Have you ever wondered why Caesar Salad is called “Caesar Salad”? I looked it up. It turns out that the original Caesar Salad was invented by an Italian immigrant chef, Caesar Cardini, who had restaurants in San Diego and Tijuana in the 1920s. The story is that, like...
These Cheese Enchiladas were our very best seller at the shop, month in and month out. Prep Cook Extraordinaire Todd would come in in the morning, assess the Cheese Enchilada situation in the coolers out front, and get to work. I don’t know exactly how many Cheese...
It’s so easy to grab a jar of salsa at the store. I used to do it all the time. That is, until the day I came home from the grocery store without it. By the time I realized my error I had enchiladas in the oven, rice on the stove, and I was setting the table for...
Black Bean Salsa is one of those recipes we make all the time at my house. I could live on it--and often do--especially in the summer. Black Bean Salsa uses mostly pantry ingredients, and the hardest part is opening the cans. I usually have fresh limes around, but in...
Mediterranean Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta is based on a classic Greek dish, Shrimp Saganaki. In Greece it’s predominantly served as an appetizer, often as part of a mezze (i.e., appetizer) platter. The word “saganaki” refers to the two handled-pan typically used to...
Everybody I know loves a tomato pie. It’s summertime right now and no one will shut up about it. Tomato pie this, tomato pie that, etc, etc, and then they look at me, and I’m all like . . . What??? I don’t make that kind of tomato pie. Those of you who have...
Just because a dish has been around for a couple of hundred years, doesn’t mean I can’t fiddle with it, right? The modern version of what we call Eggplant Parmesan appeared in the Italian aristocrat/gourmand Ippolito Cavalcanti's cookbook, Cucina Teorico-Pratica,...
Those of you who grew up here on the Gulf Coast surely remember the stuffed deviled crabs in the freezer at the grocery store. They were in real crab shells, filled with a sort of mildly spicy crab dressing, individually wrapped, and cost about 50 cents each. You may...
It’s summertime in Baldwin County, Alabama, and I hope you’re absolutely inundated with fresh local tomatoes. And when it gets too hot for tomatoes on the coast here in a minute, I hope you’ll buy silly amounts of Sand Mountain, Alabama tomatoes, which are the next...
I should warn those of you who are looking for genuine Thai food that this Pineapple Fried Rice isn’t especially authentic. This is a recipe I cobbled together from many different sources, and then adapted it to our US Gulf Coast pantries. It’s delicious, though. We...
Over the years I’ve learned a few things about food and cooking: --Respect your ingredients. --Salt and pepper are ultimately the most important seasonings. --Fresh is usually best, but not always. --For Father’s Day dinner, Dads are interested in only two things:...
It’s summertime, y’all! And I have an easy and refreshing summertime snack for you: Grape Salsa. I served this Friday night at the Eastern Shore Art Center, and it seems many people had never heard of Grape Salsa. At first some people were confused. One sweet woman in...
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