Hey everyone, I have been spending more time over at Arkansasgrown.com these days. I am trying to find all of the cool stuff produced in Arkansas. I have started looking on Etsy to find the coolest Arkansas products.
If you know of any please let me know!
I am a Hectic Gourmet, I like the idea of cooking amazing things with fresh ingredients but I never have the time to shop for what I want.
Most of my regulars know how much I love this place, Gilt Taste, to get my grub on with some killer foods. Now I am glad to have Hectic Gourmet, to let me get the stuff I need to cook this great stuff.
Yoyoyo, So I started working last week for a company called Acumen Brands. They do ecommerce…..with ROBOTS!
Acumen Brands KIVA Systems Launch from Josh Clemence on Vimeo.
I love kitchen gadgets, they are so novel and fun to play with for 20 minutes before you shove them in a drawer. Like the garlic peeler! Oh cool a little tube that peels my garlic for me! I peel garlic all the time…wait…no i dont. what a piece of crap!
Here are some gadgets that you will actually use
1) okokok this is not actually a gadget but it is a badass knife that would even make “The Butcher” jealous, this thing is sick!
sweet
2) i eat a lot of pizza so this is obvious, its also compact and easy to store and it just works
i eat pizza....a lot
3) i grill a lot of fish, burgers, steaks, and small rodents mainly. so this thing is great for flippin a squirrel or two hamburgers.
squirrel or burger flipper
4) i like to cook and jam at the same time, lately i have been diggin on some soul music and some old gospel so this has been fitting addition in our kitchen
"im all shook up"
If you drink while you cook like me and my girlfriend do, then these glasses are great for you. Plastic wine glasses, now all we need are plastic scotch glasses. For when uptown tastes meet the suburban classless.
to drink with
Today is Batille Day! I am celebrating by eating a Croque Monsieur or maybe a Croque Madame we will see. It’s simply a frenchie version of a ham & cheese sandwich.
Here is the recipe for a Croque Madame, the only difference is the fried egg
To assemble the sandwiches:
Set half of the slices of bread buttered side down, and cover them with the cheese slices, folding them back in toward the middle if they extend past the edges of the bread. Place 3 or 4 slices of the ham in an even layer over the cheese, and place the top slice of bread over the ham, buttered side up.
Grill the sandwiches in a two-sided grill or on a heavy-bottomed pan, using clarified butter and turning once. Place on serving plates.
To fry the eggs:
Crack two eggs into two separate bowls to check that the yolks aren’t broken. In 2 6-inch non-stick skillets, melt half of the butter over medium-high heat, until it starts to bubble. Pour 1 egg into each pan, being careful not to break the yolks. Add a teaspoon of water to each pan, sprinkle the eggs with fleur de sel, and cover the pans with lids. Cook the eggs for about 3 minutes for a soft-cooked egg and 5-6 minutes if you like your eggs firm. Wipe out the skillets, and fry the other 2 eggs in the remaining butter in the same manner. Center a fried egg over each of the grilled sandwiches and sprinkle with pepper.
This is exactly what mine looked like!
Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Croque-Madame-107184#ixzz1S7XRZ262
Ripped this off of Chowhound.com, the community associated with Chow.com. Pretty funny and telling list. (I think #1 is soft, and anyone who has been to a good soul food restaurant would agree!)
1. The person has long acrylic manicured nails: “Not only do I not believe that any culinary school worth its salt would allow a student to attend classes sporting long/fake nails,” saysinaplasticcup. “I also think that (sanitary issues aside), there is a sort of preciousness to the maintenance of those nails that might very well keep a person from becoming a GREAT cook.”
2. They’ve got a pantry filled with iffy ingredients: “Too many cans of processed ___,” sums upcaviar_and_chitlins. “If I look into a pantry, and see lots of cream o’ crap soup, powdered sauce mixes and the like, few good (and dated) spices, and little to no good veg in the ‘fridge, then I’m pretty sure dinner isn’t going to be very good.” A bad refrigerator is equally ominous, saysgivemecarbs, bemoaning the sight of the “pre-grated Parmesan cheese of doom,” while others quail at the sight of ReaLemon and bottled garlic.
3. Their kitchen’s too clean, with, as givemecarbs says, “pristine state-of-the-art appliances that just scream ‘don’t mess me up.’” An unused oven is another bad sign. “I went to a friend’s for a potluck and turned her range on to heat my quiches and the range instructions (still in their plastic) began to burn,” says smartie. “About 10 minutes later there was a funny smell of burning plastic and my friend said ‘oh no we don’t use the oven.’”
4. They cling to a belief that any one ingredient, such as bacon, truffle oil, or Sriracha, makes any dish better. tatamagouche, who actually enjoys both truffles and truffle oil, complains that “ubiquity devalues it. Besides, half the time, people use too much or too little truffle oil.” Samuelinthekitchencalls Sriracha “red hipster sauce. Like hipsters, the belief that Siracha improves everything is about 40 percent true and 60 percent somebody tedious saying it.”
5. They don’t salt their food. “As if that’s such a virtue,” sneers Cakegirl. “Food without ANY salt equals food without flavor. Also, a lot of people say ‘I never cook with salt,’ not realizing that they cook with a lot of processed foods (canned tomatoes, condiments, etc.) that contain plenty of salt.”
6. The names Sandra Lee or Rachael Ray come up. “I see a lot of cooks who … watch a lot of TV, make no effort at research beyond that, order the same handful of things every time they eat out, and dub themselves a master chef,” says cowboyardee. “So fair or unfair, this is the truth—if I discuss food with someone for the first time and they voluntarily—without prompting—bring up Rachael Ray or another TV host in the first minute, I assume they’re one of the types you described. Until proven otherwise. It’s not 100% accurate. But as a rule of thumb, it works.”
7. They’ve got dull knives and poor knife skills. “Especially if someone’s been cooking for many years, if there’s not a certain fluency to their knife work, I do wonder why they wouldn’t shore up on a skill that’s such a big part of the process,” says inaplasticcup.
8. Their kitchen has a dearth of local ingredients. “If a cook lives in an area with a great ingredient but has never cooked with it, I tend to wonder how they think about their food and cooking,” saysJeremyEG. “I know a cook who lives on the coast of Maine who has never cooked with shellfish. Not for religious or health reasons but because they don’t belong in her special ‘pineapple and chicken’ recipe.”
9. They show a lack of discernment between different styles of the same ingredient, e.g., someone claims they “can’t tell the difference” between full-fat yogurt and nonfat, or margarine and butter. “Not that there isn’t a place for some of those products, but if you can’t tell the difference, then I’d find your cooking abilities suspect,” says Ruth Lafler.
10. They make well-done steaks. Need we say more?
Just missed making the list: They have tons of (suspect) “food allergies,” they’re light beer drinkers, they’re followers of Hungry Girl, they’ve got a refrigerator full of saved ketchup and soy sauce packets, and/or they’ve got a spice rack with dusty jars of herb and spice blends on it.
“And then people are like..Wow! Those are some fuckin fancy pancakes!”
“I like drinking cider because its like beer for kids”
In a follow up to the coolest series that started with ‘coolest bbq grills‘ – Here is the next segment, Coolest Kitchens.
fry some bacon, then take a dip!
sleek, modern, expensive
creative castle kitchen
This is allegedly Tracy Morgan's Kitchen
This is my favorite, Heather's (Winona Ryder) kitchen
seriously wtf?
