Tag: Ina Garten

Gift of Eggs and Kimchi Fried Rice

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My friend, Linda gave me a dozen fresh eggs this morning. My obessive love of eggs is no secret. What a happy gift!

At the end of the morning yoga session while everyone was enjoying a peaceful savasana, I was planning lunch. My leftover rice from last night already had quiet ambitions of becoming a kimchi fried rice topped with a fried egg. Now, I had fresh eggs to make that dish sing.

I first learned about Kimchi (a Korean cabbage pickle) with rice watching Food Network. Thank you, Ina Garten and guest.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kimchi-fried-rice-with-fried-egg-recipe-2131583

My version is simply leftover rice, mixed with kimchi, heated and then topped with an egg. The pickle is spicy-tart and makes the rice moist, crispy and flavorful. The deep orange yolk of the fresh egg works as a sweet-salty sauce.

So simple, so good.

Thanks to Linda, lunch was fantastic.

Wishing you a happy lunch,

Hungryphil

 

 

Sheet Caking is a Grassroots Movement

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Food is a collective coping strategy. Funny. Sad. True.

Maybe cake is the answer. I want to yell into a cake now. Feels cathartic. But, is it okay to be a silent non-violent protester? How do we confront violence, fear, hate? With violence? With indifference? With cake? How do we react and do differently, instead of inverse mirroring? Meeting hate chant with peace songs?  We are told to ignore the bully and engage the victim in public hate instances. Do we do the same with a group of torch bearing, blood and soil chants? How do we invoke Popper’s paradox of tolerance of everything except intolerance? How do we address isolation and alienation that fuels such hot hate?

“Arendt’s understanding of the origins of totalitarianism begins with her insight that mass movements are founded upon “atomized, isolated individuals.” The lonely people whom Arendt sees as the adherents of movements are not necessarily the poor or the lower classes. They are the “neutral, politically indifferent people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls.” They are not unintelligent and are rarely motivated by self-interest. Arendt writes that Heinrich Himmler understood these isolated individuals when he “said they were not interested in ‘everyday problems’ but only ‘in ideological questions of importance for decades and centuries, so that the man […] knows he is working for a great task which occurs but once in 2,000 years.’” The adherents of movements are not motivated by material interests; they “are obsessed by a desire to escape from reality because in their essential homelessness they can no longer bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects.”

For the full article got to: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/arendt-matters-revisiting-origins-totalitarianism/#!

Tina Fey is a talented comedian who did an excellent job to expose the absurd through the absurd. Her comments make me think, as a philosopher what can I say? I’m still thinking…………….in the meantime pausing and eating “sheet-caking” is something we can do together. Still thinking……………….

Here is a flag cake recipe from my favorite TV chef Ina Garten. The cake was moise and light, the frosting tangy and sweet and much appreciated. The fruit is my favorite part. Strawberry, kiwi, mango, peaches can be other versions of this cake. I’m not a natural baker but Ms. Garten’s recipes make it easy. If I can bake it, you can too. Remember to share. That’s the most important part!

Wishing you a safe and happy weekend,

Hungryphil

Weekend with Ina Garten Recipes

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It was a very cold weekend and we needed comfort. Tasty, delicious, feel guilty later, put on a few pounds to keep warm comfort. Perfect attitude for testing a few decadent recipes. Food Network nobility, Ina Garten (a.k.a the Barefoot Contessa) to the rescue. We tried three of her recipes.

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Cranberry Orange Scones

The butter chucks may not have been small enough to process in the stand mixer. I had a lot o flour flying all over and the butter didn’t quite arrive at an uniform grainy stage. Didn’t matter, the scones were flaky and light. I also didn’t shape the scones into beautiful rounds. The cut triangles worked just fine. Didn’t have the patience to wait for the scones to cool enough for the icing. Again, didn’t matter, still tasted wonderful. Despite my veering off the recipe multiple times, Ina’s guidance did not steer me wrong.

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Brownie Tart

This recipe yields a magical combination of cookie like chewy consistency on the edges, fudgy gooeyness in the middle and cakey brownie in between. We swapped walnuts for pecans. May have over mixed the batter, may have not cooked it long enough for the cake to puff up, may have, may have. Without having a sense of how it was “supposed” to be, the dessert just was….. delicious. Sometimes, definitive expectations can be limiting and counter productive. Happy to test this recipe, again and again, in search of tart perfection. Whether I ever get there is irrelevant.

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Turkey Lasagna

This may just be my new favorite lasagna recipe! The goat cheese adds a gentle complexity to the taste. The turkey sausage sauce was very flavorful. I did follow the advice from the comments sections and reduced the amount of salt. Her technique of soaking the noodles in hot water for 20 minutes before layering is genius.  I was skeptical and worried that the noodles wouldn’t cook. She proved me wrong. This is the way I’ll be making lasagna from now on. The fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and parsley, the goat cheese all added a brightness to the rich lasagna.

Small deviations and additions to a recipe make it mine. But, these detours from directions also show me ways to redefine familiar dishes like lasagna or brownies in method and taste. What makes a recipe better or worse? Meeting expectations, good taste, ease of preparation, new techniques?

From the scones, I learned that as long as the proportion of fat (butter and cream) to flour is maintained all else can be variable.

From the brownie tart, I learned that chocolate whether liquid, chewy, soft or hard is delicious. A tart contains all the states of chocolate.

From the lasagna, I learned that layering light fresh ingredients with ricotta, tomato sauce and noodles, the unusual with the usual challenges lasagna expectations.

From now on, I  will trust the Ina.