And being as light and mouth-watering as they are, you won’t want to keep count.

Recipe for Prosciutto Pepper Puffs

Superbowl Sunday Food: Jalapeno Popper Mac and Cheese

Once you start showing off what you’ve managed to learn to make in the kitchen (say, on a blog for example), you have to take a certain level of responsiblity when friends and family start making certain food assumptions about what you’ll prepare for them when you invite them over. I became accutely aware of that fact earlier this week when my friend Travis asked what I was going to be serving at my weekly LOST viewing party and dinner:

Travis: “What are you making tonight, Gary?”
Me: “I’m making this amazing jalapeno popper mac and cheese.”
Travis:  “Cool… what else?”
Me:  “What do you mean what else?”
Travis:  “I mean… what else are you making to go with it?  And what, no dessert?”

I guess my days of gliding by with spaghetti and meatballs served on plastic plates I stole from my college dining commons are over, but I’ll happily leave that era in my past. MG often reminds me of my typical day’s food rundown from our first year or so of dating. I don’t recall, but apparently I lived exclusively on Hot Pockets, McDonalds and Tombstone frozen pizzas. I’m guessing MG is happy I’ve left those days behind as well.

On to the mad mac and cheese recipe I found over at Let’s Cook.

Continue reading “Superbowl Sunday Food: Jalapeno Popper Mac and Cheese” »

Superbowl Sunday Food: Three (or Four) Cheese Mac and Cheese with Herbs

There’s some serious cheese going on here, folks.  You need to be warned… I mean truly warned.  Take a good look at the photo below and ask yourself, “Do I have the fortitude to take on this recipe?”  All of the cheese in the photo below was grated  and melted into a mere 12 ounces of penne rigate to create the finished product.  You’ve been told.

And it doesn’t stop there.  There’s also butter!  There’s also bacon!  There’s also the fat from the bacon! There’s also white flour.  There’s also fresh sage, parsley, oregano and rosemary.  Some of that counts as vegetables, right?

Am I leaving anything out.  Oh yeah!  I accidentally doubled the amount of butter required by the recipe.  Oops!  I swear, it was unintentional.  And guess what, it totally didn’t ruin the meal!  Who’d have thought it?

I started preparing this at about 8:00 in the evening.  I started eating it at about 9.  By about 10, I was speaking in tongues and levitating three feet off the floor

The recipe can be found at StephenCooks.com, so send your thank you cards and/or the pants you are about to no longer be able to fit into his direction, not mine.  I didn’t come up with this.  I merely used it on a lonely Wednesday night to fill a hole in my heart.  Cheese is really the best way to overcome such things, don’t you think?

So take a read below for how to get ‘er done, and then head to the store for the ingredients you’re missing, because if you have this much cheese just sitting around your house already, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be spending your time reading blog posts.

Recipe for Super Bowl Style Mac and Cheese

Superbowl Sunday Food: Zesty Italian BBQ Meatballs

Sticking around all afternoon while the aroma of phenomenally good Italian Barbeque Meatballs slowly creeps its way through your apartment in an invisible flavor fog is utter self-torture.

Damn good meatballs though.

The potatoes were a last-minute addition.  I discovered I had one russet in my cabinet, so I diced it up, coated it with olive oil and a little dry onion soup mix and baked covered at 350 for about 45 minutes.  The tanginess provided a nice contrast to the hickory sweetness of the meatballs, and it wasn’t long before MG and I had everything on our plates mixed together in two giantic savory smokey food mountains.

And of course, you can’t serve a meal like this without a healthy slice of fresh French bread to cover the soppin’ duties at the end.  Barbecue-flavored butter!  There’s nothing better.

Recipe for Italian BBQ Meatballs

Superbowl Sunday Food: Baked Potato Skins

The King of Comfort Foods! Here’s how to make potato skins that put last year’s Super Bowl snacks to shame.

There’s a secret about how to make potato wedges no one ever tells you. Yes, cheese, sour cream, bacon and green onions don’t hurt, but the real secret to wham-bam, kick you in the face potato skins isn’t what you put in them… it’s what you put on them

Recipe for Super Bowl Potato Skins

Five Things I Learned From the Hollywood Arsonist OR “Cornmeal Thyme Cookies”

Don’t be fooled by the two ingredients in the name, these babies cook up with a sweet, buttery flavor and just a hint of cornbread goodness. This is the perfect cookie to ween you off the daily sugar showers you took through the month of December.

Last weekend, a crazed arsonist terrorized the streets of Hollywood, igniting over 50 fires all over town in the span of three nights, and causing over 2 million dollars in damage.

Here are five things I learned from the experience, followed by a recipe for cookies.

1.) I probably am not the person to contact in case of emergency, especially if I don’t know you.

MG called me at 4 in the morning last Saturday to tell me he’d woken to the sounds of his neighbors screaming “Fire!” He looked out his bedroom window and saw the carport of the apartment building next to him engulfed in flames.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?” I asked — not in a snotty way, but because I actually did not know what I was supposed to do!  Thankfully, he didn’t know what I was supposed to do either.  Then there was about five seconds of awkward silence, like when you run out of pieces for your new IKEA credenza but there’s still a page and a half of assembly instructions left to go.  Finally, I managed to come up with, “You need to get out of there!”  Boy, the Red Cross really needs to put me on the payroll, don’t they?  My split-second thinking would be an asset to any life-threatening crisis.  Did MG actually need to hear this from me?  Was he sitting there thinking, “Aw really?  I was planning to just go back to bed.  The fire is like twenty feet away, and if I can’t jump twenty feet, will a fire really be able to?”

Despite what the stickers on the elevator wall ask of me, I do not stay calm in a crisis.  When I first heard the phone ring, I immediately panicked, the way one does when they hear the words, “I think we should run additional tests,” or “Now we’re going to go around and all say something interesting about ourselves.”    Before I even picked up the phone I had the thought, “Please please please don’t be a number I recognize,” because at least then I’d be off the hook.  If someone I actually know is calling me in the middle of the night, it’s probably going to require a level of cool-headedness I’ve never had to muster before.  No one ever calls you in the middle of the night with good news.  Even if your sister went into the delivery room and instead of giving birth to one baby, as the doctor had predicted, she gave birth to nine babies and a Cuisinart hand blender, everyone knows you wait until sunrise to spread the good word and invite people to omelettes.

If someone I don’t know is calling me at 4 am, while it’s true they may be in the process of getting mugged, going down in a plane, or choking on a chicken bone, what’s also true is that thankfully, it’s not my problem.  That’s why you should always make sure you’re dialing a phone correctly, especially if it’s the middle of the night and your life is in jeopardy. Grandma may hop into her Yugo and speed over to your house with a pamphlet on the Heimlich Maneuver, but once I get my six pillows into their proper sleepy-time configuration, if you call me by mistake, you’re pretty much fucked.

Continue reading “Five Things I Learned From the Hollywood Arsonist OR “Cornmeal Thyme Cookies”” »