Recipe

Actual cooking!

Recipe: Fast and fresh Cumin Scallops

~ The Greek-o-Rican ~ 2 Comments

We recently signed up for yet another locally-sourced subscription food service providing awesomely fresh foods from the immediate area — in this case, a community-supported fishery, which is basically exactly what it sounds like, that is, a CSA with fish instead of produce. We get about a pound each of two different seafood products every week. This week we picked up shrimp and sea scallops. Tonight we needed a quick dinner, so we decided to try out one of the recipes suggested in the CSF newsletter: cumin scallops.

Cumin scallops

The recipe that the CSF folks shared came from my acquaintance Chef Shirlé, who, unlike me, is a proper (and super-talented) professional chef. Also, top-notch vocalist for rockers Free Electric State (currently) and countless other bands (formerly). Anyway, her recipe for cumin scallops is really just a riff on sautéed scallops, but the results are outstanding — and fast! Full disclosure: I played fast and loose with Shirlé’s recipe, so if you want to do this recipe up proper, this may not be the best model. Though it turned out okay for me.

Read on for lightning-fast scallop deliciousness

Recipe: Braised Beef Ribs

~ The Greek-o-Rican ~ 6 Comments

I love ribs. I must admit an attraction to the barbarian bone-gnawing involved. However, I can’t abide the price that they charge at the grocery store for a food product that’s 3/4 inedible by weight and which is traditionally considered a scrap cut of meat. I mean, who ever heard of paying $5 a pound for what’s essentially a string of bones chained together with a bit of meat and sinew? So I was pleasantly surprised when I came across a few packages of particularly meaty beef short ribs at the local Harris Teeter for a reasonable 99 cents a pound–and ended up coming home with about six pounds worth.

Ribs!

Read on to find out what became of this beefy treasure

Recipe: Tres Leches Cake

~ The Greek-o-Rican ~ 1 Comment

Postre de Tres Leches is a traditional Latin American dessert in which a dense, sweet cake is doused in a combination of condensed milk, evaporated milk, and cream. It’s topped with a thick layer of whipped cream, which I guess makes it quatro leches, but who’s counting?Tres leches son deliciosos!

A few weeks ago Alton Brown made tres leches cake on the “milk” episode of Good Eats, and I’d been dying to try it. So, in preparation of getting together with some friends to watch Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter, I thought I’d give the recipe a shot. (If anyone has appropriate puns for this juxtaposition, please let me know.)

Click here to read about our trip into the land of cream and sugar

Recipe: Midnight Quiche

~ The Greek-o-Rican ~ 6 Comments

So it’s about 10:30 when the Picky Epicurean and I get home from a lovely dinner engagement the other day. The Epicurean stumbles off to bed, as she tends to do. It’s about this time that I remember that I’m supposed to bring a an item into work tomorrow morning for a staff breakfast. What do I do, hotshot? Do I drive to the 24-hour grocery store and buy some bagels and cream cheese? Do I stop by the donut shop before work in the morning? Do I call in sick?

I do none of these things. Instead, I stay up until 1:30 making a freaking quiche.

Quiche!

Click here to learn of my foolish insomniac baking.

Recipe: Grilled Pizza

~ The Greek-o-Rican ~ 4 Comments

Grilled PizzaThis weekend was a good one for spending time outside–plenty of sun, not too hot, not too busy. This combination of factors triggered the “grilling” instinct within me, and I was itching to bust out the chimney starter. The Picky Epicurean also had a serious jonesing for pizza (one of her four food groups). There was only one solution: grilled pizza. I suppose another option would have been to conquer a sunny Italian archipalego, but our trireme is in the shop.

Click here to read about our adventures in pizza-grilling.