Vegan Cookies

K threw a cookie party where guests were to bring a batch of cookies for everyone to try. She herself made a few types of cookies to get the party started, one of them being vegan cookies because K is currently on a dairy-free diet. K's baby D is allergic to dairy, in particular allergic to cow's milk protein so this prevents K from having anything with dairy in it. Because of this I decided to also make some dairy-free cookies so she could have other cookie options besides her own to eat. After some internet searching I stumbled upon this recipe which was perfect since the party was during the holiday season. The recipe's animal free ingredients can be seen to the left.

The only ingredients that might be a little different from the norm is the margarine and the yogurt. Since most margarine has dairy in it one must pay attention to the labeling on the margarine. To be safe only buy the ones that are labeled vegan and not just labeled non-dairy. The term "non-dairy" only means less than 0.5% milk by weight (Wikipedia) so it is possible to still have a little bit of dairy in "non-dairy" products. Earth Balance is a good brand to go with. Smart Balance also has a few vegan options.

The other ingredient that you can get a vegan substitute for is yogurt. Vegan yogurts can be made from soy or coconut, found at a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's. But again be careful and look for that "vegan" labeling because even some soy yogurts such as Stonyfield O'Soy grow their cultures in Milk so therefore have trace amounts of milk and can cause an allergic reaction (about their soy yogurt).

The recipe itself is pretty standard. One thing of note is that although it calls for a spritz gun (a cookie gun that presses out cookies with a design), if you don't have one you can just made little cookies by hand like I did. The cookies will look more like whoopie pies instead of looking like cookie sandwiches, but they still taste delicious. Another tip about the recipe is that once the filling is made it should be immediately used to fill the cookies. If you leave it out for a while it gets hard and difficult spread.

Recipe Link: Chocolate Spritz Cookies with Candy Cane Filling

Worst Cooks in America

Another food show to watch! It's time for the third season of Worst Cooks in America airing Sundays at 9pm on Food Network. I've watched the previous two seasons of this show and am hooked. The show keeps me coming back because of its mixture of being able to keep me on the edge of my seat waiting for the next disaster to happen, while at the same time being able to amaze me seeing the lack of common kitchen/food sense people have (such as not knowing how a pepper grinder works, or knowing that leaving raw meat out all day is not good), but yet still be a bit heartwarming as you see how important and an amazing life changer it is for these people to actually be able to cook. Here is the Season 3 teaser.

Honestly after watching episode 1 of this season it seems that the contestants this season are better than the previous contestants, so there were less disasters and more successes than in the previous season premiers. I worry this might make this season less exciting. However the preview for the next week's episode made it seem like the contestants have to perform more difficult cooking tasks than in the previous seasons, which means disasters may ensue! One of the things they show them doing is learning how to make hand pulled noodles. That is something that even a non-worst chef in America could struggle with.

Hand Pulled Noodles at Chinatown Express in DC

Another reason why I enjoy watching this show is that I get to learn new things along with the contestants. I am actually quite excited for next week's show to learn how to make hand pulled noodles. Some of the things I learned from this week's episode is when poaching an egg, a splash of vinegar in the poaching water helps firm up the egg quickly, and one can easily make infused maple syrup such as cinnamon maple syrup. You can also glean some easy tasty recipes from the episodes which are posted on the Food Network site. You can also watch the first episode of this season or the entirety of season two there. Go Watch! Go Enjoy!

The Big Waste

   Food Network is airing a special called The Big Waste this Sunday Jan 8th at 10pm EST. From watching the commercials, my interest is piqued because it seems that they are going to touch upon how much food gets wasted in the US. And this isn't the eat everything on your plate leftovers type waste, this is a mass raw product type waste, wasted from places such as the produce farms and the grocery stores. One statement during the commercial is "We've trained the American consumer to demand perfection" while showing images of piles of food just sitting in a field to rot, hinting at there is nothing wrong with this food besides a few imperfections, but these few imperfections deem the food not worthy for grocery stores and so therefore is just dumped. Another statement from a person who appears to be a produce farmer is "We are almost 40%-50% waste".

Surplus tomatoes are dumped on farmland in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Photograph: Sally A. Morgan/Ecoscene/Corbis¹

    The part of this special that worries me a bit is the fact that this special is also a cooking competition. The premise of the special is two teams, Bobby Flay and Michael Symon against Anne Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli, each having 48 hours to create a gourmet meal for 100 people only with food they find that is on it's way to the trash. I just hope they don't spend too much time on the competition part, removing focus away from what I think the focal point of the special should be of the food waste. (I mean the special is titled The Big Waste and not The Amazing Things Famous Chefs Can Do With Food On Its Way To The Trash). Well it's scheduled on my DVR so we'll see how it goes.

    A bit more info on the special and when the special will replay can be found at the Food Network.
    An interesting article about food waste at the Guardian (same link as the footnote).
    And a good site with tips on how not to waste food at Love Food Hate Waste.


¹Image and caption from an article by Adam Vaughan for the Guardian found at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/08/food-waste

Asians like fried chicken too!

   While traveling with my parents up I-95 this holiday season, my dad was excited because it meant we could stop at one of the I-95 rest stops. In particular this excited him because it meant he could have some fried chicken at a Roy Rogers. My dad loves his fried chicken and since my mom doesn't let him eat it a lot, (it not exactly being a healthy food item) eating at a fried chicken restaurant is a treat for him, eating at a Roy Rogers Restaurant even more so as they are not located where they live. These few times he does get to eat at a Roy Rogers he likes to remind me of a story that goes something like this...

      Do you remember the time when you were around four years old and your mom had to work evening shifts at the library? I was in charge of dinner for you those nights and so one night I decided to take you to Roy Rogers for dinner. I felt the kids menu items were not worth their price so I decided I would just buy one larger meal for us to share. I bought a three piece fried chicken meal expecting you to only eat one piece of chicken leaving the other two pieces for me. Instead you stole my second piece of chicken and I only got to eat one piece of fried chicken! I had to go hungry that night because of you.

     I think to this day my dad begrudges me eating that extra piece of chicken. My mom joked saying that when my dad passes, instead of bringing flowers to his grave I should bring him a bucket of fried chicken. My dad replied that's a good idea! Maybe I can make it up to him by introducing him to KFC, Korean Fried Chicken. Now I actually haven't tried any myself yet, but F who has had it at BonChon Chicken in Annandale says it's delicious. This article about Korean fried chicken make me even more excited to go try some out with my dad the next time he is in town.

Not having taken a picture at Roy Rogers you'll have to make do with this picture from my first ever meal at Bojangles consumed this past summer.

Catfish Three Ways

Fish is one of those things I feel like I should become more familiar with because it cooks so quickly and therefore makes for an easy, delicious meal. So one week when I was particularly bored with my usual foods, I decided to add catfish to an Arganica food delivery order. When the catfish was delivered, there were three very nice pieces of filet so I decided three meals, with the catfish cooked three different ways. The first choice was an easy one. Blackened. My favorite way to eat catfish.

This was indeed an easy dish to make. All you have to do is mix together the spices, dredge the catfish in the spices, get a pan with oil hot, then cook on each side for two to three minutes and you're done! Next time I make this I think I'm even going to make extra spice mix so that I can jar it to make the process one step quicker (and who knows maybe I'll find some other dish that the "blackened" spices will work well with).

For dinner the next night I knew I could go with the other classic way of cooking catfish of grilled, but I wanted something a little more than that. As I looked around my kitchen my eyes fell upon some corn tortillas. Bingo. Fish tacos. After doing some recipe searching I discovered that catfish is not a normal fish to use for fish tacos; I think because it's not a flaky white fish. Also cabbage, of the red or white kind, seems to be a common ingredient in fish tacos. Although I didn't have any red or white cabbage, I did happen to have some napa cabbage (another item I had picked up because I wanted something different from my norm). So as I had a white fish (albeit not flaky) and I had cabbage (albeit not white or red cabbage) I decided that this could still work and so I forged ahead. Catfish tacos with napa cabbage it was. Using this recipe as my guide, I marinated the fish in some oil, chopped up jalapenos, lime juice, cayenne, and chilli and then since I don't have a grill I pan fried the fish. I also sauteed the napa cabbage as napa cabbage raw seemed strange to me. To the taco I also added some salsa and a line of Sriracha (a.k.a. rooster sauce). Overall the dish was tasty, but could be better. The fish would have benefited from a longer, heavier marinade and the dish needed some texture. In hindsight since the cabbage is supposed to give the tacos some crunch texture I should have tried to make some sort of slaw with the napa cabbage.

And lastly I made an oven baked version of a battered fried catfish using this recipe as a guide. I don't like to deep fry things in my kitchen as I don't have a deep fryer and I find deep frying makes such a mess with the hot oil popping out of the pan and also I never know what to do with all that oil afterwards. Seems such a waste just to throw it away. My solution always is to bake things instead. Does anyone have any other good solutions? Or any other good ways to make a catfish dish? For me the overall winner is still catfish blackened. So yummy.

Recipe Links:	Not Lackin' on the Blackenin' Catfish
	Fish Tacos
	Oven Fried Catfish