Once every couple of months a bunch of food lovers gather for Brooklyn Swappers where they trade homemade goods. You never know what these wonderfully creative cooks will be swapping: pickles, jams, sauces, chutneys, relishes, infused alcohols, teas, cakes, cookies, flavored salts, chocolates, candies, kombucha—it could be ANYTHING!
For Sunday’s brunch swap I made Salted Cinnamon Browned Butter Caramels.
There’s also a potluck, for which I believe I invented a new dish: the Deviled Egg Egg
Are you lazy? I definitely am… sometimes. But not when it comes to cooking and baking. These pinchably CUTE! cookies are a lil bit of a “love job” or even “love cookies” because there’s a bit of work in making them. Not complicated, but there are three definitive steps that you can do in one day or spread over several days. The dough is tender because you use powdered sugar and lots of butter. It’s not as tough as a standard shortbread or sugar cookie dough, but the texture is heavenly. You do need to be a little careful dipping them, but it’s totally worth it. When you love people, you make them “love” cookies.
How do you exercise self-control? I’m asking because when it comes to baking and cooking I suck at it! I rarely cook a simple meal, especially if I’m entertaining. I’m an excess-is-best type of gal as you can see from this past Thanksgiving or the cookies and chocolates I whipped up last year: Jackie’s gone Christmas cookie crazy 2009!!!
These rock! Liza de Guia is an inspiration. Not only does the lovely founder & chief storyteller of FOOD CURATED make rich and informative videos about passionate people who bring us incredible foods, but when she was on a holiday, she tweeted about eating bacon wrapped sweet plantains and bells went off in my head! Ding! Ding! I had to make them!
I decided that the sugar in the plantains and smoky goodness of the bacon would be DELISH with a spicy dipping sauce. I love the salty, garlic in oil condiment that is served in Latino restaurants would be a good place to start, but maybe too over-the-top for my guests. The lime and chilies and cilantro temper the garlic.
I love Thanksgiving so much I have it twice! I have the immediate family and a couple of friends, who are orphaned, on the official day and a leftover party on the Friday for my friends who are feeding and serving the people who can’t or don’t cook Thanksgiving dinner and eat out instead. It may seem over-the-top, but it’s the way the cooks in my family show our gratitude and express our love for family and friends.
What would you do with 10 overripe kiwifruit? As many of you know, I go a little canning crazy at harvest time. This season, I made about fifteen different pickles, chutneys, relishes and sauces! ←Crazy diva! On the list were kiwifruit and red pepper pickles, which I thought would be adorable for the holidays. I found the recipe in Oded Schwartz’s excellent book,Preserving.
I put “10 hard unripe kiwifruit” on the shopping list when I sent my boyfriend to the store. Mistake! What I got was 10 very ripe kiwi-fruit and the excuse, “That was all they had.” You can only make pickles with unripe fruit so I went back to another store and got them and made the pickles.
I rediscovered “dukkah”, a delicious and highly versatile treat when I was back in Australia in August 2010. I have never made or even seen it on a menu here in the states. It’s easy to make and delicious to just eat with bread and fruity olive oil or to accent or spice up any number of dishes. It’s originally from Egypt and translated the word “dukkah” means to pound.
“Can you grow tomatoes indoors?” That question came across my twitter feed, from @LaConsuelo, yesterday. I had no idea, since I grow mine in my Boerum Hill backyard, so I asked my Gardening Guru and she said, “Yes!”
