It's Almost That Time! So, Make Your Own Crust and Don't Screw-up the Mashed Potatoes

Those daunting holiday dinners are just around the corner, and while I'm unfortunately still in "can't film any new clips" mode for a few more days, I thought I would post some reruns that may be of use this time of the year. No, I'm not doing a turkey demo. That's the easiest part of the meal. The Food Network's army of talking heads will be doing every recipe and technique ever invented, ad nauseum, for the next few weeks. Not to mention the 8 million how-to-cook-the-perfect-turkey web pages.

So, I'm showing you some of the "harder" things. How to make a simple piecrust, my technique for perfect mashed potatoes, and a few vegetable sides to serve instead of the canned green beans with the canned fried onions. Anyway, here are some links to check out before it's too late:

Home-made Pie Crust: It's NOT that hard.
Mashed Potatoes: Please don't serve gluey potatoes
Roast Sweet Potatoes: So easy, so delicioius
Herb Potato Wedges: Tired of mashed? Check out this old, but delicious clip
Broccoli Gratin: Don't even try to count the calories
Spaghetti Squash: Healthy can be tasty!
Brussel Sprouts: Stop making that face
Stuffed Squash: An excuse to eat more goat cheese
5-Spice Carrots: 5 times better than 1-spice carrots

Enjoy! Lastly, I'm sorry if I don't reply to your comments instantly. It just means I've passed out for a few minutes and will get back to you as soon I come to.
photocredit (c) purpleslog

WANTED: American Regional Recipes - Don't do it for me, do it for your country!

I'm just about finished with my American Foods site for About.com and I need some help. I'm now trying to gather as many regional American recipes as I can. I have lots of the old standard regional recipes, such as a Cobb salad for California cuisine region, and Johnnycakes for New England, so what I am hoping for from you, my loyal readers/viewers, are lots of interesting local recipes and/or specialties from your hometowns. I know just about every community around the country has one or two unique "local favorites" that would be interesting to share with the rest of the country (and world). The classic example of this would be something like Buffalo Chicken Wings, which started out as a very localized, Western New York oddity. By the way, to all my international visitors, unfortunately I can only use recipes and dishes developed in America.

So, if you have a recipe you can send me please click this link and email me the text. The preferred format would be a MS Word document attachment, but it's fine if you just put it in the email body text. If there is a story that goes along with the recipe, that would be even better (even if you have to make one up). Please let me know where this recipe is from (what part of the country) and include your full name if you want the recipe credited to you. I can only accept "your" recipes, I can’t use anything you just copy and paste from a website. Thanks in advance for anything you would be able to send me, and anything that makes the site will feature you as the recipes creator and you can brag to all you friends that you are now a published culinary author!

photo credit: (c) Flickr user Rick

Escargot Bourguignon – My Slowest Video Recipe Ever

This video, produced for About.com, features snails cooked in the traditional style of the Burgundy region of France. Do I like snails? No. Do I like Escargot Bourguignon? Yes, because the escargot are drowning in copious amounts of garlic and parsley butter. Do I think that most of the viewers will make this recipe? No. Do I think that some viewers that always wanted to try them will now go for it? Maybe. Do I think this is the most question marks every to appear in the first paragraph of one of my posts? Yes. Should I stop writing like this? Yes.

This is the classic French method for preparing the slow-moving (which makes them easy to run down) delicacy. While it is true these are basically common garden snails, the ones you buy canned, imported from France, are especially plump and flavorful. I believe they are fattened on a special diet of foie gras and truffles before meeting their fate, but I’m not positive about that part. Anyway, this holiday season, when you’re in that fancy gourmet shop buying that gift basket for the person that you can never figure out what to give, pick up a can of snails, some tiny forks, and a very large bottle of wine …and enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 stick of softened butter
1 tbsp minced shallots
1 1/2 tbsp minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped parsley
black pepper to taste
salt to taste, I used about 1/2 tsp
*this is enough for about 32 snails

I Am American Food! …and Other Blog Updates

I did it! I'm just not sure what "it" is yet. I graduated from About's guide program and will now be the guide for the new "American Food" site. I still have to complete a certain amount of content before it goes live in a week or so. Once it does go live, I will have a better idea of how the balance between the two sites will work. As those of you that visit About.com's sites, all the guides have regularly updated blogs. So, eventually you will be able to get your daily-recommended amount of Chef John from two sources.

Good News, Bad News

The bad news first; for the next week or so, I will pretty much will be working exclusively on finishing the American Foods site. I will also be filming some video clips for About, but for the near future no "Food Wishes only" clips. I will, of course, post the About clips I've already done for them as soon as they go live (like the Tuna al Tonno). I will be posting an Escargot video that just aired. Mmm…. snails, I mean, mmm… garlic butter!

The goods news is hopefully the income from the About site, along with the clips I produce for them, will be enough to keep this old chef out of a real job in a professional kitchen (60 hour work week = no blogging), and will allow me to continue to grow and expand this site, and it's foodie resources. Once the About site is build, it's just a matter of maintaining it, and I will be able to get back to a normal schedule, except now I will be able to pay my bills with money, instead of ravioli!

Culinary School Update

Yes, I still plan on putting all the large corporate culinary school out of business. Unless, of course they make me a huge offer to buy my site. I am working with someone right now in determining whether the course should be done as online classes, or as a collection of DVDs. As far as a time frame, I don't expect to have anything available until April 08. This also is related to the newly found income sources, as I will be able to afford to take off some time and just work on the culinary course, as I have done in acquiring the About gig(s).

And the Winner is….Me!

For the second consecutive month I have won the coveted iFoods.tv "Member of the Month" competition! I didn't announce anything the first time I won (I wanted to make sure it wasn't a fluke), but now that I've won two months in a row, I'm going to start rubbing the other competitors faces in it! If you want to check out the site,click this link. It's run by Niall Harbison, one of Ireland's best chefs, and they award points for uploading video clips and photos, etc. Quite frankly, I have crushed the field thus far.

Googlicious

I would like to thank Google, and their army of robots (that will eventually take over the world, and enslave us all) for raising my page rank to a 5 out of 10!! No, I don't really know what that means either, but hey, 5 is higher than 4, right? If any web-marketer techno geeks care to explain the ranking to us normal folk, please do.

Flagcake photo credit: Flickr user Owwee