I don’t cook much with onions. I prefer shallots, smaller, sweeter, milder. Just the right amount of onion flavor. Wonderful roasted and caramelized.
Here’s MF Doom’s take…
shallots
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roasted mushrooms
My favorite way to prepare mushrooms is roasted with shallots, garlic, sage, rosemary and thyme. They’re delicious as a side dish, wonderful on salads, with pasta, on toast, or as a filling for a pie, which is how I most commonly use them lately. They’re easy to make, and your kitchen will smell like a holiday while they’re cooking.
Recipe to follow…
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Do fries go with that shake?
Here’s a mid-eighties offering from the inimitable George Clinton. Did you know he worked in a barber shop in Plainfield, NJ? It’s true!
Savory vanilla sauce & roasted french fries
The other night, during a bout of insomnia, I started thinking about vanilla, as one does. I love the scent and flavor of vanilla. (I have recurring dreams about vanilla essence, actually. Wonder what that means?) I think vanilla has been unfairly labeled as plain and pale – almost a non-flavor. In fact it’s wonderfully flavorful. I started to ponder the fact that, in my experience, vanilla is always used as a flavoring in sweet dishes. Why shouldn’t vanilla find its way into a savory dish? Other sweet staples, like cinnamon and chocolate have done it. Then I started thinking about fries and a vanilla milkshake. Such a perfect pairing. One hot, crispy and salty, and one cool and vanilla-y. That’s when I came up with the idea for this combination.
The sauce is a tarator sauce – it’s nut-based, and though it’s quite creamy, there’s no dairy in it at all. And the french fries are actually roasted in olive oil in the oven, but they become as crispy as you could hope for. Keep reading for recipes…
Roasted french fries
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Hey, that’s not about cabbages!
What’s your favorite song that seems to be about food, but, well…just isn’t about food at all?
Here are some of mine…
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Oatmeal – peppercorn crust
Okay, so it’s not really about pastry dough, but he does mention a kitchen range! And it is a good song!
Blind Blake – No Dough Blues
Toasting oats
Here’s a recipe for Oatmeal – peppercorn crust. I like to think of any crust as something that would taste good on its own, were you to bake it into a cracker. That’s certainly the case here. It’s not the easiest to roll smooth or make neat, so pick a pie shape that’s attractively ragged, like small galettes.
Keep reading for the recipe…
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Don’t fear the crust!
Pie crust has a bad reputation. People think it’s tricky and time-consuming to make. Unwieldy, difficult, and not all that good for you. Not true! Pie crust is exceedingly simple to make, and it doesn’t take much time at all. It’s not difficult to work with, and when it’s cooked it generally looks good no matter how much you mangle it. In fact, pie crust is one of those things that thrives on neglect. The less you mess with it, the better it tastes.
Here’s a recipe for basic pie crust. Flour, salt, butter, and ice water. Simple! Also called short crust or pate brisee, this pastry is extremely versatile and can be used for just about any of your pie crust needs.
The trick is to keep it quick and keep it cool.
recipe after the jump…
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Sofrito songs?
You’d be surprised at the amount of songs about sofrito. A testament to its deliciousness. This is my favorite…
It’s by Mondo Santamaria, and like sofrito, it’s a slow cooker, but once it gets going, it sizzles!
Sofrito!
Sofrito…it’s fun to say and delicious to eat. 
It’s also one of those foods that turns up all over the world in different guises. In Spain it’s a slow-cooked, intensely flavored tomato paste. Where different versions of sofrito show up – in the Carribean, latin America, the mediterranean – you’ll find different ingredients added or taken away. You’ll find green peppers, pork, cilantro, olives, capers, chilies, different seasonings. A sofrito is usually a base for another dish. You can add it to a soup or stew at the end to deepen the flavor, toss it with pasta, use it as a condiment. And it is the main ingredient of the empanada gallega, which is the mother of all empanadas.
paste tomatoes
This is my version of a Spanish sofrito. I keep the seasonings simple (rosemary and beautiful smoked spanish paprika) because the sofrito will probably find itself in another dish, mingling with other flavors. I’m not sure this is authentic, but it is delicious!
Recipe after the jump.
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Be Healthy
french lentils
Here’s some lentil-cooking music. Yes! I found a song that mentions lentils. This is Dead Prez’s Be Healthy. I love this song, because it describes some of the many benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle. And it sounds good!!
It’s all love!
Lentil soup is mental fruit
And ginger root is good for the youth
Fresh veg-e-table with the ital stew
Sweet yam fries with the green calallooCareful how you season and prepare your foods
‘Cause you don’t wanna lose vitamins and minerals
And that’s the jewel
Life brings life, it’s valuable, so I eat what comesFrom the ground, it’s natural
Out of the Ordinary 