Great recipe search tool

It's in beta, but you should definitely take the Food.com recipe search for a test drive. It searches across all the big recipe sites—Recipezaar, Epicurious, Food Network—and tons more, and aggregates the findings into one list. If there happens to be a photograph of the dish, it shows that in the search results, too. It's really one-stop shopping. Go here to sign up.

Fun with Food: mock lobster

Last April I wrote about a book called Face Food, the art of making bento boxes (Japanese lunch boxes).

I recently stumbled across a Flickr gallery of a bento artist named Sakurako Kitsa and found the same bento I had used to illustrate the blog post. What made this fun was that now I could see how she had constructed the bento (which she calls spa bento). Kitsa has installed little hyperlinks in the photos so that when you mouse over parts of the bento box, a little caption box pops up to explain what was used in the construction.

This will all become clear if you check out her gallery. I was especially fond of this lobster, which is made of plum tomatoes.

Fun with Food: pink pasta

OK, now I'm on a playful pasta roll. How about if you used beets to dye pasta pink?

Easy-peasy, as Jamie Oliver would say. The result is this pasta salad. (I took the photo before I tossed all the ingredients so you'd get the full impact of the pinkness.)

Rosy Pasta Salad
This serves 6 as a side dish, but it could serve 4 as a main dish if you threw in some goat cheese, feta cheese, diced ham or shredded cooked chicken or turkey.

10 ounces linguine, broken into thirds
2 medium beets (about 3/4 pound), peeled and cut into matchsticks
1 cup frozen green peas
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 large carrots, shredded (2 cups)

1. In a medium pot of boiling salted water, cook the pasta according to package directions. Add the beets for the last 5 minutes of cooking.
2. Meanwhile, place the peas in a colander. When the pasta is done, drain over the peas. Transfer the pasta and vegetables to a serving bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Let cool to lukewarm.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining 3 tablespoons oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper.
4. Add the dressing to the bowl along with the carrots and toss well. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Fun with Food: sausage spiders

When Joyce Maffezzoli used linguine in place of toothpicks (see yesterday's post), she said she didn't think she'd invented the idea and felt as though she'd read it somewhere. So I did due diligence and searched on "pasta as toothpicks." I found quite a few tips on using linguine to truss poultry, but then I stumbled on an idea that produced these cute little spider guys.

The suggestion I read called for hot dogs, but I'm not a fan so I used mango-chicken sausages instead. I stuck in 4 lengths of linguine (for 8 legs) and cooked it in boiling water for the amount of time needed to make the pasta tender.

I didn't take it to the next step--how to serve them--because I was amused enough by their cuteness. But since I don't see an adult struggling to eat a whole plate of sausage spiders, this is probably just a fun dish for kids.

Fun with Food: linguine picks

About 2 weeks ago I went to a dinner party at my sister's house. The guests/participants were all members of a group (I was just auditing) that gets together regularly to hang out and eat good food. The rules of the get-togethers are that no spouses or significant others are invited, the hosting duties rotate, and if you are a guest—i.e., not the host—then you are not allowed to help clean up (love that one).

The dinners are always collaborative, with everyone bringing a dish and/or wine. I asked them if they planned ahead who was bringing what and they said no, they just let chance dictate, but that somehow it always worked out. Which, in fact, it absolutely did that night: prune-stuffed pork loin, rich scalloped potatoes and jerk-spiced vegetables.

But before the meal we had appetizers, which brings me to the point of this post. One of the club members—Joyce Levowitz Maffezzoli (who said that since this is a food blog I could refer to her as Juice Liverwurst Mostaccioli)—brought bocconcini but she had forgotten to bring the toothpicks. My sister had no toothpicks, but she did have linguine, so Joyce improvised. Genius.

K.A.T.E.S. Avocado & Bean Salad

Kidney beans Avocado Tangerines Evaporated milk Salsa

On March 30, 2009, I issued a recipe challenge to myself:

Come up with recipes using only ingredients that start with the letters that spell out my name K + A + T + E + S (the first initial of my last name to give me a total of 5). Oil, salt and pepper do not count.

Here's the first recipe in the challenge:

Avocado & Bean Salad with Creamy Salsa Dressing
It's important to use shelf-stable bottled salsa for this, because the refrigerated salsas are too watery.

And if I hadn't set this challenge for myself, I probably would have used sour cream, yogurt or mayonnaise instead of evaporated milk in the dressing.

2 cups dried kidney beans, soaked overnight if possible
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3/4 cup bottled medium salsa
3 tablespoons canned evaporated milk
4 tangerines
1 Hass avocado, cut into cubes

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the beans, salt, pepper and water to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce to a low-boil, partially cover and cook until the beans are tender (40 minutes to 1 hour plus, depending on if you've soaked ahead or not).
2. Meanwhile, in a blender or mini food processor, puree the salsa. Grate the zest from half of one tangerine and stir into the salsa.
3. Drain the beans and transfer to a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup of the salsa mixture to the hot beans and stir to coat. Let cool to room temperature.
4. Stir the evaporated milk into the remaining salsa, add to the beans and toss to coat.
5. Peel the tangerines and cut into 1/2-inch chunks. Add the tangerines and avocado to the beans, and toss to coat. Taste and add more salt if needed.

Makes 4 servings