Mango & Tomato

2/14/11

How to make chocolate covered strawberries at home

Last Friday, my coworker (hi, Chris!) told me that he was going to buy a chocolate covered strawberry at Godiva for his fiance, but Godiva was going to charge him $7. SEVEN dollars for ONE strawberry!!! Can you believe that? Yes, I realize it's probably because of something called Valentine's Day, but that's just a robbery in my eyes, especially when making chocolate covered strawberries at home is relatively easy.

How do you make chocolate covered strawberries at home? Read on!

Lucky for me, this weekend Harris Teeter had strawberries and chocolate on sale! Two boxes of strawberries for $4.99 and two packages of Ghirardelli chocolate chips for $5.00! That means you can make about 50 strawberries for $10.00 and still have some chocolate left over.

Ingredients
25 strawberries
1/2 bag (or about 6 ounces) Ghirardelli Premium Baking 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips {I realize that many of you will tell me I should have used bars of chocolate, but chips are just so much easier for me. Of course you can choose whichever chocolate type/brand/variety you like!}
1/3 cup white chocolate chips

Directions
1. Set up a double boiler: put a little bit of water in a pan, bring it to a simmer. Put a metal bowl on top, making sure it doesn't touch the water. Add your dark chocolate and stir using a spatula till it melts. Take it off the heat. {If you have a microwave, I decided not to buy one since my new condo didn't come with it, you can melt your chocolate in a microwave.}
2. Dip your strawberries. I used toothpicks. Scroll below to see how that turned out!
3. Set your strawberries on parchment paper. {Note: I found it rather difficult to peel off the strawberries from the parchment. I also used wax paper with the same result. What worked best, was to pop them in the refrigerator for about 10-15 minutues.}

4. After the chocolate hardens, give it about 45 minutes, melt the white chocolate. Add it to a Ziploc bag, cut the tip and drizzle over the strawberries.

You'd think this would be easy, right? WRONG. The chocolate began to harden almost as soon as I put it in the bag. And it was really hot! I ended up using a kitchen towel to hold the bag and drizzled as many strawberries as I could.

5. Let the white chocolate harden. This would only take about 10-15 minutes.

So what did I do with all these strawberries? Well, I ate a few. Or maybe a bit more than a few. But I left the rest of them for Sunday (yesterday) because I had some of my friends come over. According to SassyRadish, I was supposed to leave them out covered with a towel. But to me it seemed a bit dangerous. So I put them in the refrigerator over night.

Wrong! Don't do it. The berries start to release some of the juices as they sit in the fridge and it's just not pretty. Plus, I probably should not have used toothpicks....as that too allowed the moisture to be released. They still looked ok, and tasted ok, but ok is not good enough when you have people coming over.

So I went back to the store, bought more strawberries and dipped those in dark chocolate sans toothpicks and sans white chocolate. {The photos in here are of the ones I made on Saturday prior to refrigeration.}

Lessons learned:

Don't use toothpicks.
Don't use white chocolate unless you really love it.
Make these the day you'll serve them.
Don't pop them in the fridge, unless you do so only for about 15 minutes to harden the chocolate before serving it.

If you are celebrating Valentine's Day, enjoy it!!!!

{PS it was just brought to my attention that I spelled "tomato" wrong in all of the watermarks in this post...oops! I'm just going to leave them the way they are, but luckily can change it for the next 3 posts. Thanks Dusty!!}

2/11/11

Photos of Domenica Marchetti

Last week I got a chance to do something really fun: take photos of Domenica Marchetti for her next cook book that will come out in the fall! It was a cold day, but Domenica braved the cold and posed for me.

Taking photographs of people is definitely not something I've done too often, but Domenica was a lovely and easy going model. After a quick consultation on what to wear, a bit of lip gloss and borrowing of my necklace, we were ready for the photo shoot.

At first I took some photos inside of my condo, but they looked like your standard passport or DMV photos: not ideal for a book jacket. So we decided to go outside.

The photo below is my favorite from the entire session. I just happened to turn my camera horizontally after shooting a bunch of vertical photos, and that's what came out:

I probably took more than a 100 photos and then we ran back inside to my warm place to have tea and to look through all of the photographs, deleting some of the "ooops" ones and leaving the rest.

This one below I absolutely love: Domenica looks like she could be a star of an action TV movie ;) The way her hair blows in the wind is awesome!

These photos, however, would be more appropriate for a book jacket. I can't wait to see which one gets chosen.

That's all for now! Have a lovely weekend and I'll work on some recipes for you over the weekend.

2/9/11

Spicy sun dried tomato cream cheese

Did you know today is the National Bagel Day?? It appears to be so. What kind of bagels do you like? For me, the more "stuff," the better. Just today I had an everything bagel: love! I also really like the cheesy ones with jalapeno.

But bagels are sort of boring without cream cheese, right? And just like I'm not a fan of plain bagels, I don't typically like plain cream cheese. Remember the salmon cream cheese I blogged about? It got great reviews from some of you, and so I decided to share with you another concoction I came up with over the weekend:

Spicy Sun Dried Tomato Cream Cheese

Ingredients
1 package of cream cheese at room temperature
10 halves of sun dried tomatoes (I used the ones that come sealed in a pack and are ready to use: no need to soak them in hot water)
1 chile pepper in adobo

Directions
1. Add all ingredients into a food processor.
2. Puree.
3. That's all: you are done!

You can puree this cream cheese mixture until it's completely smooth, or you can leave a few specks of sun dried tomatoes.

Serve the cream cheese with bagels or crackers, with carrot sticks or on top of baked potatoes.

Do you make cream cheese at home? What's your favorite flavor?
And since today is a National Bagel Day, what's your favorite bagel?

2/7/11

What to do with persimmons? Persimmon, avocado & pistachio salad

I grew up eating persimmons. I absolutely love these brightly colored orange fruit. From afar they look like orange tomatoes or miniature pumpkins. Don't be scared: pick them up next time you see them at your grocery store. But don't wait too long: they are typically only available during the winter months.

There are several shapes and varieties of persimmon. What matters most is that they are ripe: if they aren't, they'll be off putting. How can you tell if persimmons are ripe? They will be brightly colored and somewhat soft. But make sure that their skin is free of black blemishes.

So you've ventured out and bought a few persimmons. What to do now? I like eating them as is, although in the past I've baked persimmon muffins. On Sunday I was doing my regular grocery shopping and noticed that persimmons were on sale (1 for $0.99); so were avocados and POM Wonderful pistachios. All of a sudden I had an idea: why not combine all these ingredients in a salad? {I've also had avocados and pistachios on my mind after a great meal at Cork Wine & Bar featuring avocado, pistachios, toasted pistachio oil and sea salt on grilled bread.}

I also wanted to add some Cara Cara oranges, but my store was out of them.

Persimmon, avocado & pistachio salad

Ingredients (I trust you can decide on the amount of each yourself)
persimmon, sliced
avocado, sliced
red onion, thinly sliced
salad greens
olive oil
salt
shelled pistachios

Directions
1. Drizzle salad greens with olive oil and season with salt.
2. Arrange all the other ingredients on top of the salad greens. {You can also just mix the entire salad together.}

I happen to think the combination of green and orange colors is absolutely gorgeous. More importantly, the flavors mixed really well together. So did the textures: you have your creamy avocado and crunchy pistachios; bright and dense sweet persimmons and light salad greens. What's not to like?

I realize this is not your typical lettuce, tomato and crouton salad, but why not try something different?

What unusual fruit and nuts do you like to add to your salad?

2/4/11

First time baking French bread at home

Oh the crazy things Robyn Webb makes me do ;) I've roasted a whole chicken, made several dishes with anchovies, cooked paella and even tested vegan recipes. She pushes my culinary repertoire and gives me a chance to cross many "I've never done this" things off of my list.

A few weekends ago for Fabulous Food Finds I baked a French Baguette. From scratch! Without a machine. And you know what? It was a great success.You can find a full recipe with directions here.

The only ingredients you need are bread flour, yeast, sugar, water, oil, salt and fresh parsley.

You first combine flour, sugar, yeast and water in a bowl. Let it sit for a bit, then knead it into a ball with oil and herbs and salt. Robyn used parsley, but you can use whatever you like. I'm thinking of trying this recipe with garlic, red pepper flakes and olives next time!

After the ball sits covered (in order to rise), you flatten it out into a rectangular shape. Obviously I had a hard time doing it: mine looks more like an oval. You then fold the two long sides toward the center.

Next, roll the dough to a shape that resembles a baguette. Make a few cuts on the top with a sharp knife.

Let the unbaked baguette rise (covered for an hour). {Thank you to a reader, Jennifer, for pointing out that I left out this step originally!}
Brush the baguette with some water and bake in the oven. Trust me, your place will smell amazing!

Here is the final product! Mine turned out more like French bread than a baguette: next time I'll have to roll it into a thinner shape. But I was really pleased with the results. So were Jenna and Mary who got to try the bread when they came over for our whoppie pie baking date.

Have you baked bread lately? If so, which kind?

2/2/11

Brunch at Coco Sala in DC

Sometimes it takes me forever to try something new. This includes getting a cell phone, cable TV, wireless Internet, and oh so many other things that I should just keep to myself. Same applied to trying out Co Co Sala in DC. I've heard about this chocolate-themed restaurant for quite a while, and although it's conveniently located in the Gallery Place/Chinatown Area, I haven't tried it...until this past Saturday.

This all changed when I decided to meet Sala of VeggieBelly for brunch and we chose Coco Sala as our destination.

The restaurant is beyond beautiful. It's a great place for a girls brunch, drinks or dinner, or can be a perfect place for a special date. We were offered a three course menu for brunch left over from the Restaurant Week, which wasn't a bad thing: that way I had fewer choices and could make my decision faster and concentrate on catching up with Sala and sipping on my Peachy Keen cocktail (white peaches/amaretto/bubbly).

At first we were served an artichoke tart. The dough was incredibly buttery and flaky. The filling was creamy and oh so flavorful. This was a great start: the dishes were plated artfully and everything on the plate was edible: no random parsley or rosemary twigs!

Sala chose one of the seven types of hot chocolates for her beverage. I loved the tall cup it came in. You can't see it on this photo, but there is a handle on the other side. This reminded me of the Russian tea glasses that come with metal holders.

For my main course I ordered a Breakfast Flatbread with cheddar hash browns, chicken sausage, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, roasted tomato and hollandaise sauce served with a side of a salad. How can you go wrong with this? I loved everything on top of the Flatbread, but the flatbread itself was a bit soggy, so I left it sitting on the plate: not to worry, I did not really need the extra calories.

Sala ordered a Grown-Up Grilled Cheese (truffle-scented brioche with cheddar cheese, roasted tomato soup and cheese fritter. {The photo below is the one Sala took with my camera. Same applies to the photo of her dessert, which was a Stolen Heart: white chocolate & raspberry mousse with chocolate crispy pearls.}

For my dessert I chose Onyx: dark chocolate mousse, vanilla creme brulee, salted caramel, crispy pearl and a brownie. Yes, all that in one dessert, and all that a perfection! I should have taken a photograph of the dessert once you "break into it," because it was really pretty, but I was too busy eating it.

The food, the service and the atmosphere were on point. And I liked the attention to detail all throughout the meal, which ended with a bill presented in a pretty red book.

1/31/11

Vegetable Medley: don't throw away your random vegetables!

I often have random ingredients left over from my regular cooking and/or from the recipes I make for Robyn Webb. As hard as I try, some of those random ingredients end up in the garbage. And I end up feeling guilty. "Great."

Yesterday, instead of throwing some of the random vegetables in my refrigerator away, or letting them stay there till they go bad and then having to throw them away, I decided to use them and make a vegetable medley.

This is really not a recipe. The amounts I used were the ones that I had on hand: go ahead and use what you have. The idea is just to get a bit creative and to not waste your food.

Vegetable Medley

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups peeled and cubed butternut squash (I used 1/2 squash I had leftover from making a warm butternut squash salad with cranberries and almonds)
1/2 diced red onion
1/2 cup chopped green beans
salt & pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed chili flakes
1 cup defrosted corn (or use fresh or canned)
1/2 cup diced red pepper
1 tablespoon lime juice
chopped cilantro

{Note: I finally switched to my 50 mm lens and to all manual thanks to the encouragement from Sala. Maybe eventually I'll start shooting in RAW.}

Chopping the squash was the hardest part in making this side dish. Because the squash is so oddly shaped, it's difficult to make the pieces the same size/shape, but do your best!

Directions

1. Heat oil in a large pan. Add butternut squash and saute for 5 minutes.
2. Add onions and green beans. Season with salt & pepper and crushed chili flakes. Saute for 5 minutes.
3. Add defrosted corn. Saute for 5 minutes.
4. Add diced pepper and lime juice and cook just for a few minutes. You want to retain the crunchiness of the red pepper. The lime juice will brighten everything up.
5. Serve topped with cilantro.

This is a great side dish or can be served as dinner with some bread or topped with a fried or poached egg. You know how I like poached eggs on everything!

You can also have this for breakfast if you are not one who likes cereal or oatmeal. This is filling, healthy and oh so versatile.

Have you rescued some random ingredients lately? If so, please share!

INSTAGRAM

Looking for something?

Jewelry

Stats