Rachael Ray's Blog, page 95

Ten ways to jazz up water

I drink a lot of water - a few years ago I started drinking it with lemon after I heard an interview with Denise Austin (remember her of the exercise videos of the 80’s?) and she said she starts every day with a room temperature glass of water with lemon - before coffee - to get things going. Sounded good to me and I have been doing it ever since. Then a few years ago I dabbled in the Flat Belly Diet which has its patented “sassy water” as a core part of the program. It’s a refreshing blend of ginger, cucumber, mint, and lemon and while the diet didn’t last very long, I still make a pitcher of old sassy water from time to time.
I know a lot of people really can’t stand water (I was one of them until I was in my 20’s - I recall saying plain water “tasted like dirt”) - if you add in some fruits, herbs, or even veggies, even the staunchest water haters may change their tune. A few pitchers of infused water are also fun to put out at a party. Here are a few combos to try:
1) Sassy Water from the Flat Belly Diet

8 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 medium cucumber, sliced thin
1 medium lemon, sliced thin
12 leaves spearmint

Combine ingredients in a large pitcher and refrigerate overnight. Strain and drink.

2) Citrus Cucumber Water



One large lemon, sliced
One large lime, sliced
One large orange, sliced
One large cucumber, sliced
One half gallon of water

Place all fruits and vegetables in a glass pitcher and add water. Allow to infuse for two hours before serving over ice.

3) Orange Mint Water

Three large oranges, sliced
Ten mint leaves
One half gallon of water

Place mint and orange slices in a pitcher and add water. Infuse for two hours in the refrigerator. Pour over ice and serve garnished with an orange slice and a sprig of mint.

4) Cucumber Melon Water

One large cucumber, sliced
1/4 honeydew melon, cubed
1/4 canteloupe, cubed
One half gallon of water

Place melon and cucumber in a glass pitcher and add water. Allow to rest, refrigerated, for two hours and then serve over ice.

5) Watermelon Basil Water

1 1/2 cups of seedless watermelon, cubed
Ten to 12 basil leaves
One half gallon of water

Pour water over melon and basil. Refrigerate for two hours and then serve over ice, garnished with a sprig of basil.

6) Citrus Cilantro Water

One large lemon, sliced
One large lime, sliced
One large orange, sliced
1/4 cup cilantro leaves

Pour water over citrus fruits and cilantro. Refrigerate for two hours. Serve over ice and garnish with an orange slice and sprig of cilantro.

7) Citrus Cucumber Water

1 large lemon, sliced
1 large lime, sliced
1 large orange, sliced
1 large cucumber, sliced
1 half-gallon of water

Place all the sliced fruits and the cucumber in a glass pitcher and add water. Refrigerate for two hours to allow flavors to infuse, then serve in glasses over ice.

Cucumber Herb Water

5 cups water
10 thin slices of cucumber
2 lemon slices
2 sprigs of fresh mint
3 sprigs of rosemary

Put water in pitcher and add lemon slices and cucumber slices. Crush mint and rosemary to release flavor, then add to other ingredients. Refrigerate for several hours. Serve over ice in tall glasses. Garnish with a lemon wedge.

9) Herb and Berry Water

2  4–inch sprigs of fresh rosemary. lightly bruised  (to release more flavor)
1 cup fresh blueberries, lightly crushed
1 half-gallon of water

Add blueberries and rosemary sprigs to a large pitcher; fill with the half-gallon of water and refrigerate 2–4 hours. Serve in ice-filled glasses. Makes about 8 servings.

10) Frozen Fruit Water

2 cups frozen apple chunks, grapes, or berries
1 half-gallon of water

Add frozen fruit to a pitcher; pour water over fruit and let sit at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Stir to distribute fruit flavor and serve in glasses with some ice cubes. (Note: you can chop up the same kind of fruit, unfrozen, and follow same directions. You’ll need  to use more ice when serving the unfrozen fruit–flavored water).

Alan Richman, Like Me, Takes All His Home Meals Standing Up

Alan Richman, the dean of American restaurant critics, has been writing about restaurants from China to Peru for GQ for twenty-five years — and he celebreated his silver anniversary at the magazine by winning his 15th (!!) James Beard Award. I aspire to his august status, of course, to say nothing of his unshakeable indifference to the torrents of controversy that appear in his wake. But I suspected that his eating habits at the home are about the same as mine, and maybe as yours. So I asked him about it.



Alan, what are the last three things you ate at home, and in what room did you eat them?

Orwasher’s cinnamon-raisin-walnut bread, dotted with butter before toasting (which makes a mess of the toaster-oven), eaten in the kitchen standing up while reading Adam Platt on NoMad; leftover cold ribeye, purchased at the Le Marais butcher shop and overcooked on a gas grill by me (only I am a bad-enough cook that I can make a gas grill flare up and burn meat); and two Sabrett all-beef, natural casing hot dogs, removed from the freezer where they have resided for at least a year, reheated first with gentle steam and then by pan-broiling, accompanied by two-day-old Zabar’s potato salad. I haven’t had a normal sit-down meal at home since Sunday, and that was the overdone steak.

I never have a sit-down meal at home. In fact it’s rare for me not to eat over the sink.  But I can’t help but notice a lot of Jewish food in your answer.  Like me,  you come from a Jewish household with the usual heavy Eastern-European food occasionally relieved with bad Chinese. Do you still do any kind of Jewish cooking at home, other than on ceremonial occasions?

The only food I cook well is Eastern European, the dishes I either learned from my mother or constructed to taste as though my mother made them: Pea soup made with beef bones, braised chuck (altered to taste half-French, half-Jewish), and the cheese blintz, at which I am unrivaled. I wish there were a blintz festival so I could take on all comers.

I think they do it at Telluride. What, in your opinion, is the best piece of Jewish home cooking?

It’s not brisket, that’s for sure. If only Jews had been as ceremonial about flanken as they are about brisket, Eastern European home cooking would be every bit as honored as French country food. The single greatest piece of Jewish home cooking was my mother’s stuffed cabbage, which is lost to history.

What about baking?

Can Jews bake? The greatest Jewish baked good is rugelach, but I always thought of that as a bakery product, although I suppose there are Jewish martyrs who bake them at home, too.

What do you think of the whole third-wave coffee renaissance? I see you as a Chock Full O’ Nuts man, but I may be wrong.

I drink a lot of Chock Full O’ Nuts French roast because that is my girlfriend’s favorite coffee. I can get it on sale, and I don’t have to grind it. A man has to take advantage of the few times a woman makes his life easy. I will admit, however, that I have a secret fondness for great coffee because I lived in Boston in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, the era of The Coffee Connection, the finest purveyor of coffee the world has ever seen. I still dream of its Kenya AA.

If you are anything like me, and I believe you are,  you get a lot of doggie bags and leftovers from the elaborate meals you are forced to eat by your job. How do you generally heat them up?

Brilliantly. I am not much of a cook but I am a seminal freezer and a brilliant re-warmer. I can make a second-day sub taste better than it did the first day.

What kind of snacks do you eat at home?

I tend toward sweets, unfortunately, especially cookies and ice cream, although I don’t like cookies in ice cream.

What kind of cookware / stove do you have?

I have a six-burner, restaurant-like, Thermador gas cooktop. It’s the subject of much admiration, and I think it does everything the big-shot cooktops do except provide a very low flame when you need one. I have a Frigidaire electric double oven that’s just fine, and mostly All-Clad pots. I buy cheap fry pans because I like non-stick, and I’ve found that neither the best ones nor the worst ones last very long.

I find the same thing. Who is going to remember to use those childish plastic instruments when they are in the heat of cooking? They don’t even work.  I feel you in this, as in so much else. Well, Alan, thank you very much. And congratulations on all your honors. I hope I can get half as many before I’m done.

What I Saw in Atlanta, and Why It Matters

There are a lot of food festivals these days. There is a very classy one in Aspen; there is a rocking one in South Beach, which hosts a hamburger contest you have probably heard of. I even do a big food event myself. But having just got back from Atlanta, I am ready to say that there is only one indispensable event, and that is it. The reason is obvious: the south is the new capital of gastronomy in America. Food has to come from somewhere; the great chefs in capitals like New York or San Francisco or even Portland generally come there from somewhere else; they draw their inspiration and their authority from a tradition rooted in experience and agriculture. Maybe it’s Italy, or maybe it’s Indonesia. But it was Oakland that Gertrude Stein was speaking of when she said, “there’s no there there.”

No doubt, the bay area has its own terroir, its own folkways. But not like the South. The place is practically a continent of its own, a settled territory, a country within a country. And Atlanta is its capital. So if, like me, you believe that, within the crescent of black soil and isolated towns, each with gifted chefs operating in hothouse isolation from each other, the best chefs in America are now being grown, Atlanta is the place you have to be.

I should say here that I am favorably disposed to the festival. They flew me down there and they put me up. I had insider access, like all writers, so I didn’t have to wait in lines, and I am friends with a lot of the chefs, so don’t take my experience there as representative or objective. As an event founder, I thought it was run really well. But that’s not the point. The point is that I stood in the tents and tried five kinds of fried chicken, from four different states, each with its own vector on fried chicken. (The best one, by far, was a local southern Indian restaurant in Atlanta called Cardamom Hill, which served a perfect slice of cardamom-infused breast.) There wasn’t a single celebrity chef present; there wasn’t even a big-time restaurateur. All the chefs were actual working chefs, whom the festival had given a platform. “We made the decision to say no to celebrity chefs,” festival CEO Dominique Love told me. “It isn’t about the personality; it’s about what goes on in the kitchen.”

You could see it in the tents, normally a clearing house of lukewarm leavings plogged onto soggy toasts. These were organized by theme, and each one serving dishes as fresh, in most cases, as what you would find in a restaurant.   There was a pig tent with a pig-ear tacos from Farm 255 in Athens, a place I have never been, using a cut of meat I like but never really enjoyed much if the truth be told. Sean Brock is the best known southern chef, and may well be the best for all I know. But he’s not the only one that has found a way to elevate their chewy and cartiligineous pieces of pork; these guys have their own method, and their pig ears taste nothing like Sean’s. I went to the Rathburn Watch Dinner, which gives a platform to the Southern chefs who didn’t have big reputations even  in the south yet; and what an inside track that gave me in my never-ending war on my rival food writers. I will say here that the best thing I had there, by far, was a pork jowl, long cured, confited for 36 hours, seared off and served with some beans in a little cardboard bowl. It was served by Anthony Gray, Art Smith’s chef at Southern Art, a restaurant I didn’t know about and a man I had never met.

It doesn’t sound like much, does it? And yet it was magical. I had eaten 18 other dishes before it at the same event, and sampled a much buzzed-about hamburger at Bocato on the way. And yet that jowl stuck with me in a way I can’t entirely explain. I think the entire cuisine of the south is like that, at least in its current iteration. Whether it’s lardcore heroics like Gray’s or the celestial charcuterie handed to me by Kevin Outzs from The Spotted Trotter, the experience cemented the conviction in my mind that the South was where American cooking, in its most vital sense, is happening. If only there was a giant southern food festival every month I could go to to try all this food! Once a year is not enough. But Atlanta opened my eyes, and I won’t wait a year to go back. March to the sea, gastronomes! The South has risen.

Coconut Cream Pie

My mom has always loved coconut cream pie. Her birthday was last week and we met for lunch at a local deli and lo and behold, there was coconut cream pie in the dessert case. We talked about getting a slice for dessert in honor of her bday, but ran out of time. I decided to take a stab at it for Mother’s Day and it was delicious, even though there was no chocolate involved. Anything that is a vehicle for whipped cream is worth having in my book. I happened to have a refrigerated pie crust dough in the fridge so I used it and no one noticed it wasn’t homemade (at least no one said anything - what good guests:-)).

Coconut Cream Pie

Ingredients:

(One baked pie crust - I used Pillsbury prepared pie crust or use your favorite pie crust recipe. Bake and let cool.)

Filling:

1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup half and half
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:

1 1/4 cups chilled whipping cream
2 tablespoons sugar

For filling:

Whisk 1/2 cup sugar, eggs, egg yolk, and flour in medium bowl. Bring milk, half and half, and coconut to simmer in medium saucepan over medium heat. Gradually add hot milk mixture to egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return to same saucepan; cook until pastry cream thickens and boils, stirring constantly, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Mix in vanilla. Transfer pastry cream to medium bowl. Press plastic wrap directly onto surface to prevent formation of skin. Chill until cold, at least 2 hours and up to 1 day. Transfer filling to pie crust. Cover; chill overnight.

For topping:

Using electric mixer, beat cream and sugar in medium bowl until peaks form. Spread whipped cream all over top of filling. (Can be prepared 4 hours ahead. Cover and refrigerate.) Serve cold.

No-yeast cinnamon rolls

I hate to admit that my kids are huge fans of the refrigerated cinnamon rolls in the biscuit-type tube. So easy, so fun to whack the tube and open it up, full of ingredients I can’t pronounce with lots of consonants. That said, I’ve stopped buying them but that doesn’t mean my kids have stopped asking for them. I wanted to make some quickly last weekend which means I needed a recipe without yeast so I could avoid rising time (and yeast - I am a yeast-a-phobe). I had all the ingredients on hand, plus the recipe was super quick and took no time to whip up. The dough was veeeery soft however and required a ton of flour while rolling it out. They didn’t look perfect, but my kids still deemed them delicious. Note - they would be tasty without the frosting as well.

No-Yeast Cinnamon Rolls (click here for printable recipe)

Adapted from recipegirl.com

Ingredients:

Filling:

4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

1 cup packed brown sugar

3 teaspoons cinnamon

Dough:

2 cups flour, plus lots more more for rolling

2 tablespoons sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup milk

1 large egg, beaten

Cream Cheese Frosting:

2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

2/3 cup powdered sugar

3 tablespoons milk
Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick spray. Prepare the filling: In a small bowl, combine the filling ingredients with a fork until a crumbly mixture is formed. Place about a teaspoon of the filling in the bottom of each muffin cup:

Prepare the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Use clean hands (or a pastry blender) to work the butter into the dry ingredients. Add the milk and the egg and stir to combine.

Roll the dough out on a generously floured surface with a floured rolling pin into roughly shaped large rectangle (about 1/4-inch thick):

Sprinkle the filling evenly over the surface of the dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border all the way around.

Carefully roll up the rectangle (the dough will be soft). Use a sharp knife to cut 12 rolls. Carefully place the rolls in the prepared muffin tin. Bake 20 to 25 minutes.

While the cinnamon rolls are baking, prepare the frosting: Combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar and milk in a medium bowl. Use an electric mixer to combine. Serve warm.

Fantasy Color

The introduction of fantasy hair colors made its debut in the late 1970s when two young New York City entrepreneurs Tish and Snooky (not to be confused with our Jersey shore Snooky) created, Manic Panic catapulting ultra-vibrant hair tones to a mass level of appeal. While the underground punk rock scene’s anti-establishment virtues got the ball rolling today’s main stream acceptance has made it clear that these tones have made their mark and are here to stay!

From eccentric unique haircuts to creative color schemes and placement the kids of the 80s set the stage! At home, self-taught color sessions became the norm, ranging from all over color to multiple tones, over processing their hair with bleach for a clean canvas as well as added texture for wild and ground breaking styles.

Today’s interpretations are all over the map, from avant garde to a hint of vibrant color and faded pastels. Just remember color placement is key to the level of expression desired. For example, if your life style allows you the option to have your entire head blue or multi-toned go for it! If your life style is a bit more reserved but you’re aching to try something new a few well-placed high lights can go a long way.

Blondes: Colors that work best on blondes are soft pastels such as pink, purple, yellow or even blue. When looking to achieve a subtle change highlights away from the face or even hidden pieces work well. Another option is a few pieces on the ends for a little pop.

For an allover temporary color (on blonde hair) have your colorist apply a gloss and depending on the amount of processing time will determine how vibrant or pale the tone. Another option for a softer pink glow is to add a few drops of red into a white based conditioner for some added sparkle to your overall hair.

Brunettes: The hair that you would like colored must be pre lightened to a pale blonde for maximum results followed by toning with desired color. Warm brunettes should stick to red, yellow and orange tones for best results. Cool brunettes look best in blue, green and purple tones.

Note: Blue tones are tricky with brunettes unless pieces are lifted to the palest shade of blonde with no yellow present they will quickly fade to green. (so if you are looking for a true blue you will need to pay more attention over the other vibrant shades).

Maintenance: Overall maintenance is high when choosing to rock vibrant colors, as they tend to fade after only a few shampoos (approximately 6 washes). Speak to a colorist regarding your options and which tones work best for your lifestyle. Remember pink, yellow and purple tones tend to fade more gracefully into pretty pastels.

And if all else fails and taking the permanent plunge isn’t in the cards there’s always a temporary option for a fun night out.

Hill Country Chicken, NYC

Half the fun of discovering a new restaurant is sharing it with people you know will enjoy it. As Rachael Ray’s resident restaurant guru, here’s an inside look at what I report back to Rach about some of my favorite restaurant finds and food experiences!

From: Kappy

To: RR

Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 11:16pm

Subject: Aaaaand… BACK to Hill Country Chicken!

Hey Rach - I think I told you about the time I went to Hill Country Chicken when it first opened a little while back. I was with some former co-workers from the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. Chef Elizabeth Karmel was there and gave us a serious tasting of the menu, serving up fried chicken (served two ways, skin on and off), chicken strips, a bunch of sides, pies and more. I hadn’t been back in a while, but I’ve really been digging what Elizabeth has been doing and I had a few minutes to kill before my flight back to Chicago. Normally, I’d go for the fried chicken, but I was craving the chicken sandwich, so I went for it. As soon as I ordered it, I felt kind of weird going there and NOT getting actual fried chicken, so I ordered one wing. ☺ I later learned that the chicken sandwich was one of her favorite things on the menu. I also ordered a small side of the cole slaw and a little bit of the pimento mac and cheese, which was a special that day. I skipped the pie for dessert in favor of catching my cab to the airport, but I won’t make that mistake again! Fortunately, she just opened her second Hill Country BBQ in DC recently, so between my travels to New York and DC, I’ll get that pie sooner rather than later!

Hill Country Chicken

1123 Broadway

New York, NY 10010

(212) 257-6446

www.hillcountrychicken.com

And that’s what’s on my plate!

- Kappy

Andrew “Kappy” Kaplan loves food. A professionally trained chef, by day he runs Yum-o!, Rachael Ray’s charity focused on kids and cooking, and keeps special projects running smoothly for her. By night he hops course to course, place to place, all across the country. He’s Rach’s own personal dining guide! You can also follow Kappy on Twitter to see what’s On Kappy’s Plate in real-time!

Congo Bars

I remember having congo bars when I was little so I was psyched to stumble upon this recipe online a few weeks ago. I have made them three times since - a testament to how crazy good they are. They are thick, rich and “toothsome” - thanks to lots of butter and all brown sugar - no white. Call them blondies, call them chocolate chip cookie bars (another favorite recipe - calls for melted butter though which results in a different texture - still good, mind you). For the life of me I cannot track down the origin of the name congo bars - if anyone has knows, please post!

Congo Bars (click here for printable recipe)

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup butter, softened

2 1/4 cups brown sugar

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside. Combine butter and sugar using a mixer until blended. Add eggs, one at a time to sugar mixture, mixing on low in between each addition. Add vanilla and mix. Add flour and mix until combined. Stir in chips.

Coat a 9×13 pan with non-stick spray and spread batter evenly into dish. Bake 30 minutes, then cover top with foil to avoid over-browning. Bake for another 10-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in middle comes out with moist crumbs. You will think they are under-done - they aren’t. Make sure you don’t over bake.

Picky Eaters? Let Them Eat Arroz Con Pollo Balls!

People are always asking me for tricks on getting their kids to eat better. The short answer is, there are no tricks only persistence and patience. I always tell them to lead by example and keep offering and usually things fall into place. There really is no magic trick. Some kids like to eat and some kids don’t. Some will happily eat sashimi with a side in foie gras and others will only eat french fries. if you have always offered them healthy choices and continue to do so, rest assured, their picky eating phase is more about them asserting their independence and less about your failed parenting skills. It’s hard and can be very trying on a parent who really wants their child to eat well but if continue to cook and eat together as a family, they will come around.

There are all sorts of books out there on getting your kids to eat vegetables by hiding them. Not A. Fan. I really feel that hiding vegetables isn’t teaching your kids anything. Also, I don’t know about you, but I barely have the time to make dinner on most nights let alone start pureeing up black beans to sneak into my kids brownies (oh! and um…yuck!). I get the appeal of the books, because as parents all we want to do is protect our children and keep them healthy. And as much as I know about how developmentally appropriate it is for a two and three year old to be a pain in the tuchas about food, it still made/makes me crazy. Rather than resort to hiding veggies, I just stay the course and steer clear of junk food and fast food. I’m a big believer in one dinner for everyone and try and offer meals that everyone can at least tolerate if not love. I have two kids and my three year old still refuses many vegetables but we keep trying and offer him the ones he does love. I make the most out of the things he like eating and hope that with most phases of parenting “This too, shall pass”. Keep calm and cook on.

My oldest son practically lived on rice balls for his entire two’s and that was pretty much OK with me. When the picky eater phase of the terrific twos came, I was just happy he ate anything so who was I to argue, right? Besides, when you think about it there are a lot worse things he could have been demanding. I love rice balls. Who doesn’t right? Their portability and self contained deliciousness make them the best kind of fast food and so darn cute! And you know what? Rice balls make the perfect finger food and kids usually love them!

Being the crazy woman that I am, I decided to make the most out of his obsession by playing around with different flavors and ingredients, packing quite a nutritional punch into that little ball of goodness every chance I got. Spinach, peas, mushrooms, ground beef, chicken, white, rice, brown rice, you name it, I rolled it into a ball and he ate it. Success!

One of my favorite rice ball recipes is my Arroz Con Pollo Balls. They’re packed with yellow rice, chicken and olives—a real meal in and of itself. I like to serve these to company as an appetizer with cocktails or to the family as a light lunch with a side salad. They are incredibly delicious and so unexpected. From the outside you think you know what you are getting into, but as soon as you bite into one of these babies and their beautiful saffron yellow peeks out, you know you are in for something special. Eat up!

Arroz Con Pollo Balls

Makes 12 Rice Balls

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked yellow rice, cooled

3/4 c store bought Roasted Chicken, shredded

1/2 c chopped pimento stuffed green olives

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

2 tbsps chopped cilantro

1/4 c cotillo cheese (or any grated cheese you like)

3/4 cup seasoned breadcrumbs

1 egg beaten with 1 tbsps of water

2 cups vegetable oil (or use your favorite frying oil)

Instructions:

1. Cook your rice according to package directions and allow to cool. ( I used Canilla white rice in a 1-2 ratio and added in a pinch of saffron threads to give it the yellow color).

2. In a medium bowl, combine rice, chicken, olives, salt, pepper, cilantro and cheese. Mush the mixture with your hands until it is stick enough to form balls (if it isn’t coming together add 1-2 tbsps of water to the mixture). Form mixture into 12 equally sized balls.Roll each of the balls into the egg/water mixture and then in the breadcrumbs. Refrigerate balls for 10 minutes.

3. In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, pour in enough oil to fill the pan about 1/3 of the way. Heat over medium heat until it reaches 350 degrees. Fry the rice balls in batches (4 at a time), turning occasionally, until golden, about 4 to 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels and serve.

TIP: If you do not have a frying thermometer, simply sprinkle a little breadcrumbs into the oil. If the breadcrumbs begin to sizzle, then the oil is hot enough.

Christina Stanley-Salerno is a mama, recipe developer, food stylist, photographer and blogger atTakeBackYourTable.com. She loves cooking for and with her family. Life is hectic, but Christina is passionate about mealtime because she believes that family meals are the glue that holds everyone together. Creating simple, quick and healthy meals is her specialty and her trick to keeping the family meal a reality, even on busy weeknights.

Follow her on Twitter @TakeBackTables

Paprika, Pimenton, Smoky, Sweet, help, I’m confused!?!

I didn’t grow up with paprika.  I am Italian, so I never saw it make an appearance except when sprinkled on Deviled Eggs, which I was told was done “for color” but that paprika had no flavor.  This was probably true, because at the time, the only paprika I ever saw was sitting in my mom’s spice cabinet for decades and therefore void of all flavor.  But that didn’t matter, because it was used “for color.”

I continued to ignore this spice, even as I got older and became a very interested and adventurous home cook.  It wasn’t until Rachael used this product one day when we were shooting some web videos:

Pimenton de la Vera, which from what I can tell is named so similar to how wines are authenticated, ensuring that where it says it is from (La Vera) and the style in which it is produced is accurate.  Rachael tends to use the smoked variety, but you can find sweet, hot or bittersweet as well.  The smoked kind really blew me away when I first tried it that I started adding it to everything from soups to mac and cheese to breaded chicken and I finally even made my first Paella.

It’s so good and like nothing I ever had before, especially not in this category.  The process is simple but careful.  Peppers of all varieties are dried or smoked and dried and then slowly ground to a powder.  It’s such a beautiful seasoning that I am addicted and constantly trying new ways to use it.  However, it should be noted that this is a strong essence and does not go with every dish as it could overpower other flavors.

Here are some great websites to purchase Spanish Pimenton:

Hot Paella

La Tienda

So what is Paprika then?

Paprika is really the same thing in concept-dried and ground peppers, but it is generally produced in Hungary.  The two products couldn’t be more different in taste.  Interestingly, both pimenton and paprika, whatever you want to call it, came from Christopher Columbus-he brought it back from the Americas and delivered it to Spain.  From there it traveled all over and found its popular growing home in Hungary and Spain.  Peppers need a hot and dry climate to grow.  Each country has established its own types of peppers to grow and its own ways of grinding, drying and smoking.

Otto’s is a good site for buying Hungarian Paprika

Hungarian paprika is usually categorized as sweet or hot.  I use it for one of my favorite dishes, Chicken Paprikash, which I actually made here using Cornish Hens:

Paprika is also used in the famous Hungarian dish, Goulash.

I figured out that my mother was not actually incorrect when she said that paprika was added to Deviled Eggs for color.  Paprika or Pimenton does not release its flavors until it is heated.  You should therefore heat the paprika in oil when cooking instead of sprinkling it on at the end as you would a condiment.

There are so many ways to experiment with this spice and that’s exactly what you have to do-experiment.  It is like a wine or a cheese-you will find your favorite brands and figure out which flavors do well in which dishes.  This is one spice that could make all the difference in a dish.

Rosemary Maggiore is our Last Minute Lady. A single mom of two kids plus a full time job (she runs this website!) keep her busy and usually pushing things to the last minute. Somehow she manages to keep her cool and her sanity while she enjoys good food, wine, friends and most importantly, family.

For more Ro, see:

Mom Talk

Follow me on Twitter at @lastminutelady