By: five things…. at alaska cooks

five things…. at alaska cooks — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 23:45:51 +0000

[...] Food cooked with your Grandmother…Growing up we spent a lot of time with my Dad’s parents. Grandmom has always been a great country cook – the best. fried. chicken. ever. However, the specialty that’s gone down in family lore is the humble bird done another way. The mighty chicken and dumplings, served with achingly sweet tea, coleslaw, and Grandmom’s biscuits. If I had any meal to choose, I’d like to be back swinging my feet on one of her kitchen stools while she cooked this dinner for us. My grandmother is still well, although at 86, she moves a little slower and is no longer cooking or living on her own. My life is a long way from NC these days and one of the things I have always looked forward to the most on my trips home has been sitting at the counter at grandmaâ€™s eating dumplings with a side of cole slaw and sweet tea so strong it takes measurable amounts of enamel off with each glass. When it became apparent that her dumpling days were soon to be over, I started paying attention and asking questions when she cooked. The dumplings will be there once she is not, but they will never be the same. [...]

By: cookbook porn at alaska cooks

cookbook porn at alaska cooks — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 04:51:35 +0000

[...] Kim Severson published New AlaskaNew Alaska Cookbook in 2001 with Glenn Denkler, and somehow I missed it. She’s an ex-pat Alaskan foodie and journalist that has since left Alaska and moved on to bigger and better things, even getting a nod from food god Frank Bruni. Denkler is a chef and culinary instructor and served as the recipe tester, making sure that these ideas could be recreated in the home kitchen. The twelve chefs that contributed their favorites all cook in Alaska, and the emphasis is decidely on showcasing fresh local ingredients. Not everyone outside Alaska is going to have an easy time finding halibut cheeks, fiddlehead ferns, salmon eggs, locally smoked goose breasts, or caribou sausage, but there still are lots of things here that don’t require a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to make work. For us, the fun part is knowing the chefs and the restaurants they come from and the effort all put into new and creative plates. Anchorage, for all its pretention, is a small town I am not a baker, yet, and I picked up Peter Reinhardt’s American Pie with a bit of trepidation about where it might lead. Sure enough, a week after purchasing the book I’ve also become the proud new owner of a mixer. This isn’t just a cookbook, as it says there on the front cover, it’s also Reinhart’s search for the perfect pie. The first 90 pages are a great read on what Reinhart feels and experiences as he looks for the perfect pizza. He delves a bit int the problem that we all have trying to recreate the great meals or dishes of out pasts – no matter how exactly the same the dish and preparation may be, the cook and situation are different and thus the result and satisfaction will be as well. I can make the exact same dumplings I grew up eating at my Grandmom’s kitchen counter, but they will never be really the same because it isn’t her making htem for me. Of course we all have our own opinion about where the best pizza is in our town or region, but to get to travel the country and test those opinions as a way of making a living is probably one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. As with the other Reinhart bibles, this one goes into exhaustive detail about pizza culture, baking, technique, variations, and how to try and recreate at home your version of the foundation of all good pie – the crust. [...]

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By: five things…. at alaska cooks

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