Jalapeno Cheddar Bread

For this recipe, it would help to start by reading this post - Easy White Dough.

Then follow the pictorial by clicking on the first picture below, captions/directions will then show underneath!

Wine Pairing: a widget to help!

Have you bought a good wine and want to match food with it? Bought or made some good food and want to match a good wine with it within your budget range? Natalie MacLean has a Drinks Matcher on her website that you can also use as a widget on your website! I was going to put her widget on my site to help other people out who may visit but I think its much better to visit her site and use the Drinks Matcher there: Nat Decants

Why? Great information. Good recipes. Straight talk about choosing and drinking wines. Demystifying and bringing wine drinking down to our level (the non-snobbish foodies who think wine people are being pretentious). Books, articles, podcasts, free newsletters…

Who is Natalie MacLean? Watch her video and read the rest of her bio here:

To fund her late-night vinous habits, Natalie MacLean holds down day jobs as a wine writer, speaker and judge. An accredited sommelier, she is a member of the National Capital Sommelier Guild, the Wine Writers Circle and several French wine societies with complicated and impressive names. Funny, brainy and unapologetically tipsy, her goal in life is to intimidate those crusty wine stewards at fine restaurants with her staggering knowledge.

Help with your Doughs and Batters

Do you know who Michael Ruhlman is? He writes about many subjects in magazines and newspapers, but mostly in books and mostly about food, chefs, and cooking—issues also covered in his blog. His most recent book,

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking

as the title states – gives you many simple codes behind cooking. If you have no intentions of reading the book, or just want a sample of what knowing ratios can do, Michael has posted a PDF of the Doughs & Batters ratios that you can print and hang in your kitchen or put in your ‘cookbook’ to try your hand at…a word to the wise, the ratios are based on weight, so you need to have and know how to use a kitchen scale for this to be useful to you. But I promise you will become a better person by cooking/baking with a scale for precision.

Just click this link to his blog and look on the left hand side for the above picture and you can download his PDF for FREE! Black & White photos on the PDF are by his wife Donna, excellent!

[I don't link directly to the PDF because I think its fair that if he offers something for free, you can at least visit his site to get it...and of course permission, laws, and things of that nature tend to slow things down]

TX Smokehouse BBQ...in San Jose, CA?

I have tasted some BBQ here & there, of this and that...and it really just seems people want to cook meat any old kind of way and put some BBQ sauce on it, then call it BBQ.

At the Texas Smokehouse BBQ, it tasted like a real BBQ, which means the meat is cooked a certain way (at least to me, and I am from the South) and it's got to have an element of smoke or outdoor grill to it!

Here there is no valet parking, servers/waiters, reserved seating, or pretentiousness.

Nope, 2 parking spaces, 3 tables, and a fan outside to keep the 'smoke' from filling up the main restaurant area through the screen door.  Just the type 'Hole-n-Wall' place I love to check out.

Being in California this Texas BBQ place reminds me of back home...in Alabama.  So until I make it back home to visit in 'Sweet Home Alabama' I'll be stopping by to order, or call ahead to pick up my BBQ from here & any of the 'Down Home' style sides (that is, unless I am having/cooking my own BBQ).

You order you pay at the register, they are polite, and you WAIT if someone calls in order...they can only do so many things at once.  AND YES you are going to smell like smoke/a smoker if you are there for a while eating or waiting for your food.

Here is all the information and a copy of the menu: Texas Smokehouse BBQ

Comment and/or write about your favorite BBQ place, or let me know of another good one in the San Jose area.  I'll go check it out!

Thanks to Rudy R. for the photo!

Moroccan Style Sweet Potato Salad

Marius commented me on Facebook because I usually update about the food I am going to cook or am going to eat…

“Tyrone, I would be very interested in the Moroccan sweet potato recipe…”

or in this case the wonderful food my wifey made!

Ingredients

• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes


• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (or more if you like)


• 1 teaspoon cinnamon


• 2 teaspoons harissa or chili garlic sauce (you may improvise w/cayenne)


• 1 lemon, juiced


• 2 teaspoons honey


• salt


• 2 tablespoons coriander


• 1/2 to 1 cup sliced black Kalamata olives (you can use just the plain black, but where’s the fun & taste in that?)


• 1/4 cup capers (to taste)

Directions

1. Boil the sweet potatoes in just enough water to cover.


2. Stir in the ginger, cinnamon, harissa, lemon, honey, and salt and boil for about 10 minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked but not falling apart.


3. The sauce should be thick, almost syrup-like.


4. If it isn’t, lift out the potatoes and boil the sauce until it is thicker. (sometimes this takes a long time)


5. When the sauce is done, mix in the coriander, olives, and capers (and sweet potatoes if you had to separate them to thicken the sauce).


6. Cool and serve.

Tips/Opts:

• heat up/pan roast your coriander first to create a more in-depth flavor, if its whole coriander grind in a coffee grinder, spice mill, or beat it in a Ziploc bag with a small skillet!  If its ground coriander keep tossing it about till it smells like its cooking, looks like its smoking, & starts to get darker


• If you just want to concentrate on making the sauce without worrying about how mushy the potatoes are going to cook or fall apart, then bake the sweet potatoes whole a day or two before *(350 degrees for about 40 to 60 minutes, depends how big you bought them, poke them with a knife to check…pull them out as soon as they are real close), let them chill and get hard in the refrigerator then peel and cube and pour hot sauce over it and toss gently…this will help cool the dish down to room temp quicker too!

How about a  ‘regular’ potato salad made with sweet potatoes?  Anyone have some good recipes for that?  Keep the mail & comments coming…

Smartpower Duet...not a good Idea!

Since I am just like many of you and feel the tight crunch of getting the most out of every penny I went to Costco to get some items for the kitchen.  While I was there I found this combi blender mini-processor unit by Cuisinart and I thought, "I'll buy this to get by for a while plus it makes sense since I have such a small kitchen right now...".

Nope, never got around to trying out the mini processor because I could never get the blender to even make a frozen coffee drink.  The glass pitcher is too wide with little to NO taper, and once it does QUICKLY narrow into a smaller bowl the blades seem to sit halfway in this small 'bowl' area that the oversize plastic piece screws on to the bottom.  The blades just kicked the ice around like it was a never-ending game of dice.  If you ask me, terrible design.

Do you have one of these, does it work well for you?  It seemed like a good idea and price at the time...I took it back and just used the money to buy my favorite blender, the food processor will have to wait!  (I gave away everything I had in 2007-again!- before I went back to West Africa to work in 2008)

Restocking the 'choice' appliances has not been cheap.  But I expected as much and have the patience to wait for a 'sale' or two.