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A little dip for your chips

I enjoy blogging, but it’s a solitary activity and really can be a slog (especially in winter when faced with nothing but root vegetables in your CSA) — I do my thing, hit “publish” and that’s it for the most part. Since I haven’t quite hit on a formula to make this more of a give-and-take affair, I’ve been intrigued by the Food52 community for some time. Members can post recipes to the site with an intro about its creation, then the community is off and running, commenting and making suggestions for improvement.

The site also hosts weekly recipe contests based on a theme, and the winners of each contest go into a cookbook at the end of the 52 weeks (hence the name). When they posted a contest for your best short ribs a few weeks ago, I entered my latest version of ragu for kicks and couldn’t have been more surprised when it was chosen as a finalist, then actually won! (Also, Jen got a wildcard spot in the cookbook for her Hunter’s-Style Chicken that same day, so it was […]

Sweet potato chips

These sweet potato chips came about simply because I wanted to enter the photo contest at Leite’s Culinaria. The rules were simple: Contestants could choose any recipe on the site to cook as written, then photograph the dish in any manner of their choosing. No crazy digital shenanigans beyond tweaking white balance and exposure were allowed.

As it turned out, I had a couple of problems with this:

  1. For about a month, I literally could not decide on a recipe to cook. Everything sounded delicious, but no one recipe jumped out at me visually.
  2. When I finally decided on this recipe (mainly because I had all of the ingredients in the house and the day was drawing to a close), cooked it and took my pictures, the images didn’t seem contest-appropriate.

So… I didn’t enter. /facepalm

But these chips were absolutely delicious, and you deserve to know about them. Sea Salt and Rosemary Sweet Potato Chips. Try them now. Don’t let my neuroses stop you!

’08 Advent Calendar, Day 18

Bon Appetit’s selection of food blogs for the holidays is well worth checking out. You can’t go wrong with mixed nuts at Christmas, as my dad will attest, but roasted sweet and spicy nuts? OK, now you’re flirting with perfection.

For the 2007 Advent Calendar, click here.

recipe after the jump

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This is a public service announcement

I’m a big fan of Apartment Therapy‘s food blog, The Kitchn; they post frequently about a wide range of subjects and I’ve found quite a few recipes there that have gone into regular rotation in our home. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.

The post linked to Gourmet’s Cumin-Apple Crisps and a bright idea was born as I realized: “Hey, I love apples and I’m totally into cumin!” Unfortunately, I love apples so much, I didn’t have any in the house. I decided to use a bosc pear instead, which might’ve led to my latest kitchen disaster (though I suspect the unholy union of cumin and sugar contributed).

Out came the mandoline — my favorite kitchen toy — and I sliced one of the pears, snatching a few thin slivers for myself along the way. I sifted the cumin and sugar together, sampling a tiny bit before sprinkling it over the crisps; it was horrible, but I hoped some wondrous alchemy would take place in the oven and continued with the recipe.

Ninety minutes later I realized just how misplaced my optimism was, as my […]

Feeling snackish

hominy_sm.jpg

Roasted hominy, three ways (from front to back): With Singapore curry blend, with harissa and fresh orange juice, with ras el hanout and lime juice.