Appetizers

Sweet Potato Chips!

May 18, 2011 By Steve Dunn 29 Comments

Making this gorgeous treat hardly requires a recipe at all. In fact, crafting homemade potato chips is so easy, and the results so delicious, that once you give ’em a try, I bet you’ll think twice before buying store bought chips again. Really….. still warm from the fryer, and seasoned with a generous sprinkle of salt, they are very hard to beat.

I first pursued making sweet potato fries and chips as a means of getting the kids to take more of a liking to them….um….that would be the sweet potatoes, not the chips and fries. It’s funny, but while they all love potatoes, and adore all things sweet, when you put the two together, not one of them would eat them. I’ve baked them, steamed them, and smashed them, and always the answer was the same….no thanks.

Herbed Beef Skewers with Horseradish Cream – A Food52 WINNER!

April 8, 2011 By Steve Dunn 29 Comments

YES, I'VE CHANGED THE TITLE OF THIS POST TO REFLECT THE FACT THAT THIS DISH WON FOOD52'S "BEST DISH WITH HORSERADISH" CONTEST. MANY THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO WENT TO FOOD52 AND VOTED FOR ME!

CHEERS – STEVE

Hey everyone, I'm excited to share with you all that another one of my recipes has been chosen as a finalist by my friends Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, and the rest of the gang over at Food52! Last week's contest was for our "Best Recipe with Horseradish", and for it, I whipped up a little party snack that riffed on the flavors of the classic dish of prime rib roast with horseradish sauce.

This recipe is quick, easy and delicious! It dresses up well for company as a party treat, or accompanied by some spuds and a green salad, makes for an interesting twist on things the next time you're hankerin' for a steak for dinner.

For those of you who have never visited Food52, shame on you….what are you waiting for? It's a terrific food community that "crowd sources" its recipes by holding weekly competitions looking for participants' best dishes using the week's key ingredient. Winners gain eternal fame by having their recipes published in the annual (they are now working on their 2nd cookbook) Food52 Cookbook.

For the full recipe, click HERE and see the dish on Food52. Once there you'll be able to read what Amanda and Merrill have to say about it, as well as see how beautifully the site's photographer, Sarah Shatz shot their test version. If you think it looks tasty in the photo above, you'll REALLY want to try it once you see Sarah's photo. While you're there, and if you find the recipe worthy, please take the time to VOTE for my dish, I'd really appreciate it! Voting ends at midnight, next Tuesday the 12th, so hurry on over there now!

Thank you in advance for all your support.

Cheers – Steve

Smoky Tomato Soup

February 8, 2011 By Steve Dunn 6 Comments

Peyton, home from school the other day, was banging around the kitchen at lunchtime looking for a way to enhance her standard lunch fare, a classic grilled cheese. She was looking for something to elevate the dish to something more befitting the special occasion that is a SNOW DAY. Her first inclination was to make a croque monsiuer (a brilliant idea for a future post), but as we didn’t have any ham in the house, decided instead to whip up some tomato soup as an accompaniment.

The girl was in luck, not only did we have all the ingredients needed to make a delicious tomato soup from scratch, but I had recently stumbled across this recipe and was dying to give it a try. In our studied opinion, there are few things more perfectly matched than a gooey grilled cheese sandwich and a creamy bowl of tomato soup. I don’t know about you, but the combo was one of my favorites as a kid, ranking right up there with a PB&J with potato chips!

Garlic, Black Pepper and Blue Cheese Chicken Wings

October 17, 2010 By Steve Dunn 11 Comments

While I am a HUGE fan of Buffalo Wings, I’ve found that over time my taste for wings has evolved to favor sauces a little more multi-dimensional (and not scorchingly hot) in nature. The base for this sauce is a slight twist on Ming Tsai’s Black Pepper-Garlic Sauce (Simply Ming: Easy Techniques for East-Meets-West Meals) , which he serves with a fabulous lobster dish at his restaurant “Blue Ginger”. Ever since I tried that amazing meal, I’ve been twisting his sauce to and fro to satisfy the requirements of a number of different culinary whims.

Falafel with Tahini Sauce

July 28, 2010 By Steve Dunn 21 Comments

I don’t think I ate my first falafel until I was in my forties….late thirties at the earliest, and after hearing a great deal of hoo-ha over the years as to the joys of falafel, I must admit that my first experience left me flat. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what got people so excited about the little things, as mine were dry and as bland as sawdust on the inside, slick and oily on their surface, and presented with day-old chopped veggies and a REALLY bitter tahini sauce….ugh.

Growing up in Vermont as a kid, I never even heard the word falafel, let alone have any knowledge of what they were. I was probably in college when I saw my first one, and I remember thinking that it was some sort of meatball when I first laid eyes on it. Imagine my surprise (and disappointment) when I finally learned that it was basically just a little veggie patty. Remember, I’m of Italian descent, meatballs make so much more sense to me. To my way of thinking, falafel was to a meatball, what a veggie burger was to a juicy, 80% lean ground sirloin grilled hunk of deliciousness….you can keep the former, I’ll take the latter thank you very much.

Quinoa Tabbouleh

April 15, 2010 By Steve Dunn 4 Comments

I must admit that I felt a little like Heidi Swanson the other day when working up this recipe. No, it wasn’t ’cause of how I looked in the stylish skirt I was wearing ;-), but rather this quinoa and veggie treat is exactly the kind of thing that Heidi presents so beautifully on her blog, 101 Cookbooks every week.

Growing up in Vermont, with an Italian mother manning the stove, I didn’t grow up eating anything quite so exotic as middle-eastern cooking. In fact, it wasn’t until I married my wife, who is of Lebanese descent, that I was finally exposed to more than just the very basics of middle-eastern cuisine. Since then, I have come to love not just the ubiquitous hommus, falafel, and baba ghannouj, but also dishes like fatayer, kibbe and tabbouleh.

Nobu’s Spicy Shrimp Tempura

January 20, 2010 By Steve Dunn 20 Comments

One of my favorite features of Bon Appetit magazine has always been the r.s.v.p. section. This is where readers write to ask the Bon Appetit staff to chase down chefs in order to discover the recipes of their favorite restaurant meals. I’ve never written in myself, but have loved reading about people’s special food memories, and their quest to uncover the secrets to making a beloved “restaurant” dish at home.

That said, the boys and I came across a dish this past Spring, that had I not already had the recipe in a cookbook I owned (how lucky was that?), I almost certainly would have been begging Bon Appetit to get it for me. My desperation not only driven by how perfectly tasty the dish is, but also by Grid relentlessly hounding me to figure out how to make Nobu’s “Tempura Shrimp with Creamy Spicy Sauce”….man, you’d think I never feed the kid.

The dish is so addictive that when we ordered it as a shared appetizer, I started to really fear that someone was going to get hurt, as the four of us stabbed our chopsticks into the serving bowl to fight for our share. It got UGLY in a hurry!

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