Food In The Fort

This is one of those healthy eating gimmicks that I always look askance at. You know, those little tricks like making fresh “ice cream” by throwing a couple of frozen bananas in your blender. You and I both know any resemblance to ice cream lies only in the mind of the diet guru trying to sell you their book. Sure it might be tasty, and it might even be palatable but it’s not what it promised to be and you only end up feeling cheated.

So when I saw this video showing how to substitute summer squash for fettuccine making the rounds of the food blogs a couple of weeks ago I thought this was just more of the same food fakery. But I needed something to make to bring with me to book club this past Tuesday so I decided to use Fort Wayne’s literati as guinea pigs. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a wonderful recipe taken from Madhur Jaffrey’s brilliant cookbook. If you like Indian food and you don’t own this cookbook, stop everything and go buy it now! Ms. Jaffrey calls this “simple buttery rice with onion” (p. 149 of my ancient edition), but I have nicknamed it “1-2-3-4 rice” since it helps me remember how much of everything to use (although I have to cheat on the “1″ since there’s one onion and one tsp of salt).

You’re gonna love it!

1-2-3-4 Rice

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 3 cups of water
• 2 cups of rice
• 1 medium onion
• 1 tsp salt

Preparation

1. Melt the butter in a heavy pot over a medium flame.
2. When hot, put in the onion. Stir and saute it until it is almost translucent; do not let it brown in the slightest.
3. Put in the rice and the salt. Stir and saute gently for a minute.
4. Pour in the water and bring to a boil.
5. Cover tightly, turn heat to very, very low and let the rice cook for 25 minutes.

Serves 6

I remember looking around a couple of years ago for a garlic mashed potatoes recipe and coming across a website called Eat Dangerously which was promoting a cookbook of the same name. I loved the site and eventually ended up buying the cookbook for myself and for my parents and a couple of friends. I have since lost my copy (a bunch of books went missing when we moved – if you find my copy of this book or Caesar’s Forms and Syntax, please let me know). You should definitely check the site out: it’s humorously written and full of delicious recipes which live up to the site’s “blow health out your ass” philosophy. They use heavy cream, they aren’t afraid of butter, and they know that seasoning food robustly is not a crime. All this having been said, this isn’t their recipe for garlic mashed potatoes, but I think they might approve. Read the rest of this entry »