Posted on

a couple favorite dishes

Here's a white truffle risotto recipe from the French Laundry cookbook. It was a lot easier to make than I thought. Folding in whipped cream and letting the white wine actually get absorbed into the rice seems be a couple of the tricks.

Hokkaido snow beef from Chateau Uenae is the beefy looking thing. I put some black truffles on it. It was good too.

Posted on

my cookware recommendations

pots and pans – Mafter Bourgeat

Go with Mafter Bourgeat and get one of their black steel pans (the 11 7/8" one) and get the remainder from their stainless steel collection: the 9-1/2" and 11" fry pans, the 1-3/4 quart and 4 quart sauce pans, the 7-1/2 quart stock pot, and optionally the 4 quart saute pan. Altogether, these should run you about $500-$600.

There's a small detail with these Mafter pots and pans that's not in most cookware. The handles are attached in a way where the rivets don't go through so the interior is clean.

Also:

Posted on

King Cake season

King Cake from Haydel's Bakery
King Cake from Haydel's Bakery

We love us some King Cakes.

Haydel's Bakery is our favorite. We always get the sugar only (the sugar + frosting is pretty sweet) and we get the package with the coffee, bead pack, etc. because why not!?! The high costs of these cakes are due to FedEx shipping but good luck trying to find a legit King Cake outside of NOLA. Buy NOLA and support their economy!

Antoine's and Gambino's are pretty good too.

I have yet to try a filled King Cake which is usually cream cheese but there's lot of different options (flavored cream cheese, brownie filled, praline, German chocolate) so a bit of choice overload.

 

Posted on

hibiscus tea

hibiscus tea photo

The new to me hotness -> hibiscus tea and the best is supposed to come from the Sudan.

Benefits of drinking hibiscus tea include weight loss, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, prevent types of cancer and depression, and pro-liver; not at high doses.

Every tea seller has hibiscus tea but a lot are in blend form w/ black tea or berries, e.g Imperial Red from Imperial Tea. Luckily Berkeley Bowl has some just plain old hibiscus tea.

I'm not going to link to bad Google results for Karkade recipes which is a sweet hibiscus drink (there are no links to an Egyptian or Sudanese website for a recipe? really?). It's basically dried hibiscus, sugar, and water which is also agua de jamaica.

And I had no idea that jamaica was hibiscus. I didn't know what the red and tart drink was, just thought jamaica tasted good. Who knew? Anyway, it was nice to get introduced to hibiscus tea and will probably need to drink up other teas/mix it up a bit before I go overboard and get sick of it. Hasn't happened yet though.