We had burgers tonight – Julia burgers, made with chunks of flank steak – and Ward decided to make his own hamburger buns. He’d read this recipe in the June 2009 issue of Gourmet, and thought it sounded like it would be fun (which is why he does the cooking and I do the eating).
He [...]

I hate when this happens late in the evening when my stomach is growling a little and I go into the kitchen to search for food. Ward’s sitting at the kitchen table making up a grocery list, and he announces his plans for tomorrow. And it sounds so good, I wish it was time for [...]

Vegetarian Mushroom Stroganoff
Dinner tonight was Vegetarian Mushroom Stroganoff, a recipe that Ward adapted from the Vegetarian Cook’s Bible. He decided to use soy milk rather than milk, which made the dish vegan. The recipe called for seitan, but we didn’t have any on hand, so he used textured soy protein chunks instead.
The mushroom sauce was [...]

Olives & Oranges: Recipes & Flavor Secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus & Beyond, by Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox, has glossy pages with several full color photos. Not every recipe is accompanied by a photograph, but this doesn’t detract from the recipes themselves.
Organization of Contents
The book starts with an Introduction, and then the chapter, [...]

Twice-Baked Stuffed Potatoes
On the menu tonight:
Rib Eye Marchand de Vins: lovely rare rib-eye steaks with a sauce made from a pan reduction of shallots, stock, thyme and a good red wine.
Corn Griddle Cakes: a simple corn pancake.
Rum-Glazed Plantains: Rum and brown sugar, grilled until the sugar caramelizes a little.
These three recipes were [...]

Shrimp and Tilapia Risotto
Ingredients:
For the broth
1 medium onion, unpeeled, quartered
1 medium carrot, cut in 2-inch lengths
10 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp salt
shells from 1 pound shrimp (from below)
1 cup bottled clam juice
1 cup vegetable stock
1 can (14 1/2 oz or 400 mL) diced tomatoes
For the risotto:
5 tbsp unsalted butter
1 medium onion, diced fine
3-4 cloves garlic, [...]

On the menu tonight: Soy-Glazed Flank Steak, which we discovered in the May 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living (the recipe is also online here). This is a really wonderful recipe for flank steak, resulting in beautifully rare and very tender pieces of steak.
It’s the tenderness that gets us every time. Ward first made [...]

After months of thinking about this, Ward and I have decided to move this blog over to it’s own account on our server – and we made the decision not to port over all the old Muse in the Kitchen posts.
It helped that the database went wonky on us. We didn’t feel up to having [...]