Kitchen Scoop Blog

I am hooked on Top Chef. I’m not one of those cooking contest people, I’m really not. I don’t usually get pulled into the competition shows because my heart always breaks for who loses, goes home, gets kicked off, or has to pack their knives and go. (No, I never got over that as a kid … I guess I was too often on the losing team.)

But I am drawn to this cooking show unlike any others. I started watching it when I needed to fill an empty rainy day. Bravo has marathons of whole seasons playing back to back. My girls had recorded it on the DVR for some reason and there it was, as I was scrolling through the list weighing my options and like a gift, a whole season was ready to play non-stop all day.

I hunkered down with a bowl of popcorn and watched until I could hardly take any more. A couple days later they were promo-ing the new season in Las Vegas. Click! went the DVR record button – whole series, please.

What happens when an unprepared wine novitiate gets airlifted into the middle of Bodega heaven with more than 40 wineries and over 50,000 acres of vineyard mazes? Call me Alice in Wine Wonderland – wide-eyed and all too willing. The resulting adventure was by turns strange, wondrous and a little woozy.

“Mendoza is Malbec.” This pronouncement from our guide at our first winery tour and tasting at Legarde last Friday morning made me a bit nervous. My previous experiences with Malbec had resulted in a reflexive pucker: Cheap supermarket Malbec can be quite sour! But not at Legarde, one of the oldest and most traditional wineries in the Lujan de Cuyo Region of Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes Mountains 600 miles west of Buenos Aires where my husband and I are spending a month in Spanish immersion classes.

It’s not that I don’t know anything about wine, but in the past two decades, my crowded life and frugal sensibilities hadn’t made space for the exploration required to become a “wine expert.” While I’m able to enjoy just about anything above jug wine, to date my personal favorites had veered toward crisp Sauvignon Blanc and fruity Cabernets. And my budget? Spending more than $15 on a bottle had always seemed a bit daring and slightly naughty. What’s more, I’ve always avoided even tasting a truly fine, expensive wine. If, say, a $40 bottle or (heaven forbid) a $75 wine was so significantly better than those I felt I could normally afford, well I just didn’t want to know. Content in my ignorance? Absolutely.

Then came Mendoza.

From Guest Blogger Liza Bennett Gyllenhaal, who also took these photos:

We have some serious pickle aficionados in our family. My nephew Jonah is probably the most avid. Forget about ice cream and cake, the kid’s face lights up at the sight of pickles — and he reserves his sweetest smile for this sourest of tastes. I began to grow cucumbers every summer mostly to accommodate his voracious appetite. Together, we tracked down and tested any number of recipes, searching for the absolutely perfect pickle: bread and butter pickles, garlic pickles, half sour dills.

After much trial and error, we decided that the hands-down favorite and (probably not coincidentally) the fastest and easiest recipe was the one I clipped years ago for “Dill Pickles” from the food section of The New York Times. (Click here to find the recipe at the end of the charming story.)

Alicia and I both grew up watching our grandmothers make "Chicken and Dumplings." In the South, this could also be called "Chicken and Pastry." But what it boiled down to (no pun intended) was a hearty chicken stew with homemade strips of dough or dumplings.

To make these dumplings, Southern style, the flour, shortening and icy cold water were never measured. Our grandmothers seemed to know just how much to use by some sort of magic. Alicia's Maw-Maw would mix the dough with her hands and then dump it out on her blue counter top. The soft white lump was then rolled out, carefully cut into long thin strips and placed in the bubbling chicken broth.

It was quite a revelation to us when a company called Anne's started selling these flat dough strips frozen in many North Carolina supermarkets. But once I left the South, Anne's brand was no longer an option. So I turned to a quick-and-easy substitute -- old-fashioned egg noodles, sold alongside the pasta in practically every supermarket everywhere.

Problem solved -- and quite deliciously, too.

It seems like I’ve made this beef stew forever – so long that I really have no idea where the recipe came from or if I just made it up. Alicia mentioned the other day that she couldn’t find the recipe for my beef stew in any of our books, and we realized we’d never written about it.

A cryin’ shame! This error must be corrected immediately, and thus, here it is on Kitchen Scoop.

At first glance, homemade hummus might seem like a giant WHY since prepared hummus is widely available in an array of flavors. Gotta admit – we sometimes buy it, too. But store-bought hummus costs a ton more than homemade, plus we like to think ours tastes tons better.

The trick, however, is that you’ve got to be willing to make hummus often, since the most expensive ingredient is a jar of sesame paste (also called tahini). Each batch of hummus only requires three tablespoons of sesame paste, so divided by the lifespan of the jar, it’s actually quite cheap. But if you buy tahini and only make our spread once, you’d spend quite a bit less simply buying hummus already made.

Guest Blogger Raghavan Iyer says:

Before I try to define the word curry, let me create an image for you from my college days in India, when I was pursuing that in chemistry. As I busied myself in the laboratory, I happened to knock a mercury thermometer onto the tile floor. Microscopic pieces of glass and droplets of liquid mercury dispersed, and I tried to pick up the pieces. The glass was easy, but not the mercury. The shining, silvery liquid was elusive (not to mention dangerous) and defied containment and form (we had no mercury spill kits back then). It moved freely with even the slightest nudge and affected everything it touched. Which brings me back to the task at hand: Defining curry is like trying to grasp liquid mercury and gather it into a neat pile.

It should come as no surprise to you (or maybe it does) that the word “curry” itself is unknown in the Indian vocabulary. It doesn’t appear in any of India’s twenty-three officially recognized languages and sixteen hundred dialects. Words like kari and kadhi refer to sauce-based or gravy-laden dishes that existed in India well before the Aryans got there – and with a civilization that spans 6,000 years, you can well imagine their longevity.

In England and the rest of the world, “curry” is the catchall word for anything Indian that is mottled with hot spices, with or without a sauce, and “curry powder” is the blend that delivers it. In keeping with my culture, I define a curry as any dish that consists of either meat, fish, poultry, legumes, vegetables, or fruits, simmered in or covered with a sauce, gravy, or other liquid that is redolent with spices and/or herbs. In my India, curry is never added – it just is!

Guest Blogger Debbie Moose says:

A broken wrist meant I spent half the summer dependent upon the transportation of strangers. Getting to the grocery store – which I usually regarded as a chore to be quickly dispatched -- became an obsession.

Whenever I tagged along with an unsuspecting neighbor or friend, I bought like I was stocking up for the end of the world. I had to. I never knew for sure when I’d get another ride. I couldn’t run out of cat food -- those beasts would chew off one of my legs. And a steady supply of Oreos was getting me through the trauma.

I never turned down a ride, even if I’d just been the day before. And I never qualified for the express lane.

“You said you just needed to grab something quick for dinner,” my sister-in-law said eyeing my bulging cart. Yes, I’d sucked her in. Hey, all’s fair in grocery shopping.

I can’t even remember the last time I looked a fresh fish in the eye. But practically every bit of advice about buying fish says to go by the eyes. That’s practically impossible when most markets sell fish fileted and sometimes even already skinned. And frequently “fresh” fish in the supermarket seafood case came to that store previously frozen.

What’s a conscientious shopper to do? Here is a bit of new-fangled advice:

True confessions time: I don’t really love sandwiches. Especially not for dinner. Why that’s true, I’m not able to succinctly pin down, but I think part of it involves temperature and the fact that it’s food you pick up with your hands. To me, I guess dinner just means hot food and a fork.

Then there’s the matter of the bread. For most of my life, sandwiches revolved around fluffy bread that pretty much stuck to the roof of my mouth – getting in the way of the chewing process. All of a sudden I can’t talk or swallow and a certain degree of panic sets in.

Well, now that I’m cooking for two most nights, I’ve come to a point where I’m ready to get over it and get on with it. Common sense tells me that sandwiches are a great meal for Empty Nesters because you can construct them quickly, usually without dirtying pots and pans. Easy fix, easy clean – great for a small household.