Saying goodbye to strawberry season

Strawberries have always been my favorite fruit, so I'm sad that strawberry season is coming to a close. To make the most of the fresh strawberries at my local farmer's market, my friend Emily and I made Martha Stewart's Strawberry Icebox Pie:

Not quite as picturesque as Martha's pie, but still delicious!

Say what you will about Martha, she has some good pie recipes. The strawberry filling augmented the strawberry taste instead of overwhelming the strawberry flavor with sugar. But we did modify other parts of the recipe.  I had several pre-made pie crusts at hand, so we baked one of those instead of making the graham cracker crust. We also substituted the whipped cream with mascarpone cheese, which was a nice twist. In all, it was the perfect way to get the most out of strawberry season.

Kentucky Cooking in Oklahoma

 Determined to keep my summer resolution to cook with bourbon once a week, I decided my mom and I should try a recipe together. Forced mother-daughter bonding activities can get tense, but fortunately we had fun making the recipe and neither of us walked away traumatized. 

We picked out Chicken Kentuckiana, a fried chicken dish with a spinach and mushroom bourbon cream sauce. I would love to post the recipe, but unfortunately think there might be some copyright issues, so the best I can do is refer you to The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook's Amazon page. 

We modified the recipe slightly as we had skinless, boneless chicken breasts and used vegetable oil. My mom is a big advocate of always washing your chicken in warm water, so that helped the flour stick to the chicken, and the vegetable oil worked just fine for frying. The end result was great, and our approach was a bit healthier than the original recipe.  

Our healthier take on "fried" chicken.

While finishing cooking the fried chicken in cream sauce, we were concerned because the sauce was not thickening. Fortunately, my mom knew just what to do! She put a tablespoon of cornstarch into 1/4 cup of hot water and stirred so the starch dissolved. Once we added that to the sauce, it thickened nicely...

The bourbon cream sauce in mid-thicken

Chicken Kentuckiana was delicious and is dish I will be making again.  We ate it over rice, but the recipe also suggested mashed potatoes.  

Not wanting to miss out on the fun, my dad decided to make his fried green tomatoes!  They turned out great, and fortunately, I can share this recipe:

1) Mix Louisiana Fish Fry (in the cornmeal section of the grocery store) with a dash of Old Bay seasoning. 

2)Thinly slice green tomatoes. 

3) Combine 2-3 egg whites in a bowl and set to the side. (You can also whisk 2 full eggs together if you'd prefer.) 

4) In a large skillet, pour vegetable oil (enough so that there is 1/2 inch of oil in the pan) and heat over a medium heat. 

5) While the oil is heating, dip your tomatoes in the egg whites and cover both sides with the fish fry/seasoning mix. 

6) Place the tomatoes in the pan (they shouldn't touch each other and should leave room for you to maneuver), and when the tomatoes are browned, flip and fry them on the other side. 

7) Drain fried tomatoes on paper towels.

8) Serve and enjoy!

Oklahoma City Highlights

I visited my parents in Oklahoma City last week and took the opportunity to check out the local fare.

I was disconcerted when the waiter at Bricktown Brewery, told me the restaurant was taking fruits and veggies off their menu, but fortunately not all the restaurants were as committed to spreading obesity.  Zorba's Mediterranean Cuisine had tons of delicious dishes with fresh veggies, fruits, and herbs - not to mention the very un-DC prices!  I also loved Picasso's in the artsy Paseo neighborhood, they had an amazing fresh beet, goat cheese, and arugula salad, but my favorite thing was their homemade cheesecake drizzled with strawberry kiwi champagne sauce.

Zorba's and Picasso's were the highlights, but I also enjoyed Cajun King (what's not to love about endless fried catfish and beignets), Cattlemen's (great burgers), and Mi Pueblo (unpretentious, classic Tex Mex).

As much fun as I had exploring the local fare, my favorite food experiences were trying out some new recipes on my parents and learning some of their cooking tricks...more on that soon!

Shake Shack is here!

For ages I've been reading about how amazing Shake Shack is - but  I never seemed to make it there while in New York. Luckily for me, a Shake Shack recently opened in Dupont.

It was well worth the wait.  I think Shake Shack's burger may be better than Ray's Hell Burger. I got the single and it was unbelievably delicious, but wasn't so rich and filling that I felt like I needed to change into sweat pants and take a nap just to recover from the simple act of eating a burger.  The fries were very good too, but perhaps my favorite thing were the concretes.  The concretes are made of dense custard mixed at high speed with toppings and mix-ins - the result is the creamiest custard I've ever tasted, add in the mouth-watering flavor combinations, and it's a crippling addiction.

I can't wait to go back.

Summer Resolution: cook with bourbon once a week

In this blog, I have documented my love of bourbon (as well as cupcakes).  For my birthday, I received some new bourbon inspiration thanks to my friend Liz...

Aside from the mouthwatering pictures of Kentucky bourbon French toast with Kentucky bourbon blueberry syrup, the book gives a good overview of bourbon 101.  The book also is broken into season to encourage fresh ingredients...though I'm pretty sure that French toast should be made year round.  

I've been dying to try a recipe, but haven't had the chance until now.  I kicked off my bourbon cooking spree with my old favorite, Derby pie.  But from here on out, I'm going to try a new bourbon recipe and share the results.

Let the bourbon cooking begin!

The longest blog lapse EVER...

I love this blog and many times over the past few months have wanted to write an entry.  But in the midst of working crazy hours and moving, blogging just hasn't been possible. 

Fortunately, this has not been the case with eating.  So I'll leave you with the highlights from my Chicago trip and I promise to write more soon (and by "soon" I mean later this week, NOT three months from now).

Koi, a sushi restaurant in Evanston, had the best sushi I have ever tasted.  It was an excellent recommendation from my office mate - I'm so glad I made it there.  Here were my two favorite dishes -

Chicago Maki - Salmon, avocado, and cream cheese topped with spicy tuna, crabmeat, tobikko, green onion, and sumo sauce

Dragon Fire Maki - Shrimp tempura topped with salmon, super white tuna, tobikko, green onion, spicy mayo, and unagi sauce, the baked and served warm.

I also checked out a local pastry shop, Bennison's.  It was delicious - I tried macaroons, a doughnut, and the sad face cookie (if only because it's awesome they had a sad face cookie).  All were amazing.  Wish I'd had room for the cupcakes though...

My all-time favorite Sesame Street character in cupcake form