There may be a new, energy efficient way to roast food coming soon. According to InventorSpot, a food stand owner in Thailand has invented a solar powered roasting oven.
The oven uses mirrors to focus sunlight on the food, and in the case of its inventor the food is chicken. The inventor says he got the idea from childhood memories of playing with magnifying glasses to focus sunlight. He claims that his oven can roast a small chicken in ten minutes on a sunny day and twenty when it's cloudy out.
The article also comments on the food stand owners' power bill: nothing. In a time of rising energy costs and environmental worries, this is the kind of invention that needs to be developed and promoted world wide. It's great for third world cooks, but I hope it can be developed for my kitchen as well.
You probably won't win any nutrition awards for this meal (its painfully whitish-tan color reminds us that there aren't many rich nutrients hidden in the dish), but no matter - it's still a delicious dinner choice for meat eaters and veggies alike.
The recipe does call for anchovy filets, so simply omit those if you're a vegetarian (unfortunately, though, anchovies are known to produce a certain je ne se quoi in foods that is hard to reproduce). But there's nothing wrong with a simple pasta and cauliflower dish, too.
One of the keys to this recipe is the roasted cauliflower - you cook them until they're just browned, which is sure to bring out their best flavor. And don't forget the parmesan cheese at the end for an added salty kick.
Not long ago I posted about an event at the Astor Center in NYC, the annual Head to Tail Dinner put on by Chris Cosentino of Incanto restaurant in San Francisco. I was lucky enough to attend and want to tell you all about it. We'll go behind the scenes in the kitchen before, and just prior to the meal; and follow all the way through the dinner itself. It all started three days prior when I was invited to join the chefs in the kitchen as they started prepping for the dinner.
Chris and his pal, Chef Jonnatan Leiva of the Jack Falstaff Restaurant in San Francisco had flown in on a red-eye after finishing work late the night before. With what little sleep they had on the plane, they went straight to work in the Astor Center kitchen, as they engaged on a three-day binge of Red Bull to keep them alert and local microbrews to keep them sane. Other chefs from around New York state showed up to volunteer and help put the event together.
Every now and then I get a hankering for something truly decadent. The past few days I was lamenting the loss of Tim Love's Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in NYC. I first met Tim on the set of Iron Chef America and he invited Joe Distefano and me back to his restaurant after the show.
We sat down at the bar and had a quick shot of icy Tuaca liqueur (one of Tim and his crew's favorite tipples that they had done shots of every 15 minutes during the filming of the 60 minute contest part of the show) and ordered Jalapeno Margarita's and Prairie Butter. Prairie Butter is Tim's take on roasted marrow bones. He takes Buffalo marrow bones, sprinkles them with a mix of South-Western spices, roasts them, and serves them with flatbread and a roasted pepper chutney.
Well, the restaurant is closed now, and Tim is back to Texas at his original Lonesome Dove Bistro, but I am stuck craving those marrow bones. I don't know what spices he used so I have come up with my own recipe. Every few months I buy a bunch of bones and get set for a truly great meal.
Here's my recipe for South-Western Roasted Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad.
Roasted chicken with fried yucca root was the obvious winner for judges at the Food Network's Ultimate Recipe: Chicken Showdown (just so we're clear, the contestants were battling it out, not the chickens). Grand Prize Winner Amparo Alam of Syracuse, Utah, swept the competition, winning 99 out of a possible 100 points for her original dish.
The recipe, listed here, uses ajies (Peruvian chilies) and huacatay (a Peruvian herb) to enhance the flavors of both the bird and the veggie.
What do you think? Do these recipes sound good to you? Or could you do better? Put your money where your mouth is and submit your recipe by March 31 for the next competition.
I shied away from brussels sprouts until I found Ina Garten's (the Barefoot Contessa) recipe, and then I never looked back. I make 'em every few weeks, and I'm pleased every time.
They're deceptively simple and unbelievably delicious.
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
A cup of brussels sprouts, washed with the ends chopped off 2 tsp. olive oil kosher salt for seasoning
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread the sprouts on an oiled pan and sprinkle with olive oil and salt. Bake for about 12 minutes, turn, and bake for another 12-15.
The sprouts come out perfectly, with sweet, crinkled caramelized skins and tender, flavorful insides. They're on the firmer side, but plenty easy to eat.
I had something of a whirlwind weekend in which I hung out with a bunch of Philly bloggers, helped a friend arrange the couches in her new house and baked a batch of brownies to take to an impromptu dinner party. Other than the brownies, I didn't do much in the way of cooking and by last night, I was aching to get back into the kitchen and make some easy food that tasted good and wasn't ordered off a menu.
The meal I cooked was fairly simple, just some chicken breasts marinated in balsamic vinegar, olive oil and chopped rosemary (grilled up quickly on my trusty George Foreman grill--it's not fancy but it does the job really well), steamed broccoli and roasted carrots. However, it was deeply satisfying.
The carrots were an especially nice touch as they aren't one of my normal sides. They brought added color and sweetness to a meal that could have been a little boring otherwise. Typically I don't peel carrots, but these had been in my crisper drawer for some time and so had gotten a little furry and funky, so I quickly stripped them of their skins. I cut them on the bias for maximum surface area, tossed them with salt, pepper and olive oil and popped them in a 425 degree oven for about half an hour. They came out sweet and tender, but not mushy. You could do the same thing with those half-empty bags of baby carrots that often gather in the produce drawer. By using them, you wouldn't even have to chop them to prepare.
Two nights ago, I found myself on the phone with my mother, trying to describe how one cooks duck breast. I had been telling her about a dinner I had with friends on Saturday night and the amazingly scrumptious duck I had eaten. She admitted that the only time in her life she remembers eating duck was once, as a Chinese restaurant, about 25 years ago. She hadn't been impressed then and just stayed away. I talked her through the whole process, but I could just tell that she wasn't sold.
However, thanks to Brys over at Cookthink, there now exists a perfect picture tutorial to show you how to go about pan roasting a duck breast. It is concise, complete and totally hunger-inducing. So go forth and cook duck breast without fear!
Last week, I found myself shopping for a turkey the day before I needed to cook it. Finding a fresh bird a month before Thanksgiving was something of a challenge but we managed to do it (although the guy at Whole Foods gave Scott attitude when he called to ensure they had a bird). We got lucky with the fresh bird, but there are times when you won't be so lucky and all there will be at the grocery store is a sea of frozen birds.
For those of you to whom this has happened the night before Thanksgiving, take heart. Jennie-O has created a bird that can go straight from freezer section to oven. You don't even have to clean or season it. Over at the Epi-Log, Michael Y. Park took this Frankenbird out for a spin and over all has good things to say about it. It seems a little suspect to me, as it gets cooked in a plastic bag (a practice I've never really trusted) and I don't totally understand how it could be safe to cook a frozen turkey, but apparently it is.
When my sister came to visit last week, the first thing she asked me after hoping into my car at the train station was, "Do you have any brussel sprouts?" This might sound like a weird question, but the last two times she's stopped in Philly I just happened to have roasted brussel sprouts in the fridge. Sadly, this time around I didn't have any (although I had thought briefly about stopping to get some just the day before she arrived) and while we ate well while she was here (she makes a mean roasted sweet potato) I had started to develop a mean yen for some roasted brussel sprouts.
Last Thursday I finally slaked my thirst, as it were, with a pound of sprouts from my local produce market. I trimmed the ends off, sliced them in half and tossed them in a roasting pan with half a chopped onion, crushed garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. They went into the oven at 375 degrees for about half an hour, until they were browned and tender. I finished them with a little squeeze of lemon and some chopped, toasted walnuts. Truly one of the best things ever.
My Slashfood friends, I am a sadist. Or is it masochist? I never knew the difference between the two.
Either way, for some reason known only to, well, to no one, I decided to do the most punishing thing ever on a hot summer day: turn on the oven. I know, I must be crazy. The inexplicable thing is, however, that I turned it on to roast something that doesn't need to be roasted. If I needed to make a roasted garlic puree, I could justify it. If I felt like roasting a lemon herb chicken for Sunday supper, it would make sense.
My friends, I roasted tomatoes. Tomatoes! At this point in the season, there is absolutely no need to roast produce that is practically dripping with fresh flavor right off the vine!
However, I couldn't resist after I came across a recipe for Roasted Tomato Soup while flipping lazily through Marcus Wareing's Cook the Perfect cookbook.
I went a little overboard with the tomatoes at the farmers' market on Tuesday morning. I already had a few nice yellow ones from a market visit over the weekend and then ended up buying several heirlooms as well as an overflowing pint of black cherry tomatoes. When I came home tonight, I noticed that the black cherry tomatoes were starting to get just slightly wrinkled and needed to be used as soon as possible.
I picked them over, tossing out the couple that were too far gone and poured the rest into a glass baking dish. I gave them a little drizzle of olive oil, along with a sprinkling of salt and pepper and popped them into the oven at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes. When I took them out, they had softened and created a gorgeous juice. I ate them over a scoop of quinoa (they'd also be great tossed with pasta), topped with a nice handful of crumbled feta cheese. These little guys started out pretty sweet, but the addition of roasting made them even sweeter. This is a great way to handle grape and cherry tomatoes in the winter when they aren't in their prime the way they are now.
When I was 17, my next-door neighbor Alma taught me how to roast red peppers. She turned the burner way up on her big old white enamel gas stove and grabbed a pepper firmly with a pair of long-handled metal tongs. She systematically blistered the skin on a series of five peppers, stashing the finished ones in a brown paper bag to trap the heat and finish cooking the flesh. When the last pepper had gotten a chance to work in the heat of the bag, she tumbled everything out into a colander in the sink and ran water over the peppers to cool them down enough to handle. I was amazed how the blackened skin just slid off, leaving behind a tender, naked pepper.
I don't have a gas stove in my apartment, and even if I did I think I would be hesitant to roast my peppers like Alma did because I've got some seriously sensitive smoke detectors. These days I roast them at high heat on a foil-lined baking sheet (if you roast them on an uncovered sheet you run the risk of caramelizing the sugars permanently to the surface of your baking sheet), turning them a couple of times to get as much surface-area blackening as possible. I still use the techniques she taught me of letting them steam a bit in a paper bag and running cold water over them to get them cool enough to handle.
In the fall and winter I often puree with some roasted carrots and stock into soup. The last batch I made went into some sandwiches and on the top of a salad. They are fairly low effort, and if you get your red peppers on sale, are much less expensive than buying the jars of gourmet roasted peppers.
There's something rather odd about putting those two words together, eh? "Watermelon Steak." It's like saying "Chocolate Potatoes" or something.
But this is something that's actually growing in popularity. You cut the watermelon into slices (removing the rind) and cook it in a roasting pan (350 degrees) with sherry, butter, and salt and pepper.
Now, it certainly has that steak look, but I wonder how it tastes, exactly? I would assume it's very tender and sweet, with the salt and pepper giving the watermelon a certain kick. At 51 Lincoln in Newton Highlands, MA serves it with a confit of tomatoes and eggplant.
This is some of the best food TV I've seen recently (the player is embedded after the jump). It's a nicely edited clip of Christopher Walken preparing roasted chicken and pears. He shares cooking tips, shows off his upright roaster and seems totally and completely comfortable in the kitchen. Clocking in at just more than three minutes long, it is a good example of how little preparation is needed to make a good meal, even one fit for a star.
There may be a new, energy efficient way to roast food coming soon. According to InventorSpot, a food stand owner in Thailand has invented a solar powered roasting oven.
Not long ago I posted about an event at the Astor Center in NYC, the annual 
This
Creating the ultimate Mother's Day gift for the carnivorous mom
Create less clutter with your Mother's Day gifts
Gifts for the vegetarian (or vegetable-loving) mom
