My New Header

I'm really loving my current blog header - designed for me by....me!

If you want to snazz up your Blogger blog, I'm happy to design a little sumpin' sumpin' for you. Just drop me a line at theminx1 AT gmail DOT com and we can get to work!

Skinny Italian Giveaway!

Ok, so it's like this:

I don't watch any of the Housewives franchise on Bravo. Those overly-dramatic, bitchy women with lots of money and little class are, to me, everything that is wrong with American society. So when I was approached to talk about Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa "Table Flipper" Giudice's new book, Skinny Italian, I laughed out loud at the request. I sneer at the Housewives every chance I get and I'm going to promote one of them? Heck, I don't even know how to pronounce her last name.

So I made a little deal - I'll talk about the book if I can cook from it - that way, I can judge the book on its own merits and not on the reputation of its author. And I planned to be brutally honest about the recipes. So I contacted fellow blogger Jordan Baker, she of the highly amusing Top Chef and Project Runway recaps, because I knew she owned a copy of the book. (You can read about her experience with one of the biscotti recipes here.) I decided to try Danielle's Puttanesca Sauce (which I'm guessing is named after Giudice's favorite fellow RHNJ, Danielle Staub) and the Panzanella Salad.

I began to look forward to cooking because I *knew* I'd have some really strong criticisms. There was no way these recipes would be good. Heh - I was going to get to do some table flipping of my own.

I started with the Puttanesca sauce, which involved adding additional seasonings to a recipe Giudice calls the "Quickie Sauce" (recipe below). So step one was to make said sauce.

Me being me, I had to make a substitution to the recipe: because I don't like the watery texture of sauce made with hand-squooshed whole tomatoes and their juice, I substituted a can of crushed plum tomatoes. And, I had to question, with this being a "skinny" dish, why bother putting olive oil in the sauce if it's not first used to sauté garlic and/or onion? I did, however, add the oil. The end result was basically tomatoes + basil + oil slick = sauce. That needs a recipe? I think not. It tasted like canned tomatoes with basil in it. My use of crushed tomatoes, however, produced a pretty texturally perfect sauce, thick and smooth, just the way I like it. But this basic sauce needed some serious doctoring. And that's basically the premise of the recipe - it's a base to which other flavorings are added to create different types of sauce (for instance, Quickie + carrots + meat = a Bolognese).

On to the Puttanesca: A "puttana" is a whore, and this type of sauce - like a good whore - should be both salty and spicy. Basically, you take the "Quickie" tomato sauce and add some anchovy paste, garlic, olives, and capers, simmer for a few more minutes and pour it over pasta. Surprisingly, the salty capers and anchovy paste really transformed the bland basic sauce into something far more rich and savory.

I served it over fettuccine, my favorite type of pasta.

Here's the basic sauce recipe, as published on the Hyperion Voice site, originally from Skinny Italian, by Teresa Giudice with Heather McLean.

Basic Tomato Sauce AKA “The Quickie”

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

One 28-ounce can imported Italian plum tomatoes, broken up, with their juices

¼ cup tomato paste

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil or 2 teaspoons dried basil

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the tomatoes and their juices and the tomato paste. Bring just to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the basil. Simmer to blend the flavors, about 10 minutes. The end.

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Next up was the panzanella, a salad made from stale bread and tomatoes. My changes: I substituted Vidalia onion for the red onion and didn't remove the seeds from the tomatoes. Part of me thought that maybe there was going to be too much tomato/olive/basil going on since I was planning on serving it with the pasta Puttanesca, but actually, they were a good match - cold tomato vs. hot tomato, cold olives vs. hot olives, cooked basil vs. raw basil both reinforced the tomato- and olive- and basil-ness of the individual components.

While the sauce was warm and rich and spicy, the salad was light and bright and would make a great summertime lunch.

So what's the verdict of my Skinny Italian experience?

As much as I hate to admit it, both dishes were delicious. They had close to the perfect amount of seasoning and I didn't feel the need to do any heavy alterations or additions. That said, both recipes were very basic, very simple. I have the feeling that Skinny Italian would be an ideal first cookbook for someone just starting to experiment with cooking - college students, young couples, people who have no clue about Italian food.

The Giveaway (you thought I forgot this part, right?)

Family tradition is very important to me. A lot of our family time, our culture, and our love revolves around being in the kitchen. I learned to cook from my mom, and I cook homemade meals for my family almost every night. I’ve been collecting my mom’s recipes, tips, tricks and secrets from the Old World for healthy Italian living for years. I finally wrote them down to pass on to my kids, and the result is Skinny Italian. It’s a love letter to my mom. It’s full of full-color photographs, over 60 family recipes straight from Salerno, and of course, a bit of behind-the-scenes gossip thrown in. –Teresa Guidice

If your interest is piqued, I have five, count 'em FIVE copies of the book to give away to my readers. All you have to do is share a family recipe or food memory in the comments section. You don't even have to be Italian. :) Please make sure to also leave your e-mail address so I may contact you if you are a winner.

Contest ends at noon June 11th, 2010.

The fine print:

• No purchase necessary.
  
• One entry per person – USA residents only.
  
• The odds of winning are dependent on how many entries we receive.
  
• Winners will be chosen randomly and notified via email.
  
• The prizing for this giveaway was provided by Bravo. However, Bravo is not a sponsor, administrator, or connected in any other way with this giveaway.

Chik-Fil-A Better Than 23 Others

According to this Grub Street article about the 101 Best Sandwiches in NY, Chik-Fil-A is good enough to come in at #78. Bet the 23 other sammies that ranked lower are annoyed.

The rest of the list makes me want to eat nothing but sandwiches on my next trip to New York. The ones that intrigue the most:

Sesame Pancake with Beef
Llanero Patacon
Pig's Ass Sandwich
Torta Ahogata
Cemita al Pastor
Mumbai Grilled Sandwich
Eggplant Parmigiana
Connecticut Lobster Roll

What's your favorite sandwich?

Korean-style BBQ Chicken Wraps

Most of my Internet surfing these days revolves around my favorite topic: food. I read food blogs, recipe sites, search for recipe contests, etc. On most days, I try to look through the food photos at Photograzing, an offshoot of Serious Eats, for inspiration for my home cooking. One day, I was struck by photos of a vivid red Korean-style preparation called Pineapple Dak Bulgogi, which uses pineapple as a tenderizing agent in the marinade. The creator not only ate his bulgogi on rice, he also did interesting cross-cultural things like use it as a filling for burritos and tacos.

After reading the recipe, I determined that I wanted to try it but only after an issue was resolved.

Korean cooks use Asian pear in their bulgogi marinades for tenderizing, but adding sweetness is just as an important role for the fruit. And while its juice is somewhat acidic, its tenderizing ability is nothing compared to a protein-digesting enzyme like the bromelain found in pineapple. Left in contact with bromelain for more than a short time, meat proteins can break down and get unpleasantly mushy - I know this from experience. (Never marinate shrimp in pineapple juice for more time than it takes to read this sentence - tears may ensue.) The Pineapple Duk Bulgogi recipe calls for a half hour of marination, and if you've got such control of your time, then that's probably fine, but suppose you get an urgent phone call, or have to leave the house for any length of time? Sadly, your chicken will probably be ruined.

And face it, chicken doesn't need tenderizing. The original recipe calls for breast meat, which cooks very quickly. My solution to the problem: take the pineapple out of the marinade. Another change: because I'm not a fan of the BSCB (boneless skinless chicken breast), I used thighs because they are more flavorful and don't suffer when overcooked.

As for the pineapple, I did use it, but in a different component of the dish - as a sweet relish with some herbs from our garden.

Because I liked the idea of a bulgogi burrito, I wrapped my chicken in a whole-wheat flatbread along with the pineapple relish and some really fast kimchee (faster and less-powerfully garlicky than the one I made last month). The flavors went together beautifully, with the brightness and herbiness of the pineapple cutting some of the heat from the chicken, and the kimchi just making it all more flavorful.

Korean-style BBQ Chicken Wraps with Pineapple Relish and Quick and Dirty Kimchi

Korean-style BBQ Chicken
1/2 cup gochujang (Korean hot pepper bean paste)
3 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely minced
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
3 green onions, both white and green parts chopped
4 boneless skinless chicken thighs, thinly sliced

In a large bowl, mix all ingredients except chicken, stirring well to dissolve sugar. Add chicken. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour and up to overnight.

When ready to cook, pour everything into a hot sauté pan and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Turn heat down to medium, cover, and cook until chicken is cooked through, 15-20 minutes. If  you use chicken breasts, cut the cooking time by about half.

Pineapple Relish
1 cup fresh pineapple, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon sugar
6-10 basil leaves, depending on the type and size of basil you use (I used Thai)
6 large mint leaves
finely grated zest of half a lime

Over medium-high heat, sauté pineapple in butter and sugar until fruit begins to brown slightly. Remove to a bowl and toss with mint, basil, and lime zest. Serve warm.

Quick and Dirty Kimchi
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Korean pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon agave syrup
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1.5 cups shredded cabbage

Combine first five ingredients. Add cabbage and stir to coat. Refrigerate for an hour or more to allow flavors to develop.

To assemble:

Flatbreads, tortillas, or lavash
Korean BBQ chicken
Pineapple Relish
Quick Kimchi

Place chicken, relish, and kimchi on one end of the wrapper of your choice. Roll up and eat. Makes 4-6, depending on the size of your wrapper.