Blake Makes

Don’t ya just love alliterations? This will be a short post, because these shrimp are so simple.

Skewer them and generously coat them in Chinese chili garlic sauce (the prepared kind you get in the grocery store).

Throw them on your grill (outdoor or Foreman), and minutes later you’re eating.

They were spicy and sweet, and we ate them with grilled vegetables right off the grill.

Every now and then, you stumble upon something simple and amazing in your kitchen. Discoveries like these used to happen all the time in mine, but my food muse has been conspicuously absent lately. However, I learned today that a good cookbook can bring it all back.

I’ve written several times before about our Gourmet cookbook (Patrick’s wedding present to us), and today we cracked it open in search of something healthy and lite. This wrap looked promising.

I hate to bury the lead, but this wrap was SCRUMPTIOUS!

It’s got pickled red onions, and an amazing spicy mayo concoction that I literally ate by the spoonful.

First, I had to make the onions. I sliced a red onion and blanched it for 60 seconds in boiling water.

The deep purple rings went all pale pink, and when they did, I drained them.

I returned the onions to the pan, and added 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 3/4 cup water and 1 tsp. salt.

I brought it all to a boil, and simmered for another 60 seconds. By this time, the onions looked a bit like candy (which is my way of saying they were hard to resist).

I set the pan aside to cool. After a bit, I poured its contents into a bowl and let it chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Next, I made the mayo. For this you’ll need to buy a small can of chiles in adobo sauce.

Combine 1/4 cup mayo with 2 tsp. of chopped chiles in adobo. I did this in my little food processor, but you could do it by hand.

Finally, assemble! Heat the tortillas (we used whole wheat ones, and I heated them right on the smooth, glass cooktop). They bubbled and scorched a little in a few places – about 40 seconds per side.

Spread the tortillas with the spicy mayo, then layer on thin slices of turkey. Add four or five ringlets of the pickled onions. We adapted this recipe by next adding alfalfa sprouts and crumbling on some goat cheese. Wrap it up and devour!

For some reason, we only bought a few slices of turkey, so after three wraps (1 for Beez, 2 for me), we were all out. I wanted more, so I made another one with just the mayo, onions, cheese and sprouts.

I never missed the turkey.

Are you like me, and keep lists and menus in your head? When we cook something good, it gets put on a list. Our most popular list is the one we keep to serve company. The other, lesser known (lesser used) list is for the food we would cook for parties. These balsamic glazed drumsticks are perfect for both.

Now that Bridget and I are eating healthier, we’re buying fewer bottles of olive oil, and more bottles of paradoxically sweet balsamic vinegar. We seem to be putting it on everything these days (chicken, pork chops, salmon), which is taking a toll on our poor poodle’s nostrils. First the recipe, then the sneezing.

Put the following in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag:

• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 5 rosemary sprigs
• 5 garlic cloves

Seal the bag and squidge everything together to mix and to dissolve the sugar. Toss in 10 to 12 chicken drumsticks, and let it chill in the fridge for about 2 hours.

Bake the lovelies in a blazing-hot (450 degrees) oven for 30 minutes until they look like mine above.

Bring the marinade to a boil (it’s safe, we’ve made this many times and haven’t died, yet), then reduce the heat. Simmer and thicken the sauce for about 15 minutes. Brush it on at the end, or do like me and dip them in. A bit of chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley makes this fancy company slash party food.

Ooo! I just thought of something. I bet using drumettes would make this perfect party pickings for fancy finger foraging.

Chopper Sneezes

An interesting and peculiar phenomenon occurs every time I reduce balsamic vinegar. If you’ve done it, you know that first burst of vinegary steam can be quite caustic – acrid enough, it seems, to make my poodle sneeze. It’s like clockwork. No matter where he is in the house, we’ll hear a cute little poddley sneeze. I feed him a little piece of chicken to make up for the abuse.

Get a sneak peek.

Hello, Blake Makers. I have an extra special treat for you today. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of connecting with the Spoon Sisters. Like most of the people I meet these days, we haven’t actually met in person. We had an hour-long conversation over the phone which was all we needed to feel like family. I loved how they both got on the phone, talked over each other, and finished each other’s sentences. It was so cute, and so very Spoony!

Well, I loved them so much that I asked if they’d be interested in guest blogging right here on Blake Makes. They loved the idea, and so here we are. This is the first of what I hope will be many posts from the Spoons. I’ve asked them to blog about the nifty little finds that they sell on their site. Oh, and because this is Blake Makes, you know we’ll be giving some away (stay tuned)!

I’ll let the Spoons take it from here. Ladies, after you!

The Spoon Sisters happily here and feeling honored that we are guest bloggers on Blake Makes! So, we have to say a big thank you to Bon Appetite magazine for bringing us together. You see, the magazine featured one of our favorite type of items… a set of spoons…Dipping Spoons that is (You ask what are Dipping Spoons? Hmmmmm…read on). Blake saw the feature and contacted us. The rest is Internet history.

We have a gift website, www.spoonsisters.com, that’s been around for almost seven years now. We’ve been called “quirky” by Time Magazine; “one of the best websites you probably never heard of” by Lucky Magazine, “convenient shopping with useful gifts sporting cool twists” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and “at the top of our must-click list” by Redbook.

Yes, we really are sisters – that’s always the first question that we get asked. Known as the “Big Spoon” and the “Little Spoon,” we’re nicknamed based on age, not size. Our gift site sells products that are “classic to kitsch and funny to functional.” With a name like ours, we are also partial to kitchen related products and gadgets, and, of course, we have a category on our website called “Spoon Related”….how could we not!?!

Let’s face it, Spoons are a truly universal item…but we do our best to find odd, quirky, and sometimes totally off the wall interpretations of our favorite utensil and we’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a few.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the Avery. Chocolate-caramel ganache enrobed in dark chocolate, and topped with a little sprinkling of salt. I actually made this piece of chocolate at Sucre (if you look closely, you can see my thumbprint on the left of the one in front). Enjoy it while you’re waiting for the Sucre show to come out of post-production.

Hello, Blake Makers. It’s been a while since my last post, and I’m sorry about that. Rest assured, however, that I’m not sitting on my duff. I told you I had some ideas, and I meant it. We’re just about there, but the suspense is killing me.

Here’s a little appetizer:

Sucre Teaser from Blake Killian on Vimeo.

Anyone interested in blogging about beverages (i.e. soda, tea, beer, wine), comment on this post. Blake Sips is coming.

I love qunioa, yes I do. I love quinoa, how ’bout you? I’m a happy camper! Tonight’s dinner was delicious, and it wasn’t even that fancy. We had pork chops (seared in safflower oil), and I served them with sauteed spinach and quinoa (keen-wah).

Potatoes, rice and couscous should be afraid. There’s a new (grainy, starchy) side in town.

I sliced a yellow onion to cook in the pan with the chops which I weighted down with a heavy cast-iron skillet to get a nice crust on them. But enough about that, let’s talk quinoa!

I think I first heard of quinoa on an episode of Top Chef, but immediately dismissed it because of its resemblance to couscous (I know, being a good foodie I should never judge food that way). Now, I don’t like couscous. It’s too grainy, sometimes gummy, and overall just not for me.

Quinoa is a different story. We cooked it in our rice cooker (the same volume proportions as rice), and while it was cooking, Bridget commented on the aroma filling our house. It smelled like grass, or maybe a little like hay. It wasn’t a bad smell, but I admit it did make us a little apprehensive. The rice cooker dinged, and I took off the lid.

I gave the grainy little specs a stir, and tasted them. They were delicately sweet, soft and, well, grainy like couscous. This stuff is super healthy for us, and I’m stoked I found it. Each serving’s got tons of protein, and it’s wheat/gluten free.

Make sure to read the Wikipedia entry which says that the Incas referred to quinoa as the “mother of all grains.” Oh heck, let me just paste it here:

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, being secondary only to the potato, and followed in third place by maize. In contemporary times this crop has come to be highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%), making it a healthy choice for vegetarians and vegans. Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered as a possible crop in NASA’s Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights.

In its natural state quinoa has a coating of bitter-tasting saponins, making it unpalatable. Most quinoa sold commercially in North America has been processed to remove this coating. Some have speculated this bitter coating may have caused the Europeans who first encountered quinoa to reject it as a food source, since they adopted other indigenous food plants of the Americas like maize and potatoes. However, this bitterness has beneficial effects during cultivation, as the plant is unpopular with birds and thus requires minimal protection.

I’m a dork.

Happy Fourth Of July, Blake Makers! We’re at Bridget’s parents’ house (in Alexandria, LA), and we’ve been in the pool all day. I’ve been talking for weeks about this break as I’ve been in desperate need of one.

Ask any of my co-workers, and they’ll tell you I planned to spend today floating in the pool, eating salty pistachios and lifting frigid bottles of beer from a bucket bobbing right along side me.

Well, the bucket of beer didn’t happen, but the pool did. The pistachios did, too.

Curry happened. Actually, curry happened to burgers, and a precedent was made.

Weeks ago, Bridget came across this recipe for Curried Lamb Burgers in the July 2008 issue of Bon Appetit. We decided to give them a go.

Now, you need to know that Bridget and I rarely fight over food. For starters, there’s usually plenty to go around, but when there’s not, we settle it like grown-ups (After you. No, after you. After you. No, after you.).

These burgers were a different story. They were good, and the leftovers were even better. So much better, in fact, that I left work early for lunch one day just to make it home before Bridget. I knew there was only one serving left, and it was going to be mine. It was.

We decided to make these again for today’s festive meal, and they were a hit! I may never eat barbecued burgers again. There’s a curry and ginger base to these burgers. There’s also cilantro, and a minted-yogurt raita (the milky-white sauce in the pic above). In place of a bun, naan (Indian flatbread), and instead of pickles, green grilled tender-crisp vegetables.

I’ve never been to India, but curry always takes me there (trite, I know). It’s so exotic and deep and unique. Bollywood Burgers can change the world, or at least the way you eat burgers.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! Play with fire and think of me!