whet your whistle wednesday: grilling

June 25, 2014 by anne fassnacht 8 Comments

Grilling has always been a favorite of mine. I watched my dad do it growing up and when I got out on my own and had space I quickly purchased a grill. Even in California I have reserved grilling for summer. There is something special about the first time you pull something off the grill. Hope you enjoy my ode to summer and grilling this week. This weeks photos are some to the recipes I have made so far this summer.

grilled chicken on a bed of thyme

Since sweet potatoes are such an important staple to the Whole 30 diet I am always up for some different ways to cook them. The grill never crossed my mind. These skewers look extremely enticing. Why do things on skewers always seem more fun?

We love our vegetables and are working on grilling more and handy veggie cooking time chart is going to come in handy.

When we eat at Bengal BBQ in Disneyland the bacon wrapped asparagus are the thing I look forward to the most. So this recipe is definitely hitting the grill this weekend.

These squash ribbons with prosciutto look beautiful. I don’t know how functional but they get me with the beauty and the prosciutto doesn’t hurt.

Lemon salt zucchini spears sound delicious. We are still working on seasoning technique for our veggies and this plastic bag trick looks like a winner.

When you are ready for dessert just throw the whole pineapple right on the coals and serve with ice cream!

cilantro chili lime shrimp

Did you know that you can help make your grill a little more non-stick?

Use the hand test to tell how well done your steak is. No need to guess and wonder with this clever technique.

Not sure if you should cook your food over direct or indirect heat? Lucky you there is an infographic for that. Infographics are like apps there is one for everything.

To make cleaning even easier brush it off right after you take your food off while the grates are still piping hot. If that isn’t enough try a DIY cleaner for your grill.

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what happened to the food network?

June 16, 2014 by anne fassnacht 9 Comments

When I was in college food network was in its infancy and the term celebrity chef was a few years from being part of the daily lexicon. From years of watching the food network I learned a lot, branched out and tried new foods, and became more confident in the kitchen. Some place down the road a lot seems to have changed with celebrity chefs and food programing on television.

The chefs on the food network used to seem so passionate about teaching us about food. Every time I tuned in I felt like I had been personally invited to the kitchen to learn how to make their favorite dish. It was the next best thing to learning in the kitchen with my mom. Alton Brown taught me about the science of food, Bobby Flay taught me how to grill, Emeril taught me to try and enjoy my time in the kitchen and there were other chefs that left an impression on me. Even Rachel Ray, who had less prior cooking experience taught me how to make quick meals.

Now food programming across all channels and even HGTV seem to have succumbed to a sensationalist style that focuses on competition and is more about personality than substance and teaching.

Because of those early chefs I believed that all chefs cared about what people ate. I believed they wouldn’t endorse products they wouldn’t themselves use. When I see Rocco DiSpirito and Carla Hall endorsing Kraft Recipe starters.

Duff’s face on a boxed cake mix, icing and ice cream it makes me come unglued. The box claims it is bakery quality. Nothing about the ingredients in that cake are bakery quality.

I feel strongly that people should learn to eat well and take care of themselves and that should involve the smallest amount of process food you can muster. When the chefs that put themselves out there as people who know good food start talking about how easy Kraft recipe starters it makes teaching people about real food even harder.

If they decide to endorse products I wish they had higher standards. They don’t all have to be Jaime Oliver and champion the cause of people eating better, but it would be nice if they didn’t perpetuate a problem they were at one point actually helping to solve. Getting people who are afraid of the kitchen into the kitchen is the first step to a healthier life and they were good at that once.

Do you think that celebrity chefs have a responsibility to their fans? Should they be helping to educate people on eating properly?

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homemade cake vs box cake showdown

June 9, 2014 by anne fassnacht 5 Comments

Do you use box cake mixes instead of making cakes from scratch? Have you tried one of the many pinterest hacks to make a box cake mix taste more like homemade? I was surprised to see that someone took the time to figure out how to make a box cake taste more like scratch. Why wouldn’t you just make the cake from scratch and skip the box all together?

It got me to thinking what the benefit would be to making a box mix over a scratch cake. It certainly could be that a box cake is faster. Is the time you save worth the quality of cake you get though? It must not be if someone went through the time of figuring out how to make their box cake taste more like scratch. So what is the difference in time? How do the taste of the two cakes differ and would anyone notice?

Here is what I found out from making my own basic yellow cake and a Betty Crocker yellow cake mix and why I think you should just bake your cake from scratch. Just like in the above photo homemade cupcake is on the left and box cake is on the right.

Homemade vs Box ingredients

The box has many ingredients you wouldn’t want in your cake including some I can’t pronounce. The cake from scratch has only the ingredients pictured above. Just what you would want in it and I can, not only pronounce them I can tell you where they came from. Don’t even get me started on the icing ingredients!

Homemade vs Box time

The start time was opening the box and the first ingredient measured on the scratch cake. The end time was after I filled both cupcake trays. No surprise the box cake took less time. I did go the extra step and sifted my flour when I made the scratch cake.

Homemade vs Box rise

In an effort to get accurate results, I used an ice cream scoop to make sure they had the same amount of batter.The had about the similar height above the cupcake liner. The homemade cupcake seemed to fill out the entire liner better than the box cake.

Homemade vs Box color/texture

The homemade cake has a light color that is consistent over every cupcake. It is soft and smooth to the touch. The box cake has some spots that browned more than others. The box cake texture was one of the things I like the least about the box cake. It was sticky. It had a tacky feel like paint that isn’t quite dry yet.

Homemade vs Box crumb

Even with my macro lens it is hard to show the difference in the photo. The biggest difference was the homemade cupcake was fluffier and lighter.

Homemade vs box taste

It is a shame you couldn’t have stopped by and tasted them both. Take my word for it the scratch cake was much better. It just melted in your mouth. The box cake was good but left and odd coating in my mouth.

All the cupcakes went to work. The homemade was the bigger winner. The icing on the homemade version was a seafoam icing. It is a boiled icing made with only 6 ingredients; egg whites, sugar, water, light corn syrup, cream of tartar and vanilla. Using brown sugar instead of white is what makes it a seafoam icing and gives it a caramel flavoring. Boiled icing has a sort of marshmallow consistency that makes it one of my favorites.

The differences weren’t drastic in the finished products but for me and mine the extra minutes are worth it. I think the homemade cake tasted so much lighter and delicious compared to the box cake. Plus I like knowing exactly what is going into my cake. and it feels like more of a labor of love to make it from scratch. Bonus is that when you tell someone you made it from scratch they will inexplicably be awed.

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