jm chen's Profile

The Barefoot Contessa's orzo with roasted veg and feta is superfantastic. Great for home suppers or dinner parties alike.

Pix and recipe link on my blog.

I also really like to make a dip with roasted peppers, feta, and smoked paprika, but since it's such good feta I wouldn't blend it with too many other things. Enjoy!

I wish I liked eggs, because not liking them really limits your choices at brunch.

[Items containing egg such as French toast, pancakes, any cake or cookie = okay. Eggs on their own (hard boiled, fried, scrambled, poached) or dominating a dish (frittata, quiche, strata) = not okay.]

I'm also in the raw tomato chorus.

Experiment and expand your spice horizons -- stir fry potato cubes with curry powder, roast cauliflower with nothing but salt and pepper and oil until it gets deep brown and popcorny, mix up couscous with dried apricots and almonds, find the perfect lemon-and-sage roast chicken, maybe even learn to make sushi. Play with hot sauce. Find weird new vegetables like kohlrabi and jicama. Make cold soup out of fresh cherries. Grill a wasabi-marinated flank steak. Buy unfamiliar lettuces for salad and make your own vinaigrette.

Cheeses and onion/garlic are easy things to reach for when you're adding flavor, but you'll find a LOT of other ways to spice things up. If there's a Penzey's or other spice store in your area, visit and sniff. (Avoid the blends that have onion or garlic powder, obviously.)

Best of luck!

Virtually all the Philly-style ice creams in The Perfect Scoop turn out great. Peanut butter, tiramisu, cheesecake, the Philadelphia-style vanilla, they're all great. I only rarely bother with custards.

I don't usually like uni-taskers, but if you like to stuff jalapenos, I don't know an existing tool that can handle it. Spoons are too wide. A knife of the right length might work, but it's a bit tricky to cut down inside a small pepper -- not a lot of room to manuever. I can reach in and pull out the core with my fingers, but I hate getting hot pepper oils under my fingernails and feeling it burn hours later.

If you don't have to keep the pepper whole, to heck with fancy schmancy, use a paring knife. But it's not one of those totally useless unitaskers like, say, an asparagus steamer.

Matilda! Now that's the only thing I see! Eek!

Guess I'll check the Flickr pix to see where the wet ingredients ran off to...

I'm pretty sure attempting to use either the zester or the peeler, I'd cut my finger clean off.

Separate tools please.

These are all awesome tips! I'm hoping to do a similar set of tips on my blog soon, but aside from the above my #1 tip is WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. I've been known to partially or completely prepare dishes and then forget to serve them. Keep a list on the counter as you cook. Scheduling is also really important but the number one thing is writing everything down, because you can't keep track if you don't remember what you're trying to keep track of.

The chalkboard fridge is supercool! Thanks for sharing it!

I use it on salted fudge brownies. Other than that I think the only thing I've done with it is mix it into a pasta sauce with ramps and cream.