NJ SPICE

This would’ve been really good if it had actual liquor in the soaking liquid, as traditional babas do.  But of course you can’t do that at ShopRite, so no dice.

But it still wasn’t bad, and an unusual item to find in a supermarket setting.  Every now and then ShopRite surprises me.

I fell for it because of the Limoncello version that Lidia Bastianich makes, having seen that on PBS more than once. My mouth is watering by the time she and her mother bite into those!

What is it with TV shows about food?  I recently got a digital converter from my cable company (so I could keep viewing a couple of the PBS stations I like on my ancient TV), and it seems I can now get a whole bunch of new channels, including the Food Network. 

After giving up on the Food Network when it got so mass-market commercial a number of years ago, I zeroed right in on it this time since I now write about food.  I figured I should take an interest.

 To my surprise, I find the programming boring.  And repetitious. Very boring and very repetitious.  First of all, between Food Network and a couple other stations, most of the food shows seem to be about cakes.  Making elaborate theme cakes, and very carefully moving them from place to place, is the gist of it, it seems.  Is this a genre?  Make a cake and move it?

And often they show one installment of a series after another for, literally, a whole afternoon or evening.  There are lots and lots of repeats.  No budget for new programming I guess?  No interest in, say, actually teaching people how to cook in their homes?

There also seems to be multiple shows featuring men and women with very light bleached hair, cut in a spiky style.  Are they related?  Is that a food thing?  (I don’t hate the look, by the way.)  Since the cakes and the bleached spiky hair run together, I’m not sure if these are separate shows or one and the same, since I rarely linger more than a moment on this dull (except for the hair) fare.

When it’s not cakes, it’s a cooking contest - Iron Chef, Top Chef, and so forth.  Also not so interesting, as it turns out, especially for an entire evening.  Or sagas about fast food and diners or some talking head’s favorite junk food or snack.  (That would be a lot more compelling if any of those places were around the corner from me and deliivered.)

Are these shows really about food or are they reality TV posing as food shows?  Whatever, this is not interesting programming, and between that and all the repeats, I find it astonishing that Scripps, which owns the Food Network, is actually launching yet another network, the Cooking Channel, soon.  Seriously?  We need more of this? 

Meanwhile, now Comcast tells me it’s a mistake that I get all these channels, and they’re going to pull them if I don’t pony up double my current bill each month.  Be my guest.  Lidia, here I come!

Princeton’s Taste of the Nation (part of a nationwide series with the goal of eradicating childhood hunger) has become our area’s premier hunger-relief fundraiser since it’s inception here in 1992.  I worked on the event myself for a number of years, even chairing it twice, and I think the world of the parent organization, Share Our Strength.  That’s quite a running record for an event that brings together our area’s top chefs and beverage purveyers for a glorious gourmet tasting event attended by hundreds.

100% percent of the ticket price goes to the beneficiary agencies, mostly right in Mercer County and New Jersey.  This year’s Taste takes place on April 26 at the Westin Forrestal, 6:00-9:00pm.  Get a discount (from $85 to $75) with my special code, PRFAITH, when you purchase advance tickets online.

Just think, by then you won’t have to worry about snow and ice!  Think Spring - Think Taste!

Scrumptious!

Here is a photo of one of the arancini (Italian rice balls) I made at home recently, when I was writing an “In The Kitchen” column for the Packet about them. They are starting to show up on menus more and more lately, often as a special.

Instead of the usual knob of Fontina cheese (or ragu with peas), I put a nugget of marinated mozzarella in each one before frying in a deep-sided pot, so there were no splatters on my stovetop.  After the frying oil cooled, I poured it into a plastic container and set it in my garbage. It was not messy, really!

From jerky to a fast food burger at Wendy’s - what’s come over me?  This is what sometimes happens when I’m out doing endless errands on the weekend and didn’t bring lunch with me.  It was way past lunchtime and I had to have something and it had to be fast.  I pulled into a Wendy’s drive thru, which was right where I was at the moment, thinking I could get a fish or chicken sandwich.

But I caved in once I saw this Bacon&Bleu cheese burger on the menu.  It was quite good, and didn’t taste nearly as salty as I feared, although there was plenty of salt in it, as I later learned when I checked the nutrition profile online.  That’s okay.  I don’t do this often!  

(Actually, if I crave a burger nowadays, I usually make one with bison meat at home.  Oddly, I know of two people, close relatives of good friends, who have died from some variation of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - that’s basically “Mad Cow” disease.  Considering the rarity of this disease, this is astonishing!  I’m just sayin’…)

I had been dimly aware that jerky, that chewy mainstay of convenience store and truck stop counters, was having its moment.

With all the foodie interest in cured and artisanal meat products, I guess it was inevitable that people, especially in the Western states,  would start making better versions of jerky, with fewer chemicals, and truer meat taste.

Hunters make their own with elk and venison.  Buffalo and turkey are popular, and there’s even salmon jerky.  (Can pemmican be far behind?)

So I couldn’t resist taking the folks at Perky Jerky up on their offer of free samples of their caffeinated beef jerky, especially when I read the amusing story behind the product:

“The story, like most good stories, begins with two jerks in a ski lodge. After a long, hard night of energy-drink-cocktail-fueled libation, these jerks settled in while the winter storm raged outside. The next morning they awoke, loaded up their gear, and headed out to the mountain. Amongst this gear was an open bag of peppered beef jerky, which had, unfortunately been drenched in some of the energy drink that had been carelessly spilled the night before. On the first lift up, it made no difference: to these jerks, jerky was the only breakfast they needed, altered or not. Much to their delight, the jerky had retained it’s original flavor, but had been made more tender by the accident. What’s more, as they floated their way down the mountain through bottomless powder, they realized they’d been given an extra boost - the jerky had taken on some of the pep of the energy drink. On the next lift ride up, the greatest innovation in jerky since cracked pepper was born.”

(I wasn’t surprised to be told the ski lodge in the story was in Aspen, where I lived for many years.) 

Perky Jerky contains the energy-enhancing herb guarana and has about 60 milligrams of caffeine per 1 ounce serving, about the same as an energy drink and, to my surprise, less than my morning mug of dark drip-brewed coffee.  It also contains (in part), beef, soy sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, garlic powder, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.  It is not at all the tough, overly salty, leather product of yore.  Perky Jerky - what a hoot!

A terrible start for the Chinese New Year, a year of the tiger, which is said to be an inauspicious year of natural disasters.  First Haiti (right before the lunar new year), and now Chile.  (Makes our blizzards pale in comparison, right?) 

People are already lining up for food, as in the Reuters photo of a line outside a bakery here.  If you’d like to donate, check out this Google site or the Huffington Post site, and pick a way that suits you.  For the price of a few dinners here, you can provide for many more badly needed meals or other supplies in Chile.  And the vinyards and winerys, those wonderful wines, I wonder how they fared?

On March 3, 7:00pm, Barnes & Noble Princeton hosts chef Rocco DiSpirito in an author discussion & signing event with his new cookbook, “Now Eat This!: 150 of America’s Favorite Comfort Foods, All Under 350 Calories.”

Already a highly-rated chef, DiSpirito catapulted to television fame in 2004 with his NBC reality television series “The Restaurant,” which followed him and his mother during the the opening of their restaurant, Rocco’s 22nd Street.  He crashed and burned with that endeavor (a little fame goes a long way, right?), but has gone on to a become a regular on numerous TV shows, including a stint on “Dancing With the Stars.” A man of many talents!

My friends and I are on a cassoulet bender!  The one here is from One 53 Restaurant in Rocky HIll (one of my favorite places), and was served in lovely crockery from JohnShedd Designs, just down the street from the restaurant. 

The cassoulet contains white beans, pork, smoked pork, pancetta, duck confit and sausages.  It was a fairly wet version (not soupy, though), which kept it from being too heavy.  It was, as their website claims, delicious!

The sprinkling of breacrumbs on top is de riguer, although these don’t appear to be baked on, or turned uner during baking, as is the traditional custom.  (I described another version of this classic French dish in my February 19 review of Sophie’s Bistro for the Packet.)

Bottled wine is 25% off at One 53 Mondays-Wednesdays, and they have lots of special beverage tasting events which regularly sell out.  So if you’ve got cabin fever (don’t we all by now?), check the website for upcoming events soon.

My brother sent me this photo of a salmon salad he and his wife enjoyed at home recently.  It looks spectacular, doesn’t it?!

He marinated the fish while they were off at church, using low sodium teriyaki and Chef Paul’s Seafood Magic, and cooked it when they came home, plopping it right over the greens, blue cheese, cherry tomatoes and corn (just wait until we have local tomatoes and corn again!).  The juices from the salmon became dressing for the salad, as they seeped down through the greens.  (Our mother also loved her fish cozied up to her salad.)

Be still my heart, this is one amazing dish!  Nice china too, although not, as my brother mischievously commented, quite the same as the Royal Doulton painted with periwinkles that was Hyacinth Bucket’’s pride and joy on Keeping Up Appearances.  Er, Bouquet, I meant Bouquet!  (Hyacinth’s pattern was actually called Braganza.)