Cooking Mag Mommy

When I lived in Phoenix, I was only 5 hours away from San Diego and from there, it was only a quick drive into Mexico. One year a friend from Michigan, Eric Seelye , came to visit me and we hopped in the car and drove to the Baja . I laugh a bit now at how blase we were about the trip. So blase that Eric left his wallet on the top of a pay phone, we drove away, realized he left it and it was still there when we went back. That night we stopped for dinner in the town of Rosarito , below Tijuana. Our waiter, Ricky, was delightful and when we mentioned we had no idea where we were spending that night (I told you we were blase!), he offered to let us pitch our tent behind the restaurant. When we woke up to the ocean crashing below us and a beautiful view of Rosarito Beach, we felt like we'd spent the night in a five-star hotel. The next year, I took Richard back to Baja and just down the road from the restaurant we'd eaten at the year before was a little place called Ricky's....

When I started posting to my blog about tonight's meal, I noticed that several of the visits on the live traffic feed were from bonappetit .com. Curious, I jumped over to bonappetit .com to see how someone got to my blog from there. Sure enough, just one click off the homepage of Bon Appetit , my blog is quoted and linked to. Fifteen months after I start this blog and 5 posts after I decide to switch up my cooking magazine from Bon Appetit to another magazine for the month, Bon Appetit puts me on their blog list. Alanis Morissette would be proud. Ah well, hopefully Bon Appetit is not like our local grocery store competitors. A Publix employee literally whispered "Kroger" when I told her Eyrleigh could tell the difference between grocery stores because of free cookies. She looked around surreptitiously as if someone would fire her if they heard her even mention the name of the "other" grocery store. Tonight's meal was from Food and Wine and in all...

Look closely at the picture to your left. That is not pepper you see. That is burnt stuff. It wasn't enough to make the dish inedible but it did contribute to authenticity. The dish I made tonight was called Smoky Paella with Shrimp and Squid from this month's Food and Wine. Mine almost got a bit smokier than recommended . When the recipe says "...bring to a boil over high heat 10 minutes" and doesn't mention stirring, I suggest you stir. I didn't and had to do a bit of scraping resulting in the black stuff at left. I love paella and truth be told, consider myself a bit of an expert, for an American. When I stayed in Spain in 1996, I had the most amazing paella almost daily with whatever fish was bought that day. Tonight's version was a bit disappointing. Something was missing, perhaps a few more types of fish or shellfish. The rice was rather thick with the tomato paste and didn't absorb the flavors of the additional fish. It wasn't terrible but ...

I'll begin this post by apologizing. These four tacos look exactly the same but you must believe me, they are not! Last night, I invited several families from our church small group over for Cinco De Mayo. I guess I started the margarita part of the evening a little early (while cooking, of course). In all the rush of cooking, hosting, and ... uh... bar tending , I didn't take any pictures. This picture was taken by Richard at lunch the next day. Pretty good looking leftovers if I do say so myself. This month's Taco World article in Food and Wine magazine has seven taco recipes but I didn't think I could pull off all seven. Three of the tacos I made for the party involved premaking a marinade and simply grilling the meat before serving. That's a pretty easy way to do a party. I had very little to do once people arrived. I just lit the grill and let the charcoal do its thing. I did have a vegetarian friend coming so my fourth taco was the tofu variation. The Chili-...

Cooking magazines love to use fancy names for recipes to make them sound more authentic and delicious. Tonight I made Buccatini all" Amatriciana , basically Italian for tubular pasta with bacon and tomato sauce. It sounds much fancier in Italian. I think everything sounds fancier in Italian. I need to learn Italian or at least go to Italy to hear it spoken for awhile. How I missed the entire country when I backpacked through Europe is beyond me. I think Eyrleigh and Richard would really love to go there too. Though Buccatini all'Amatriciana sounds complicated, it wasn't and the use of store-bought tomato sauce made it downright simple. I replaced the pancetta with low-sodium bacon and realized I had no more Romano cheese so I used Manchego . It worked. The flavor added to the store-bought sauce was an improvement. I may not duplicate this recipe exactly again but this recipe reinforced that anything can be added to a commercial sauce to give it an extra dimension. ...

You may remember the story of Benedict Arnold, the general who betrayed the American Revolutionaries and joined the British forces. So I'll admit my traitorous act was not that great but I have decided to change magazines for the month of May. I sat down this week to look at my new cooking magazines and I got to be honest, the line-up in Food and Wine just looked better and more doable. It's not that I can't make Caramelized Pork Belly and Shrimp with Spicy Fish Sauce and Padron Peppers Stuffed with Tetilla Cheese. It's just that it's hard to find those ingredients and I would spend an inordinate amount of time hunting high and low to make my recipes authentic. I also was a bit over butter and flour. The six cake recipes last month did me in and I swear my stomach is still flabbier as a result. The Food and Wine recipe list had fewer desserts and several of those were lighter in nature (like Poached Pears with Prunes, not exactly a high fat treat!). There is a who...