Friday, April 29, 2005

Micro-Bleah

If I are ever tempted to suggest a beer to Foodgoat based solely its mildly interesting name, Foodgoat will no doubt remind me of North Coast Brewery Rasputin Beer.


If I am inclined to suggest a beer to Foodgoat based on its higher cost (imagining, perhaps, higher quality and elevated taste), he will remind me of Bell's Expedition Stout.


If I have the idea of suggesting any microbrew to Foodgoat, just stop me right there, because he hasn't liked any of them.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Is My Blog Burning #14: Hot Orange on Orange Action!!

This edition of the fine meme Is My Blog Burning? features the meals and dishes celebrating the lovely color of Orange. Food is an experience of all the senses; taste - sound - scent - touch - and yes, sight. Can anyone deny that a good-lookin' dish adds to pleasure of eating? So this round highlights the visual quality of food. While food comes in the whole spectrum of lovely color, we are looking at orange, that pleasant range that blends from reds into yellows, shades that can bring to mind everything from cool autumn leaves to hot tropical juiciness.

I've been incredibly impressed with the range of tasties posted thus far. Color me ... impressed!

Let's go on to the visual feast!

Michelle from Stubborn like a mule started us off with Lime and Paprika Chicken with Tomato Chilli jam and Feta, a delicious sounding dish using more than one orange ingredient.

Sarah of Cooking with the Headhunter went beyond the traditional orange-y foods with Puerco Pibil to get the orange color from a plethora of Mexican spices. So she didn't like it. It certainly looks pretty.

Lisa, the Kitchen Chick, came up with Simple Carrot Halwa, an Indian sweet, when a previous attempt came up yellow.

The first attempt of Tanvi of From the Pantry, on the other hand, so was good it was eaten before it could be recorded. Fortunately, the Orange Risotto was the next try.

Barbara of Winos & Foodies salvaged a Sugar High Friday attempt to create Persimmons in Spice Syrup.

Jenni, of Pertelote, transforms an autumn standard into a spring dish with Pumpkin soup with spring herb butter.

Caroline of 18thC Cuisine gives us the retro Oranges Glazed with Caramel.

Lynn of To Short Term Memories gives us Sweet Potato Oranges , which combines an orange ingredient with actual orange fruits.

Nic of bakingsheet relives a childhood classic by recreating the Orange Julius.

Winne from Hodge Pode Kitchen went sweet with a not-from-a-box version of Mango Pudding.

Sam from Becks & Posh also mined a memory of a favorite restaurant to recreate Shrikhand, a Indian dessert with a touch of saffron.

Sigrid of il cavoletto di bruxelles, gives us (in both Italian and English!) multiple orange ingredients in Savoury carrots and ginger flan with tangerine sauce.

Mrs D & Chopper Dave from Belly-Timber gave us ... Cheetos? Oh wait, they're just kidding. They went above and beyond with the too-pretty-to-eat orange-checkered, weaved ravioli.

Christine of the new blog Vegetablog comes at orange from the sides: combining red peppers and yellow peppers for a roasted pepper soup.

You might think Ana at Pumpkin Pie Bungalow would go with pumpkin pie, but no: she made a Torta de Laranja, an orange-based rolled pudding with the name cutely translated to Orange Roly-Poly.

Christine of I like to do stuff made Butter Chicken, an Indian dish that she assures us only looks brown in the picture.

Anne, of Anne's Food, passed up on Velveeta for the smooth and soothing Orange Carrot and Ginger soup.

Linda of At Our Table whipped up a jar of Peach Marmalade. A big jar of marmalade.

Chefdoc of a A Perfect Pear took Thomas Keller's cold carrot soup in a new direction with a butter-tender poached carrot in the bottom of a soup bowl.

Suebob of Snackish made Camote Adobado - sweet potatoes in a chile-orange sauce - which is both colored orange and flavored with orange.

Celia of English Patis made Sotanghon Gisado, a Filipino dish of sauteed glass noodle, that gets its orange color from annato seed. And yes, it does look orange in the picture!

Amy, of Cooking with Amy, celebrates summertime with a Frozen Mango Lassi with just 3 ingredients.

Chronicler of Food Chronicles looks to convert more people to tangerine love with her Blueberry Soup with Tangerine Sorbet.

Jennifer of The Spice Must Flow got to stretch her culinary creativity with Carrot, Honey, and Ginger Soup, Sauteed Pheasant with Orange Gravy, and Cantaloupe Sorbet.

Orange bread? Zarah of Food & Thoughts made one in the Sweet Potato Rolls with Chili & Cheese.

Jennifer, the Domestic Goddgess, produced a red lentil ravioli with tomato sauce, with orange on all different levels.

Kaba from Blog Schokolade und der Rest (chocolate and other things) made Carebbian Mango Mousse with raspberries.

Mia, of Nosh, made a Mango Lime Salsa (with Grilled Shrimp) out of the fresh, seasonal spring ingredients.

Karen of The Pilgrim's Pots and Pans made Fish Escabeche with orange from carrots and yellow-orange capsicum.

Derrick of An Obsession With Food, who also managed to write up Sugar High Friday, made an elegant macaroni and cheese with fava beans.

Irene of Cuisine Capers raided her store of fall's bumper crop of butternut squash to create a lovely Butternut Flan.

Dreska of Little Fancies made something sweet, bit spicy and aromatic in a Honey, ginger, apricot chicken.

Alice of My Adventures in the Breadbox created a Sweet Potato Hummus .

Alberto of Il Forno (the creator of the whole wonderful IMBB? meme!) came up with Pierre Herme's Orange Tuiles, delicate, crunchy cookie-like sweets that gave him a chance to use the oranges of the season.

After one disappointing attempt, Keiko of Nordjus hit the jackpot the second time 'round with a Lemon tart with orange juice and zest.

Allison of Jinjurly gives us the best carrot dish evar.

Katie of Sharp Cookie, whipped up a light and healthy, and definitely orange, Creamy Carrot Soup.

Sarah of Delicious Paths came up with Chilled Citrus-Melon Soup, which is a delicious recipe, but alas, finds that ripeness is a requisite!

Kelli Ann of avoir une famille n'est pas comme un téléroman takes the opportunity to delve into a beloved cookbook to make Sugarfree Carrot Coconut Cookies.

Nupur of One Hot Stove brings a Mexican flair to the ubiquitously orange Indian spices with a tortilla soup.

Laura of Upside-Down Pear fills the house with the scent and the duck with the flavor of Valencia oranges.

Niki of Esurientes whips up a yummy-sounding Bitter-Orange and Blueberry Tart.

Some people just couldn't settle down to just one orange dish. AugustusGloop of Grab Your Fork whipped up not one, not two, but THREE dishes, going all over the cuisine map: tarka dhal, Moroccan carrot dip and German carrots cooked in beer.

Oliver of Delicious Days also didn't settle for just one dish: he gives us Roasted Orange Pepper Tomato Soup with Basil Oil and Bread Chips, Orange Tomate and Thyme Tarte, and Orange Panna Cotta.

And Stephanie continues Dispensing Happiness with cheese tart with cream of (orange) pepper soup and orange-coated truffles. Kevin of Seriously Good gives us Duck Crepes a l'Orange with carrot puree and asparagus puree.

We at Foodgoat also couldn't stop at just one: we made chicken paprikash, roasted sweet potatoes, orange Jell-O, and mango lassi.

We have several people just joining the IMBB march towards domination: Melissa of The Traveler's Lunch makes an exotic, "escape" food with Cardamom and Honey Stewed Apricots with Buttermilk-Rosewater Panna Cotta.

June, of Nibble & Scribble, enters the meme with the tasty-sounding Cold Soup of Carrot and Saffron with Beancurd.

Cindy of Food Migration patched together a Frankenrecipe from various sources to create a fruity Tarocco Orange and Mango Tart with Ginger Crème Anglaise.

Julia of Aroma Cookery transforms the usually-green Indonesian sweet into orange in Sweet Potato Onde Onde.

And Barbara of Tigers & Strawberries updated an Indian classic with a fruity new twist in her Chicken Vindaloo with Mangoes.

Two people went with ikura, or fish roe, for the orange colors: Anthony of Spiceblog made Nori and Buckwheat Blinis with Ikura and Tobiko with Wasabi Crème Fraîche, while Alice of Epicure and Debauchery contributes, from Japan!, the triple O - Orange Oyako Over-rice.

And that's it! If more comes in, I'll keep adding them on. But for now, I'm orange'd out. Thanks to everyone for participating! Everything sounded so delicious: I could go for months with just orange food!

**And they keep coming in! An orange tidal wave is crashing onto my email!

Sarah of the Delicious Life lets nature's flavors shine through in a caprese salad of tang-colored tomatoes and mozzarella.

Santos from the scent of green bananas clocks in with not one, but two, entries: tamales gisu, the creamsicle of the tamale world, and passionfruit pannacotta with fresh mango and pineapple.

Julie of A Finger in Every Pie whipped up a gorgeous salad that included juicy navel oranges and a vineagrette of Meyer Lemons and blood orange vinegar that was the hit of the party.

Gemma, the Part Time Pro Bono Baker, samples several tasty Wisconsin cheeses on the way home from the Mustard Museum (!).

Molly, of Spicetart, argues persuasively that Mango and Orange Margaritas are a tasty and healthy food. Can't say that I disagree!

Welcome to Michele of Oswego Tea, who made a Roasted Carrot Soup, to the food blogging world. We think you'll like it here!

Renee continues feeding dexygus seconds with Bouchon's Butternut Squash Soup with Brown Butter, Sage, and Nutmeg Creme Fraiche, which sold her on the Thomas Keller cookbook.

Gastronomie-SF makes a case for Beef & Lamb Vinegar Stew with Lentils as orange food, and seals the deal with Spicy Mango, Avocado & Orange Fruit Salad.

Alan of m?'ona is also inspired by Thomas Keller to create an orange-colored and oranged-flavored Carrot Soup.

Viv, of Seattle Bon Vivant, had a full orange day, from Yam and Pinto Bean Tamales to an Orange cup of coffee to Golden Beets to ... oh heck, just go read them all.

Orion, the Confabulist, created a Tower of Orange! Papaya, orange tomatoes, salmon, orange peppers go vertical.

Mika, of the Green Jackfruit, mades an egg curry with the bright orange gravy of Indian spices.

Jeanne from Cook Sister! honors the culinary side of a famous Afrikaan poet with Soetpatats - stewed sweet potatoes. And does Billy Bob Thornton only eat orange foods? Get him on the phone - we need to talk.

Kimberly of Music and Cats made French Toast with Orange Brandied Peach Preserves just in time for IMBB. Coincidence? I think not.

Reid of 'ono kine grindz made two sorbets that span the orange spectrum: Li Hing Mui Sorbet and a kumquat sorbet.

Petra from Chili und Ciabatta celebrates spring with a lovely Carrot Flan with Chive Sauce.

Kate, the Accidental Hedonist, whipped up a sweet, sweet Orange/Peach Tart.

Jennifer of Taste Everything Once kept it sweet and simple with a fruit salad of papaya, mango, cantaloupe, and oranges with prosciutto and orange syrup in hollowed out horned melons.

And nothing gets in the way of Foodnerd's entry, a vibrant Carrot-lime salad.

Whew!

UPDATE: A couple of new additions:

Gwenda at The Adventures of the Tastebuds! stumbles in with a lovely penne with carrot-potato sauce.

And finally, Jessica of Cosmic Menu of Happiness closes us out with Lentil soup.

And that's a wrap!!

IMBB 14: Brought to you by the Color Orange


For our Is My Blog Burning? Orange You Hungry entry, your humble hosts went with all orange, all the time - multiple dishes in the orange shades to make one Very Orange Meal.

We started with an old standby, Chicken Paprikash, where Hungarian paprika and sour cream create the comfort-food orange Foodgoat so loves. This time, portabella mushrooms gave the traditional dish a bit of a twist.

To the side we had oven-roasted sweet potatoes. It's the easiest thing in the world: slices of sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil and coarse salt cooks up orange in a hot oven in 25 minutes flat. Sweet potatoes wins the underrated orange food award hands down.

For dessert, Grown-Up Orange Jell-O shot: orange-flavored Jell-O made with Amaretto di Saronno, lemon juice, and calamansi juice. Surprisingly good, for something that Foodgoat made up goofing around.

And for a tasty orange beverage, Mango Lassi: a cup or so of yogurt blended with one mango and a spoonful of sugar. The yogurt, might I add, was made from scratch in my beloved yogurt machine. Okay, so it came out a bit more on the yellow side. I'm the host, and I say it stays.

Friday, April 22, 2005

rejection letter

Dear okra,
Thank you for your audition in the grilled dinner the other night, along with the lamp lamb chops and zucchini. It was nice to meet you face to vegetable for the first time.

Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that are you are not likely to be invited to another dinner. Although we enjoyed your delicate taste, your rather slimy, sticky quality does not reflect - how shall I put it? - star quality. You are simply not a right fit for any of the dishes we have been producing; lately we prefer vegetables that are able to carry a dish on their own.

Please do not take this too personally; this is a purely aesthetic decision that in no way reflects on your fine flavor.

We may consider you in the future for a minor role in an ensemble production (i.e. gumbo).

Sincerely,
Ladygoat

Thursday, April 21, 2005

He drank the fat!

When I brought home a bottle of grapeseed oil for Foodgoat to try, he promptly opened the bottle and chugged it.


Of course the only way to try a new food item is to taste it. And grapeseed oil is a light vegetable oil (well suited to salads and, due to a high smoke point, sauteing) and not exactly freshly rendered whale blubber. It wasn't like the time my 5-year-old cousin ate an entire bottle of squeezable butter.

But I can't help it, I think any type of fat eaten straight up should be tasted, delicately, from the tip of one finger.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Emerging Top Food Trends

Inspired by the recent report by the Institute of Food Technologists on the top 10 emerging food trends (which includes "quick fixes", "drive-and-go", and "layered flavors"), here are my top 10 food trends:

1. Avocados - Raw, cooked, mashed into chickens, it's all good.
Another port wine and mushroom and bacon experiment
2. Port wine - You've seen the experiments. All successful. So we'll just keep going with it.
3. Portabella mushrooms - The bigger, the funnier. But always tasty, especially when combined in some way with aforementioned port wine.
4. Roasted vegetables - Asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, you name it, they've been getting oven-roasted and coming out the yummier for it.
5. Muffins - Cook up a dozen on Sunday, and Foodgoat has breakfast for the whole week.
6. Medjool dates - Chewy, sweet, and look like giant raisins. Hee!
7. Roasted, salted sunflower seeds - I can eat 'em by the handful. When the nut lady ran out ran out of them last week I almost cried.
8. Grilling - The snow's gone (we think)! Fire! Fire! Fire!
9. Chicken sausage - Sure it sounds funny, but the chicken apple turned out to be good.
10. Wax paper sandwich bags - Microwavable and biodegradable. It is Earth Day on Friday, after all.

Monday, April 18, 2005

a warm-up to Orange You Hungry


It sounded so promising: Mexican Drunken Cake.

So tasty sounding, yet so, well, icky. That's what I get for trying to get around baking. We do precious little baking around here. Foodgoat refuses to measure things, and I am made anxious by the inability to constantly check for doneness. For the Mexican Drunken Cake, I just had to buy an angel food cake and let it soak in a orange juice and rum syrup.

The result was, ahem, a little too orange-and-rummy.

Friday, April 15, 2005


McD's marks 50 years today. I have an audio tape of me at 4 years old, singing: first I sing the alphabet, then I sing the McDonald's theme song. Here's to another 50 years of cheap, bland, obscenely fattening food and insidious infiltration of children's subconsciousness!

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Tryout Tuesday: El Rodeo

When we walked into El Rodeo, looking for a little Mexican food love, kids were running around everywhere. And there were ... so ... many ... colors. Red hand-painted chairs, blue chairs, green chairs. And a very bright yellow sun smiled up at up from our table.

After we recovered from the slight vertigo of unused-to vibrancy, we had what was actually some pretty good Mexican food (it's always a gamble getting ethnic food in the 'burbs). I had the shredded beef quesadillas; Foodgoat had enchiladas. They noted in the menu something like "proper food takes time" - a hint, I suppose, to people who are used to getting their Mexican fix from Taco Bell (which is okay in California but downright atrocious in Cleveland).

The best part of the meal (aside from a character of a waiter) was dessert: a churro. A hot fried dough stick covered with sugar and cinnamon that I usually only find at Disneyland. Yum. Did you catch that? YUM.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Is My Blog Burning? #14: Orange you hungry?

This dish is brought to you by the color ORANGE

Food being an aesthetic experience as well as a tasty one, in this April round of that Is My Blog Burning?, sponsored by we us here at Foodgoat, I put out the call far and wide to bloggers of all stripes to whip up a little something in the orange hue. Many of my favorite foods fall in this lovely, lively range of the spectrum. Not just orange the fruit, but among the foods coming in one orange shade or another are sweet potatoes, butternut squashes, various cheeses, paprika-spiked chicken paprikash, macaroni and cheese, certain peppers ... but enough about me, what dishes come up orange for you?

Post your orange-colored recipe on Sunday, April 24 (prime time to bust out the digital camera too) and email me your link at ladygoat@yahoo.com so I can include you in my summary. Orange you excited? I am.

Friday, April 8, 2005

Cookiegate

What's the world come to when even the Cookie Monster stops eating cookies? Alas, my googly-eyed hero now proclaims cookies are only a "sometimes" food.

While I'm all for lifelong healthy eating, I'm also of the opinion that kids, especially those watching Sesame Street, are just too young to understand and make such health decisions. Healthy eating means understanding making choices based on long term nutritional consequences, which I don't think kids can handle. The nuances of "all things in moderation" are often beyond them, leaving them with the lesson that such-and-such food is good, while others are bad, a perspective that can mess you up for life. Rather, it's the parents who ought to be responsible for children's eating.

Much better would be to encourage trying new and diverse foods. Like Sesame Street does in their classic (in my house anyway) album "On The Street Where We Live - Block Party!" ... "Everybody like soul foooood, would you like to try sooooome? Everybody likes soul foooood, don't say no 'til you've tried soooome!"

So it seems I owe a love of jambalaya and cornbread and beans and rice to Gordon on Sesame Street.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

random links


-Smucker's is their way of making trying to patent their nasty-looking (and frozen!) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Do people really buy these? Do they realize that PB&J sandwiches are easy to make?

-Britain's poet laureate gets paid £500 a year ... and 500 bottles of sherry. I might be persuaded to take a smaller salary if I also received 500 pounds of chocolate. Or even 50 pounds of chocolate. Or refunded my $0.70 that the vending machine ate while I tried to get some crappy chocolate bar.

-Tootsie Pops + salt container = very tasty clock

Monday, April 4, 2005

Foods That Get Along That I Didn't Think Would

Two recent, surprising combinations that are new to me.

1. Avocado and Bacon - Slap a couple slices of each on a whole grain bread and say hello to Ladygoat's new favorite lunch.

2. Fresh strawberries and Balsamic Vinegar - Simmer two tablespoons each of packed brown sugar and balsamic vinegar for a minute or two and pour the syrup over quartered strawberries for a tart and sweet dessert.

Friday, April 1, 2005

Tryout Wednesday: Lola Bistro

The last Tryout out came on Wednesday, and took the form of attending a dinner at Lola Bistro with 36 other people from the local food and wine forum. It was a three-hour feast from which I'm just now recovering. How the very wealthy and the very gluttonous manage to do these things on a regular basis is beyond me.

Lola Bistro is one of the most acclaimed restaurants of Cleveland, and its headliner Michael Symon is the city's very own celebrity chef (see page on the Food Network if you don't believe me). So when the local food and wine forum proposed a dinner there, on the occasion of its imminent closing for relocation, what I could I do but sign Foodgoat and me up?

Shall we start things off with sturgeon on beef cheeks? I thought it might be just a name, but now I thought this is actually be meat a cow's face. It was quite tender and tasty.


The first actual course was yellowtail sashimi ... horseradish marinated yellowtail with hot sauce. Very yummy.


The second course was by far the best, and the highlight of the evening: lobster pierogi, a single truffled lobster pierogi with caramelized onions and creme fraiche. Utterly delectable, and completely convinced me that I love lobster, and Foodgoat, that he needs to bring truffles into his cooking repertoire. Foodgoat laments that had dinner ended here, he would have been a happy camper.


I've never eaten bunnies, but here, before me was my third course: rabbit strudel, with spiced almond and roasted carrot sauce. Very good. Would it be a cliche to mention that rabbit tastes like chicken? I only regret that I ate the whole freaking thing, instead of saving half of it for lunch later.


Foodgoat, on the other hand, went with the much hyped mac and cheese, with roasted chicken, tomatoes and goat cheese. The photo didn't quite come out, and neither, to Foodgoat, did the dish. For all the talk I've heard about the Lola mac and cheese, it was just okay, and rather a disappointment. Surely the man who made the lobster pierogi could do much better than this.


Course four, duck confit "stroganoff" with mushrooms, spinach, and broad noodles for me. It must have been delicious, because I polished it off, even though by now I was pretty well stuffed.


I give Foodgoat great credit, because he ordered the veal sweetbreads - thyroid glands of a baby cow - and ate them. Much to his regret. I ate a bit and found them absolutely delicious. But Foodgoat had an upset stomach the whole next day, and blames the sweetbreads. (Personally, I think it's psychosomatic. He's never done well with organs.)


And the grand finale: dessert. The menu said "chocolate covered pretzel with vanilla ice cream" so I expected something a bit more prosaic than this elaborate getup. Pretzel bits are mixed into a caramel candy (yum!), covered with chocolate and topped with mascarpone ice cream. It bummed me out that I couldn't eat the chocolate or ice cream parts, but it was just as well, since it was so rich I could barely manage to eat the pretzels.


So there you go, our fanciest meal out yet. The best part was the company: everyone there was great fun and splendid dinner companions. The chef was also a blast: I was impressed that he actually spent much of the evening chatting with everyone and describing each course for us. I ask you, what can be more convivial, more festive, than a group of people who love food?