Monthly Archives: January 2010

Sunflower Oil

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As mentioned in a previous blog post, we enjoy experimenting with varying flavors of oil. They can add a subtle taste to a plate, giving the same old recipe a new kick. We recently tried Sunflower Oil, which is a very light oil much like Grape Seed Oil.

Sunflower Oil

Unlike Grape Seed Oil, you cannot cook it at high temperatures, so make sure to leave the oil over medium heat to avoid burning it. It has a slightly seedy flavor that really only comes through if you are looking for it, so like Grape Seed Oil it is a good substitute for vegetable oil when you need a neutral oil to cook with. We cooked some pirogi with it, and it gave it a nice light golden outside with just a hint of sunflower seed taste, which complemented the pirogi nicely.

We are also experimenting with infusing our own oil. We received an oil spritzer for Christmas as a gift, and so we put in some regular Olive Oil with some fresh Marjoram leaves.

Marjoram Oil

After a couple of days, the marjoram flavor has infused nicely into the oil, giving it a nice light herbal flavor. We cooked some chicken with it last night, and we noticed the marjoram flavor without us having to bust out the spice bottle.

There are plenty of other oils out there to try (personally I want to try Hazelnut Oil) so if you have tried any unusual or delicious ones, please let us know!

–Cory

Pistou

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Quite a few years ago, I found a recipe for a soup called Pistou. I don’t recall if it was from a magazine or some newspaper or what, but I wrote it down and kept it in my recipe books ever since. The funny thing about this is that I believe it was long enough ago that I wouldn’t have liked many of the ingredients in this soup, as it is wholly comprised of vegetables (plus some vegetable stock and some tiny soup pasta), and my palate was not yet ready for so many veggies in one dish. So, for some reason, I decided it sounded cool (probably because it has a bouquet garni) and wrote it down. Since we received a large stock pot for Christmas, and this was the oldest soup recipe I had that I had never tried making, we bought the ingredients and gave it a whirl.

What is Pistou?

Teriyaki Sauce

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We all know that teriyaki sauce is delicious, but not many people know that it is actually also very easy to make. It involves only a few ingredients: soy sauce, garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, some water, and some sake (if you have it). I don’t have a recipe for you that involves precise measurements simply because I did not make it that way, and because I believe that this is one recipe which benefits from each chef’s own preference for taste. If you don’t like the saltiness of teriyaki, add more water than soy sauce – it will just be thin sauce. Or, if you don’t like garlic that much, only add a tiny bit or even none at all! I’m not saying that subtracting these ingredients completely will give you an authentic teriyaki flavor, but it will give a teriyaki kick to whatever you’re making. This being said, I made a total of about 3 cups of sauce, part of which I stored for later:

and part of which we cooked thin strips of beef in to make our own version of beef teriyaki.

Read on!

Baked Mac and Cheese

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Traditionally when we made Mac and Cheese (a favorite in this household), we would use Velveeta cheese for the creamy base, and add in other cheeses to give it a cheese flavor that’s not…Velveeta. More recently, we have discovered that using a roux makes them even more creamy and delicious, and we don’t have to use Velveeta. Combined with baking, it becomes absolutely amazing.

Click for more cheesy goodness