This is another dish that came out of my Random Number Generator game. The page was shrimp, and since summer is definitely upon us I wanted to make a light salad with the flavors of a ceviche. Ceviche is a Latin American dish usually prepared by curing raw fish or shrimp in citrus juice – somewhere between sushi and actually cooking the fish. However, I just went ahead and cooked the shrimp to avoid the hassle. The addition of corn, avocado, red onion, lime, and chili powder really made it seem like ceviche and the beans and spinach stretched it into a full meal.
Copenhagen Hot Dogs
I recently got back from my first trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, and in addition to all the bicycles, Scandinavian architecture, and Vikings, I found they have some of the best food I’ve ever had. While much of that food is modern Nordic cuisine (as prepared by Michelin star restaurants that later get featured in Netflix shows), you don’t have to spend 3000DKK to have a great meal. One of my favorites was picking up a hot dog (or two) at one of the ubiquitous pølser (Danish for sausages) carts. When I returned home, I knew I had to recreate them for myself.
Rotisserie Chicken Grain Bowl
Grain bowls are really popular these days, and for good reason. They’re hearty, there are a million different permutations of ingredients, and if you add enough vegetables they can be really healthy. I do not make a lot of grain bowls but I would like to get better at it. This one uses rotisserie chicken, which is one of my favorite grocery store items for when I just can’t right now.
Caramelized Nectarine Smash
With the warmer weather, all I want to do is eat fruit and lie on a lawn chair drinking cocktails. Which is probably why this post is late… In case you can’t spend all your time doing that, here’s a cocktail that reminds me of summer block party desserts, relying on a classic combination of nectarines and bourbon.
Chocolate Truffles Galore
Also for my birthday tea party, I wanted to keep improving my chocolate making skills. Since filling is the only real opening for creativity in chocolate truffles, I developed a number of different recipes. It gave me an opportunity to learn about jam making, which is a whole new world I’m excited to explore more in the future!
Beer-Braised Sausage and Mashed Potatoes
Continuing with the theme of cleaning out the fridge from the last few weeks, I have had some cans of IPA sitting in the fridge for months now. I don’t particularly like beer, and IPAs are the worst of the bunch, so they weren’t likely to disappear unless I used them for cooking. Enter – beer braising. In this case, bratwurst, which are a natural complement for beer. I just added a few classic German sides – potatoes and sauerkraut -and it was a meal. It may be June, but it sure feels like October!
Chai Custard Tart
As another offering at my birthday tea party, I decided to use up some of my remaining chai masala spice mix (leftover from previous recipes on this site) to make a twist on a traditional English egg custard tart. Egg custards are sweet and wobbly, and a perfect backdrop for stronger spice flavors. Given the obvious nature of this combo and the fact that India was once a British colony, it’s easy to see why this dish works so well.
Pizza Soup Remix
When I was a kid, I didn’t exactly like Lipton noodle soup, but it was always there for me on a cold winter day after playing in the snow. One day, I looked at the back of the box and there was a recipe for pizza soup, aka put pepperoni and cheese in your chicken noodle soup. Despite how bizarre this COMBINATION sounds, it was actually a revelation, and I remember making it all the time. I hadn’t thought about that soup for years, and then the other day it just struck me again, and I knew I had to try to recreate it as an adult dish for this site. Trying to relive childhood is always a risk, but that’s the point of what I’m doing here, right?
The Beetnik Martini
This recipe comes from a new game I’ll be playing on this site, called Random Number Generator (RNG, Results Not Guaranteed, get it?!). As you know from my previous posts, I have a book called the flavor bible that I’ve been using a lot in my recipe creation to figure out what flavors go together. This book lists ingredients in alphabetical order, and has 374 pages. When I play the RNG game, I will use google to randomly pick one of those pages, and I will have to make up a recipe using at least one main ingredient from that page. This week, the page was 366, and the ingredients were Vinegar and Vodka. Being an overachiever, I decided to do both, using the shrub method that I have recently been experimenting with (Vinegar) to make a Vodka-based cocktail.
No-Bake Chocolate Tahini Bars
For my 30th (!) birthday, I had a tea party/picnic with a bunch of friends. I made tons of sweet treats (recipes to follow), and this is one of my favorites. Chocolate peanut butter bar recipes are ubiquitous all over the internet (such as this one) and for good reason – they are easy, they BALANCE salty, sweet, smooth, and crunchy, and taste just like peanut butter cups. To make the recipe my own and satisfy a peanut-allergic best friend, I ADAPTED my favorite recipe, replacing the peanut butter with tahini. The result still satisfies all of the same cravings, with additional smoky complexity from the tahini that will wow your guests.
Results Not Guaranteed 