The Bitten Words posted on this recipe and gave it high marks. Being a northerner, I am no BBQ expert. So, when these guys say this is the real deal, it counts for a lot.

This recipe isn’t quick and there are some tedious bits, but the results are great. It calls for first brining the pork, applying a rub, roasting it covered for 3 hours and then roasting it uncovered to crunch up the outside. All that may seem like a lot, but you get tender, flavor packed pork that tastes like the real deal.

With all the roasting, you end up with a pan full of delicious pork juice. This goodness is used as the base for the sauce you toss your pulled pork in. There are recipes for a bunch of different sauces, but we just tried out Tangy and Sweet Sauce.

We used it to build some tasty sandwiches, but the pork would also be great on nachos, or baked potatoes.

Are you envious of our Lamb Awesomeness? Was your New Year’s Resolution to get more Lean Protein in your diet? Or do you just like looking at nice food photos?

Well, you are in luck! The nice people at the Tri-Lamb Group who have been hooking us up with lamb, sent a bunch of extra copies of their Lamb Cookbook. If you would like a copy, and you live in the US, send me an email at: luke@cookography.com with your address. (Well those went quick! Thanks for all the interest. Apparently there are a lot of you out there even though you don’t leave comments :)

Live outside the US or are in too much suspense to wait? You are in luck! They have a PDF copy online you can download.

The nice folks on the Tri-Lamb Council recently sent us our next shipment of lamb. The seasonal recipe this time around was a lamb flatbread with arugula and goat cheese. It is ground lamb, which is a fun switch from the large roast we had last time. They sent the lamb, along with everything needed to make the flatbread. We again teamed up with our downstairs neighbors and decided to go with a Mediterranean theme.

I am always a fan of making your pizza dough, since it is super easy if you have a food processor. However, they included some frozen pizza dough, so I gave that a shot and it turned out good. If you are holding off making your own pizza because you don’t want to deal with the dough, give frozen dough a try, it seems to work pretty good.

I cooked the lamb ahead of time, which made it really easy to put the flatbreads together later. With the prep work done ahead of time and the oven preheated, we were able to prep and bake the pizza’s in 25 minutes or so and most of that time was just baking them. Everything was easy to put together and required minimal attention, I would definitely recommend this dish if you are having people over. You get to have fun hanging out and you still impress your guest with a delicious dish.

Lamb may not seem like a normal pizza topping, but really it is a natural fit. On pizza you want a strong meat, like pepperoni or sausage, and seasoned ground lamb delivers perfectly. While this recipe has more of fancy, Mediterranean flare, you could easily take it in a different direction with some Italian seasonings and a tomato base.

The Mediterranean theme really came out in the dessert and our drink selection. One of our guests brought Galatoboureko, which is a Greek phyllo custard and is extremely delicious. Between the eggs, butter and phyllo, it may not seem that healthy, but the recipe makes a lot of servings and it is really good, so who cares. We also had a nice assortment of Greek liquors, all of them were pretty strong. Metaxa is a Greek brandy, which if you are a fan of brandies, is supposedly pretty good. No one was too keen on it though, it might be better mixed with something as opposed to straight up. Kitpon Naeoy is a lemon liquor that is produced on the island of Naxos and is made with the fruit and leaves of the citron tree. Since citron taste sort of like a lemon, it tasted a bit like lemoncello, but was a bit more mild. It used to be popular, but went out of style and most of the citron trees were cut down. It is pretty rare now and almost impossible to get anywhere besides on Naxos. This was a much bigger hit and everyone was a fan. The final liquor Carolyn and I brought back from Crete, where we got it from a random honey vendor on the side of the road. It is a honey liquor that was about the same strength as citron one and quite tasty too. Unfortunately, we have no idea what it is called and can’t read Greek.

One of the best parts of the evening were the pun filled place cards that came with the Lamb kit. Here are a few of our favorites, along with some educational lamb tidbits.

• What is a lamb’s favorite protest movement? Flock-upy Wool Street
• What do lambs do if they can’t sleep? Take a Lambien
• How do lambs get to the hospital? In a Lambulance

Facts:

• On average, a 3-ounce portion of lamb contains 25 percent of the daily value of niacin, necessary for processing nutrients and proper enzyme function.

For the past month we have always come back from the farmer’s market with a nice bundle of Swiss Chard so we can make our new favorite pasta dish. We still love Putanesca, but this dish offer a nice alternative. It has the same pungency from the garlic and anchovies, but the substitution of breadcrumb and chard for the tomato sauce completely changes it attitude.

You can just use store bought crumb, but it is pretty easy to make your own if you have some bread lying around. Simply cut it into cubes and microwave it on half power until it is dried out. You could also dry it out in the oven if you have it already going. The simply toss it in the food processor and process away. Keep them in an air tight container and they should last a while. If you do use store-bought ones, reduce the amount you use. Try only using 1/2 a cup.

So here is a conundrum: “Do I not cook 7lbs of meat because I don’t host dinner for 10?” or “Do I not host dinner for 10 because I don’t cook 7lbs of meat?”

Luckily, the Tri-Lamb Group helped me break out of this Catch-22 with an offer of a Lamb Dinner Kit for 10. We are big lamb fans, as we have posted previously, and even had Lamb for Thanksgiving instead turkey a couple of years ago. The offer of free lamb was just what was needed to help us break this stalemate and overcome our hesitations for having a large dinner party.

Just pulling off a nice dinner for Carolyn and myself is a bit of challenge with Elena running around. In order to pull this off I realized we needed a Team approach. Luckily, our awesome neighbors who live downstairs, Matt & Natalie, were game for helping out and more importantly, hosting.

We scheduled the dinner for Saturday and a large, insulated box stuff with a lot of lamb and all the necessary recipe ingredients arrived on Friday. While it is not to tough to cook large amounts of meat, it can take a lot of time. If the meat is left in one large piece, the heat has to penetrate all the way through. However, if you butterfly or flatten it out, you are able to cook it much quicker. Butterflying a portion of meat exposes more of the surface to any marinade or rub and also gives it chance to brown; both of which add lots of flavor. the challenge in creating more surface area is that you need a larger pan. If you have a grill, that is not much of a problem. Unfortunately we are stuck in a condo without a good place to grill. A broiler does make for a good grill substitute though and worked great. There was an alternate recipe included for indoor cooking, but it called for searing the butterflied lamb in a pan before roasting it in the oven and we didn’t have a pan which could fit all that lamb. I butterflied the lamb in the morning and let it marinate all day in the fridge. It was very easy to butterfly, the only challenge was trying to get all the lamb in to a ziploc bag.

The Dinner Kit also came with what I thought was an absurd amount of green onions, to be grilled and served with the lamb. The onions get tossed with oil, salt and pepper and then grilled (or broiled). The funny thing with onions though is that they cook down… a lot. I had to cook the 4 bunches of onions in 3 batches and they ended up yielding a couple onions per diner. I made them ahead of time, along with a batch of herbed and roasted potatoes. We reheated everything downstairs while the lamb cooked upstairs. The green onions were delicious, they had a slight char but a sweet flavor from the roasting. They would be a great addition to any meat you are grilling or broiling and worked particularly well with the lamb. Natalie also put together an Asian slaw that had red cabbage and apples. Its brightness and crispness provided a great contrast.

Since the marinade for the lamb had ginger in it we made some cocktails which had ginger in them. Matt made a bourbon based one with ginger which he put through their juice along with a dash of orange bitters. I made a slushie drink that had a frozen lemon, ginger and mint simple syrup which was blended and frozen ahead of time. Everyone came over around 7pm and we started by sampling the drinks. Meanwhile, I started the lamb going upstairs under the broiler. One of the benefits of butterflying lamb, is that it cooks much faster. The only drawback is that it means it can get overcooked more quickly if you are not watching… perhaps because you are enjoying drinks downstairs. Even with my inattentiveness, the lamb ended up being medium-well instead of medium. Since the butterflying leaves some portions thicker than others, you end with different amounts of doneness. This is good because not everyone like the same The smaller portions were a little overcooked, but the larger portions were just right.

Another valuable lesson for cooking large portions of meat for lots of people: always prepare a sauce. A little bit of sauce can cure almost any amount of overcooking. Since the marinade was little Asiany and because I had a ton of Shiso growing in our garden, I made a pesto out of it. The flavor of the shiso pesto and acidity from the lime juice into worked great with the lamb and give a nice little flavor boost.

Of course what dinner would be complete without a little dessert?! Carolyn made a fruit salad that continued the ginger theme with a ginger syrup. We served it on pound cake, topped with toasted coconut and a side of vanilla ice cream.

While the thought of cooking a large portion of meat or hosting a dinner for 10 seems a little daunting, both are pretty easy, especially with a little teamwork.

My parents were in DC for the 4th of July and it was Elena’s half-birthday, so I decided to do something special for breakfast. Overnight pancakes are great when you are cooking for company. I cut down the amount of yeast to 1 tsp and skipped the cinnamon and instead went with a little grated nutmeg. Since you make the batter the night before, everything is ready to go in the morning. All you need to do is heat up a griddle and start turning them out. Even with a large griddle, you will still need make them in at least 2 batches. To keep the first batch warm, heat you oven to the lowest setting and place them on a baking rack inside. The rack helps keep them from getting soggy.

Since it was the 4th of July, I decided to go with a Red, White and Blue theme; Strawberries, Whip Cream and Blueberries. It is easy to add fruit to the pancakes, simply push them in as the first side cooks. To get a some of the juice out of the strawberries, I tossed the cut pieces with a bit of confectioners sugar. I also whipped up a batch of fresh whip cream, which is easy enough to do if you have a hand mixer. Simply add a little bit of vanilla and confectioners sugar to some heavy cream and beat until you have whip cream.

For the past couple of years we haven’t done much for Easter. Sure we exchanged some candy, but we never really cooked up a big meal. However, this year Carolyn’s parents came down to visit, giving us a perfect excuse to put together something a little fancier.

Lamb is of course a traditional Easter meat, so that was our starting point. If you haven’t guessed, we are big fans of the guys from The Bitten Word. I sort of want to be them when I grow up. They are much more useful than us and post holiday recipes… before the holiday! What a concept! They had done an Easter post on an awesome looking lamb recipe, which pretty much locked in our decision for what to make.

Making large portions of meat always scares me a bit. There is the “what if I screw up and ruin 4 lbs of meat” factor. The risk does make it a bit more exciting though! Luckily for me, and everyone else who was planning on eating lamb, the recipe worked out perfectly. I followed the Bitten Word guys advice and went for frozen artichoke hearts instead of using fresh. I did innovate a little and make the mint sauce in the VitaMix, which turned into a smooth, bright green sauce. I don’t think it made a huge difference taste wise, but it may have made it easier to keep on the lamb. It was easy to coat a lamb bite with the sauce and it may have been a little trickier with the original, chunkier version. Either way it was a lot of fun.

The one slip up I had was making a full batch of the stuffing when I only bought half as much lamb as was called for. This was only a problem because I tried to stuff it all in and roll up the butterflied lamb. Surprisingly it wouldn’t all stay in.

Serving the lamb and keeping it nice and tidy seems to be a little tricky though. As soon as I cut the butchers twine, the tightly rolled lamb sprung open. So instead of a nice disk of lamb and stuffing, guest were served something that was slightly circular. Luckily it was very tasty!

Spring may have just begun, but it is still pretty cold here in DC. There are buds on the trees but it is still chilly in the morning. Since we are still in between season, we need an in between soup. Something that is hearty, but not a thick puree. This kale and white bean soup is exactly what is called for. The broth is light and the kale is green, but the sausage and beans help keep you warm.

This recipe doesn’t call for it, but I threw in some zucchini I had lying around… feel free to innovate. I also went with Andouille sausage instead of kielbasa.

Every time someone visits Cookography, we get an itsy bitsy amount of money via the ads you see on the right hand side. Over time and if enough people stop by, it starts to add up. Better yet, if I use the money for Cookography related things I don’t have to pay taxes on it because they count as expenses. At the end of last year we had earned enough to get Vitamix.

A Vitamix is a very high blender that does things no ordinary blender. Its blades are very sharp and spin so quickly and with so much force that it can transform anything into a velvety smooth sauce. If you use it to make dressing, it can combine and emulsify the ingredients so well that they will not separate, even after a couple of days in the fridge.

We are hummus addicts. A container does not last too long in our fridge. However at $4+ a pop, it gets pretty expensive. I have tried lots of different recipes, but they never turn out as smooth as store bought versions. This is before I tried making hummus in the vitamix. Not only does it turn out super smooth hummus, but it can make a quart size batch without blinking an eye. Better yet, you don’t have to worry about having some tahini on hand, because you can add whole sesame seeds, along with the other ingredients, and the Vitamix will pulverize them into tahini.

Somehow in my head buying a $450 blender to save on $4 containers of hummus makes total economic sense, good thing I am not a financial advisor. Regular blenders and food processors are also perfectly capable of turning out good humus, the end results are just have a different texture. It is of course great a making a number of other things, which I will cover in follow-up posts.

As much as I like the blender, Vitamix comes across as a bit of a weird company. Their website looks vintage 2005, and comes across as being a little shady, with areas focusing on diabetes prevention. They seem to be targeting the new age food & vegan lover crowd instead of serious home cooks. Their sales channels are little weird too. For the most part you can only get the blender directly from them. The also have an affiliate program, where websites get a percentage of the sales they drive to vitmax. This of course has lead to a lot of even sketchier website promoting the wonderousness of the Vitamix and offering free shipping. Having a dated website, promoted by sketchy 3rd party sites does very little to inspire confidence in a very expensive purchase.

Luckily they are also available through Williams Sonoma and Sur la Table. I decided to go this route, figuring I could easily return it if it didn’t live up to the hype. Of course Vitamix has to make this confusing and refers to these models using a different model. The Professional Series 200 is the same blender as their 5200, except that it comes with a different recipe book and DVD (which I have yet to watch). Unfortunately most of the included recipes are more geared towards ultra healthy eating, who makes a quart of hummus with only 1 tablespoon of olive oil. I have fixed this for them! Give my recipe a try and suggest any tweaks you have.

Ahh… the Japanese Mountain Yam. A most strange and curious tuber, and the one type of yam that can be eaten raw (the orange things you get in super market are really sweet potatoes, not yams). It is a rather bland, lacking any distinct flavor. Its only saving grace, is that it turn a mucousy pile of snot when grated.

While it it may not be attractive, this slimy mess is an important addition to Okonomiyaki. The yam snot improves the texture of the large cabbage pancake, making it fluffy in the middle and crisp on the outside. It haven’t done any scientific, side-by-side tests, but the batch I made with the yam were the best ones to date.

Oh wait, you are still wondering what Okonomiyaki is? Well, it is a large pancake/ pizza made up of cabbage and a yam-flour-egg batter and topped with just about anything you can think off and fried up in a pan. In case you didn’t guess, it is Japanese. This past post goes over how to make it. If you have a mountain yam handy, add about 2 tbsp of the grated paste to the batter and decrease the water slightly.

So awesome, this amazingly snotty tuber makes my cabbage pizzas better… so how can I get one? Well unfortunately you are not going to be finding them in your standard, American grocery store. You will have better luck in an Asian grocer, where it could be called any of the following: nagaimo, yamaimo, Chinese yam, Japanese mountain yam, or Korean yam. Luckily for us we live right by the most awesome Hana Japanese Market, at 17th & U Street in NW DC. They have fresh yams there and they may even have dried powdered yams.

A cabbage about to meet its fate…

One Japanese Mountain Yam, ready for some fun

A little bit of cabbage ends up going a long way

All chopped up and ready to go…

A little bit of “snot” goes a long way. You only need about 2TBsp per batch

I topped mine with a good shake of Furikake

I then added some bonito flakes, seaweed and a lot of yummy Okonomi Sauce!

When Luke came home from the farmers’ market with 10 pounds of second tomatoes, we had to figure out something to do with them. Roasting all the tomatoes seemed like a good idea, and then we found this soup recipe in a book cleverly named Soup by Debra Mayhew. It was a pretty quick (besides from the time roasting) and tasty dish to make. You can roast the vegetables in advance and let them cool, then leave them in a covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight before pureeing.

Instead of pureeing the tomatoes in the food processor, we used our food mill. The advantage of the food mill is that it helped remove the skins. We had so many tomatoes that we had a bunch of leftover sauce. We did something fun with the leftovers, but you will have to check back to see what it was!

 

Roasted Tomato and Pasta Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ripe Italian plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise
• 1 large red bell pepper, quartered lengthwise and seeded
• 1 large red onion, quartered lengthwise
• 2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/4 quarts vegetable stock or water
• a good pinch of sugar
• scant 1 cup small pasta shapes, such as elbow macaroni
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• fresh basil leaves, to garnish

Directions:

2. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread out tomatoes, red pepper, onion, and garlic in a roasting pan and drizzle with the olive oil. Roast for 30-40 minutes until the vegetables are soft and charred, stirring and turning them halfway through.
3. Tip the vegetables into a food processor, add about 1 cup of the stock or water, and process until pureed. Scrape into a strainer placed over a large saucepan and press the puree through into the pan. [Alternatively, you can use a food mill.]
4. Add the remaining stock or water, sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. [We also added a little sherry vinegar, which added some depth to the soup.]
5. Add the pasta and simmer for 7 to 8 minutes, or according to the directions on the package, stirring frequently, until al dente. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve hot, garnished with the fresh basil leaves.

Our daughter Elena has become quite the little eater. She is definitely good with finger food and prefers to feed herself, but hasn’t quite master the art of using a spoon yet. This presents a little bit of a challenge for us because we don’t usually eat that much food which is easily consumed in bite-size chunks.

This has forced us to branch out a little. Our new goto menu option is salmon. They are easy to whip up using random pantry staples, freeze well and best of all, Elena loves them. We got the idea from a kids recipe book. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t make for a good adult size meal, as long as you scale them up a bit.

Can salmon is perfect for this recipe. It is pretty cheap and almost always made from wild fish. The canned salmon I have gotten usually ends up being the mid-section of two salmon crammed in the can, including some skin and bones. The can is then sealed and heated, cooking the salmon. When you open the can, drain it and then empty it into a bowl. It is pretty easy to remove the skin and large back bones. I wouldn’t worry too much about the smaller bones. They are usually pretty soft and after getting mashed up and cooked, are not noticeable. The bones actually act as a good source of calcium.

The salmon is pretty low in fat, so you need to add an egg or two and some bread crumbs or corn meal in order to bind it together. There are an endless number of flavorings and seasonings you can add. I like adding capers, Dijon mustard and Japanese pepper for seasoning. For a finishing touch, I roll the patties in panko bread before cooking them.

Last time Carolyn’s parents came to visit, we cooked up a batch of Greek Shrimp with Feta. I had forgotten how good this dish is, so it was great to revisit it. It gets roasted in the oven, and the tomato, shrimp and feta flavors have lots of time to meld.

This dish is also great for entertaining. You can prep everything ahead of time and then just stick it in the oven when it is time to eat. One of the best parts is the juices, so make sure you serve it with some crusty bread!

Taza turns out some great chocolate in a non-discript building, in the industrial part of Somerville. Carolyn and I checked it out them out while we were up in Massachusetts last December. They make chocolate bars and Mexican style hot chocolate discs.

Luckily for us, they had just started up a factory tour and we ended up getting two of the last tour tickets for the day.

Taza makes their chocolate directly from coco beans, right in their facility. The tour takes you through all of the manufacturing steps. They one of a few manufacturers that does bean to bar, so it is cool that you get to see the entire chocolate making process. Most of the other people start with a chocolate liquor that was refined somewhere else.

The tour, and the process, starts with bags of beans. Taza gets their beans from good sources, sustainably grown with workers paid a fair wage. Right now the beans mostly come from the Dominican.

Coco beans grow in large pods. When they are ready for harvest, they pick the pod and crack it open to get the beans from inside. The beans are then allowed to ferment for a bit and then dried. After all this, the beans are bagged up and shipped north. The beans get held in a warehouse in NJ until they are needed.

Enough about beans, back to chocolate making. The first stuff is to roast the beans. They use a large roaster, the same model that you use to roast coffee beans. Taza uses it to also roasts the nuts that goes into their chocolate.

After the roasting, the beans go into a huge machine which crunches them up and uses air to blow of the shells of the bean and other non-coco stuff. The coco nibs are heavy and fall down into large cans below.

The nibs are what makes chocolate. The next step is to pulverize them, which heats up all the fat in them and turns it into a thick liquid. Taza uses granite wheels to crush up the nibs, which is the authentic Mexican style way to do it. The chocolate is added into a large vat where it gets mixed with sugar and any other flavorings that are going to be added.

In order to crush the small pieces of nibs left and smooth out the liquor, it is passed through a series of steel rollers. The chocolate used for the Hot Chocolate disks is left a little “chunkier” and not as smooth. The little bit of grit left is part of the style. For the chocolate bars, they pass the chocolate a bunch of extra times, each time moving the rollers closer together.

The chocolate for the chocolate bars is also tempered. This step helps make sure that the sugar doesn’t crystalize after the chocolate has been poured into the mold. This involves heating and cooling the mixture over a long period of time. When you get a chocolate bar and it looks like it has a white film on it, that is a sign that the chocolate has lost its tempering.

Once the chocolate liquor is ready, it is time to pour it into a mold. The molds are just plastic tray. Since the mixture is so think, they had to use a doughnut dispenser to fill the molds. The chocolate is then chilled, to let the chocolate set. Once they are good to go, the chocolate gets unmolded and wrapped.

And that is how chocolate is made!

Excellent, knowledge is great and all, but it is not as good as eating chocolate. In order to make Mexican style hot chocolate you just mix some melted chocolate with warm milk. The trick is not burning the milk or chocolate in the process. They recommend grating the chocolate and then mixing it with the warmed milk.

I started out giving this a try, but grating chocolate is sort of a pain. Instead, I went for the double boiler option. A double boiler is two pots, one on top of each other. The bottom pot has a bit of water in it. The water gets boiled and the steam heats up the bowl above it. Since it is heated using the steam, it can only get so hot, and the milk and chocolate don’t burn.

Of course, buying a specialized pot that would rarely gets used is sort of silly. Instead, simply find a metal bowl the fits over a pot you already have and use that instead. Problem solved! Expensive gear avoided!

Once the chocolate has melted, start mixing in milk, a bit at the time. While this is going on, preheat the mugs. I just put a bit of water in each and microwaved them. We made two disks worth of chocolate and added about 14oz of milk. Switching up the ratio changes how thick or milky it is.

When the mixture is hot, ladle it into the warm mugs. I went the extra mile and used the little frother we have from Ikea to give it a nice foam.

So was it much better than Swiss Miss? Most definitely! It taste CHOCOLATY and not at all weak. It is a most enjoyable indulgence. It is even better after seeing how it was made, and the work and thought that goes into making the chocolate.

It was a bit of work though. If you are cold or wet, the last thing you want to do is work for 20 minutes making a pot of hot chocolate.

Necessity is the mother of invention…and sometimes really great dishes. This dish came about because we were low on milk and couldn’t go without it in out coffee. So instead of sparing some to make pancakes, we followed Mark Bittman’s advice and tried using yogurt instead.

We didn’t use any old, ordinary yogurt though…we used Stoneyfield’s Banilla yogurt! It is a combo of banana and vanilla yogurt. To further enhance the banana flavor, I added in a mashed up ripe banana we had.

After the first bite, I knew we had a hit on our hands. The pancakes were light and full of banana flavor. We also added in chocolate chips just to hedge our bets, but they were so good we could have skipped them. So next time you are making pancakes, skip the milk and add yogurt instead!

If you want to substitute yogurt in a pancake recipe of your own, just add about 1/2 cup less flour.

So what would happen if you three of the most popular cookie styles in a single cookie? Would you have a super cookie or a confused, muddled mess of flavors?

Not one to let this question go unanswered, we gave this recipe a try. We lucked out, the results were great! All of the flavors in this cookie play well together and you get a cookie that is well-balanced. Everyone wins with this cookie… Peanut Butter, Oatmeal & Chocolate Chip fans will all be pleased. If you like soft cookies, pull them out at 10 minutes as directed. I like my cookies a little crisper. I would have keep them in for another 5 minutes.

Carolyn got me the cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home for Christmas. We went to the restaurant when we were out in Sonoma, and both the restaurant and cookbook are excellent. They focus around good, wholesome food, with detailed preparation. None of the recipes in the cookbook are particularly hard, but they call for specific ingredients not everyone has around the house and can involve many exacting steps.

I have unfortunately not tried as many recipes from the book as I want to. This recipe for Grissini… or crunchy breadsticks, is great though. They are very simple to make and once prepared can be placed aside and popped in the oven when guests arrive. Served hot and crispy out of the oven, they will go quick so make sure you put a few aside for yourself!

When it comes to cornbread, we live in a house divided. Carolyn is a fan of Northern style and I like Southern style. Northern style is made with a mixture of cornmeal and flour and a bit of sugar. It rises up high and is nice and light. Southern style is dense and has a much stronger corn taste.

The other big difference is that Southern style gets baked in a cast iron pan with a bunch of butter. It gives it a nice crust and that buttery taste that is oh so hard to hate.

In my own opinion, Southern style is great for putting in the bottom of bowl of chili and Northern is great on the side of a pat with a pat of butter on top. Cook up a batch of both and decide for yourself.

I have been making different Greens… or I should say I have been trying to make greens. I generally mess up the seasoning and make it too salty. In my defense it is pretty tricky because you start with a ton of Greens, but they cook down so much. Other times I tried to get creative and didn’t remove the stem. That didn’t work.

When it came to our super Awesome Southern Food Feast, I knew I shouldn’t chance it and instead go with a recipe. While I was over at The Bitten Word picking out a fried chicken recipe, I also spotted a great recipe for collard greens. According to them, two true Southerners, it beat the traditional slow simmer version. Who was I to argue?

The recipe gets a bit of sweetness from the maple syrup and it helps cancel out the bitterness of the greens. The sweetness is so subtle in fact that Carolyn didn’t even know there was any maple syrup in it. Also, a proud native of a maple syrup producing region, I am happy to see it improving Southern food.