June 24 - Stuff to read, do and devour

Ooooofff. Been a minute. Had a long list going, but I've pared it down for ya'll because your time is valuable. But we all need distractions. Here are some of my favorite recent ones:

Reading

Road Tripping with Diana Kennedy. What a neat lady. Now I need to go on a road trip to San Antonio to visit her collection! And I also just found out there's a new documentary about her. I need to track that down...

The artistry of fruit stickers. As a graphic designer for a grocery store chain... I need to pay more attention to my fruits! Although these are mostly found in London. I can follow the instagram, at least.

My mother was the one who found Jesus in a tortilla. What it's like to grow up with a famous tortilla. Very cool article from a whole series of reads about Mexican food in America from Eater.

This new online food magazine Crust is great so far!

My Great Great Grandmother's Recipe Book. Love this so much. And also reminds me I have a bunch of my Nonna's recipe I need to scan and do something with...

25 Beers to Try before You Die. I've tried 8! Not bad. Shout out to TWO St. Louis breweries that made the list (and the deserve it!), Perennial and Side Project!

Traveling

We recently took a trip to Milwaukee to see the legendary George Clinton and Parliament Funk! (And Fishbone!) We did one night in Milwaukee then went to Chicago for a couple nights. Here are some culinary highlights of our trip.

In Milwaukee, we had a lovely brunch at Honeypie cafe. Admittedly we went there for the t-shirts and the pie (see below), but the biscuit bread pudding was worth a visit, also! We discovered that they don't sell the tees, which we saw on their Instagram feed, at the cafe itself. When we explained that we were out of town, our waitress went out of her way to phone the bake shop, which was down the street and not open to the public, to have them reserve a couple shirts for us to pick up! Between that customer service and the heavenly key lime coconut pie, we will be loyal patrons whenever we are back in Milwaukee!

The shirt I was hell-bent on getting from Honeypie. Photo via their IG

Key Lime Coconut Cream Pie at Honeypie in Milwaukee, WI.

In Chicago, we mostly visited some of our favorites. We had our favorite Filipino breakfast at Uncle Mike's Place.

If you are not familiar with Filipino breakfast, it's garlic fried rice (made with granulated garlic not fresh), a meat of choice (I went with Tocino) and fried eggs. At Uncle Mike's place you get a bowl of hot arroz caldo (chicken rice porridge) and ends with Champurado, a chocolate sweet rice dish.

We also hit up Jibaritos Y Mas for Jibaritos. A Jibarito is a sandwich specific to Chicago Puerto Ricans. It's 2 flattened, fried plantains that act as bread, filled with a choice of meat (traditional favorite is steak) and lettuce and tomatoes and cheese. It's topped here with minced garlic. You need to try one, and Jibaritos Y Mas is the place to go.

A first for me was the OTHER Chicago style pizza, the one locals actually eat regularly, the thin crust pub pizza. We got ours at Marcello's Father & Sons restaurant. It was great, the kind of pizza you gotta eat hot, right there at the restaurant, so shareable. Also we got giardiniera on one of ours and my pizza life is changed.

InstAdoring

@pepperdelightblog is a St. Louis-based blogger and photographer whom I should probably hang out with. Her gorgeous photos make me so hungry.

@pepperdelightblog on Instagram

@thejamlab is another blog with stunning photos of foods I want to eat. I've pinned many of her recipes. 

@thejamlab on Instagram

Making

It's garlic scape season! My favorite! I've made a batch of pesto and added small pieces to stir fries. I just love the flavor and also how pretty they are!

I grew these!

I am all about Mike's Hot Honey right now. Always on the lookout for dishes to finish it with. If you aren't aware, it's honey infused with chilis. It is wonderful on pizza and anything that could benefit from a sweet and spicy kick. I topped cottage cheese with grilled pineapple and drizzled some hot honey on it all, and honeyyyyyy it was good.

From now on when I'm craving Saag Paneer but don't need all that cheese, I'm gonna make Simply Recipes' pressure cooker Saag Tofu. Easy to make and very satisfying to eat, both in flavor and bulk. I served it with 2-ingredient Naan (see my post about my love for 2-ingredient dough).

That's it for this week! Hopefully I'll update sooner next time. Until then...keep cookin'!

May 10 - Interesting, pinteresting, and yummy

Craving/Pinning:

Thousand-Layer Chocolate Chip Cookies. A Thousand YES PLZes. Wow.

Photo: Leite's Culinaria

Celery and Chickpea Soup with Chile Garlic Oil .This just seems like an interesting, satisfying spring soup. Bonus: budget friendly! 

Photo: Bon Appetit

Nik Sharma's Egg Curry. I love eggs in spicy sauce. I just love eggs, okay. I really need to get Nik's book, Season. 

Photo: San Fransisco Chronicle

Reading:

-The United States of Mexican Food, an exhaustive guide to regional US Mexican cuisines, from Eater. I am still working my way through. Will travel for tacos.

-Speaking of traveling for food, love this little anecdote about a writer and her son on a quest to find all the best croissants in San Fransisco. That's my kind of vacation!

-The illustrious Beard Awards happened earlier this week. Here are all the media/cookbook/journalist winners. So much reading I need to do!

-I did just finish reading The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty. I'll probably write more about it when I do another book roundup post (like this, or this). Until then, you should check it out. Important and informative work.

-Soy Sauce Buying Guide. We always have Kikkoman and Silver Swan in our pantry. I'd like to play more with dark soy sauce and the sweet soy sauce she mentions.

Cooking/Eating:

I was invited to a cookbook club dinner party where everyone was to cook from Samin Nosrat's Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat cookbook. Swoon! Well, it ended up getting postponed, but I made this Sicilian Chicken Salad from it. You'll have to get the book if you want the recipe, but I'll tell you had fennel and currants and a good hit of lemon in it and it was the best chicken salad I've ever tasted. My favorite takeaway from the recipe was that she has you steep the raw onions in red wine vinegar before adding them, to mellow out the bite.



I finally made it to Sultan, a newer Turkish/Middle Eastern restaurant in town (St. Louis if you're new here). I had tasted my husband's leftovers from one of his visits, and they were tasty. Of course experiencing the food fresh was better. I am smitten. We started with the Turkish style fattoush, which had chick peas and roasted eggplant salad over fried pita chips, topped with cucumber yogurt, pomegranate and za'atar.

For our entrees we got the Sultan Pilau, a mixture of lamb, basmati rice, almonds, raisins and chick peas in a gorgeous Kurdish pastry crust. So much flavor, and a fun eating experience. 

We also got the Ali Naza Kabob, a creamy, smokey eggplant spread topped with beef skewers served with a giant pita bread. That was our surprise favorite of the night. So far everything we've tried here is great. You should go.

That's all for this week. Happy reading/eating/daydreaming!