It’s October and time for pumpkins! Big, heavy pumpkins filled with seeds and goop. Don’t worry, for this recipe you won’t have to buy an actual pumpkin. (However, I will buy the fattest one and attack it with my sharpest knife just to get to the seeds.) Fortunately, this recipe calls for the canned variety and we’ll add in the pumpkin spices to give these cookies that wonderful autumn flavor. Read the rest of this entry
These are a real crowd-pleaser. They’re best hot out of the oven, but can be eaten room temperature or reheated in the microwave. Mac n’Cheese Bites appeal to kids, big kids, and the bigger not-kids-anymore-kids. This is also the reason why I would refrain from making too many fancy changes or additions. There is a certain expectation to macaroni and cheese – like taste, texture, color, etc. I really like white cheddar, but many of us grew up eating the Construction-Cone orange mac n’ cheese. As a concession to tradition, I used a 1:1 blend of white cheddar and a sharp cheddar with the required orange color. It wasn’t as bold a color, but the cheese sauce was a respectable shade that no one thought I was putting on airs. Read the rest of this entry
I absolutely love the rich red color of this curry. The only way you can get this bright red is using dried chilies. Chili powder can be substituted, but it tends to just add heat without the smoky flavor of dried chilies. I didn’t have any Kashmiri chilies on hand (I had just run out the week before!), so I used 7 dried California chilies – usually reserved for weekend Chili, but I really didn’t want to use chili powder. You can roast the dried chilies beforehand if you want to enhance that smoky flavor, but allow it to cool completely before grinding or else if will create a hot powder that will BURN when you finish grinding. Read the rest of this entry
Kitchen Experiments 