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Category Archives: Kook Cooks

Thoughts on food. More tips at Pooh-bah Rules, over yonder.

Gazpacho Summer Soup

Friday, July 31, 2009

Every summer growing up in Fort Smith, Mom would make Summer Soup a few times. The recipe was from her best friend Isabel, and when we ate at her house, she’d also have Summer Soup. (Isabel also served her own dill pickles, the world’s best.) That recipe, at bottom, will take you back to the [...]

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You Say Ganouj, I Say Ghanouj

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Or baba ganoush or baba ghanoush. Baba ganouj is a first cousin to hummus dip (mashed spicy chickpeas), but with eggplant as the base. For shmearing on pita wedges or vegetable sticks. Mollie Katzen in Still Life With Menu likes it as a pasta sauce.
Any kind of eggplant works; the common jumbo globe has the [...]

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Granola, Better Homemade

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Using two cookbooks for one oft-used recipe, mainly the penciled notes in each, finally got old. It’s time to write it out. Is it mine, or theirs (see footnote)? A now-retired newspaper food editor once told me not to worry: “At conferences, we all agree, if you change more than the amounts of salt and [...]

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Irish-style Soda Bread

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Traditional Irish soda bread consists just of flour, buttermilk, salt and baking soda. Americans added sugar, raisins and sometimes caraway seed. Soda bread gets stale in a day and crumbles when you try to slice it. The New York Times in March 2007 discussed this here , with an improved recipe here, which makes a [...]

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