Oh, my God, my husband’s bringing home the boys! (Make THEM bring the beer, meanwhile….)
Always keep a couple of pounds of edamame in the freezer. With some shoyu, hoisin, chili sauce, garlic, Hawaiian salt, you can make stir-fry the boiled soybeans for a lightning fast pupu.
Always keep tortillas on hand. Cut into quarters. Spray with nonstick spray. Sprinkle very lightly with salt and chili powder. Bake at 375 degrees until crisp.
If you’ve got a square of tofu, drain, place on a serving plate, pour ko chu jang (Korean hot chili paste) or kim chee juice over or scatter chopped kim chee over. Serve with toothpicks.
Pantry essentials for quick pupu: A tub of almonds or whole mac nuts in the freezer. A bottle of olives in the pantry. Sharp cheese to cut into chunks. Crackers. Cans of tuna (drain and make a tuna spread; if you’ve got lemons or limes, squeeze juice over and stir in finely grated rind of lemon or lime). Sun-dried tomatoes in oil. Capers.
If you’ve got a baguette or a loaf of crusty country-style bread on hand, slice, brush lightly with olive oil, sprinkle with finely chopped garlic, throw some sundried tomatoes and capers in a mini food processor or chop fine, scatter over bread and bake at 375 until crisp and heated through.
There’s no dessert!
Keep a pound cake in the freezer and some kind of dessert sauce (chocolate or caramel) in the fridge. Or keep a Hawaiian Happy Cake in the freezer; slice thinly, toast, serve with a dollop of ice cream (www.happycake.com).
Dried fruit keeps for a long time. Serve a bowl of raisins and nuts or scatter them over ice cream. Dip dried apricots in microwave-melted chocolate; chill until firm.
Keep a tub of whipped topping in the freezer and a few plain chocolate Hershey bars in the fridge. While the whipped topping is defrosting gently in the microwave, crush whatever cookies you have on hand; stir them and chopped or grated chocolate into the softened whipped topping and serve in little cups. Or make a quick-as-a-blink mousse: Defrost the whipped topping. Melt a bar of chocolate (anykine). Stir together (the whipped topping MUST be completely defrosted or the chocolate will sieze) in a bowl with a few drops of whatever liqueur you’ve got (or skip this step). Serve. Look smug.
Would you believe my computer crashed some weeks ago and I lost my admin password? How about the dog ate my homework? No, really, I did lose my computer. Four words for you from my excruciating experience of losing two years’ worth of work and […]
Can a person hold down a part-time job, freelance for a half-dozen writing/editing clients, work on a cookbook, engage in volunteer projects aid their ailing mother and keep up a household AND a blog? If that person is me, apparently not! It’s been such a […]
I love custom-made pizzas and I love my friend Elizabeth. I especially love it when the two are in the same room. I owe a lot to Elizabeth, including a recipe for made-from-scratch pizza that I’ve been playing with. But first, I just have to […]
I wish I could show you the meal I made tonight when my husband’s new BFF and his wife came to dinner. But, well, we did it again: ate before shooting. Ex cept for one dish, the onigiri (musubi rice balls) above. For some reason—I […]
Husband has rescued one of the two pots that got chewing gummed in the previous blog about using chico fruit. I found the chico pix and am mounting a couple so you can see it. Since the latex release didn’t happen when I used the […]
Somehow, I’ve been roped into doing a cooking demo at Whole Foods Kailua in August (date pending) featuring tropical fruit. My good friend Ken Love is in charge of a project to encourage grocery stores to stock some of the more exotic tropical fruit that’s […]
God was thinking the day He made the banana. To me, it’s the perfect fruit: no seed, peeling is easy, you don’t even need a knife, they’re sweet without being cloying and you can find them everywhere. You ever met anyone who objects to banana? […]
Canned goods have never played much of a place in my pantry since I began a love affair with “gourmet cooking,” in the ’70s. “Exotics,” yes — sardines, smoked oysters, Red Devil liver paste, water chestnuts until I discovered fresh ones in Seattle’s International District […]
When life gives you lemons, throw ’em at somebody. That’s kinda how I’m feeling right now. Or maybe, when life gives you lemons, let somebody else make you lemonade. And serve it to you. So cold it’s sweating. Preferably alongside the pool at a Four […]
Hurray! No pictures agian, kala mai, but just to let you know that last night, Friday, a book I edited (and, believe me, the one-word title editor doesn’t cover it; cat herdeer would be much more accurate), won the cookbook diviion of the Hawaii Publishers […]
