Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
KCRW Good Food Pie Contest
Last month KCRW and LACMA (L.A. County Museum of Art) hosted the 3rd Annual Good Food Pie Contest. I added it to my calendar spring of this year to make sure I attended in the fall. Have to get those priorities straight!
Last year I had the pleasure of attending the 2nd Annual Good Food Pie Contest in Beverly Hills, behind the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The spacious setting, apron fashion show, pies to taste everywhere I looked and ample shade made it a great event.
The man in top hat sharing his pie tastings with his dog added to the unique vibe.
It was perhaps a bit less organized, lacking shade/seats, had much larger crowds/lines compared to last year, but still worth experiencing.
Categories: nut, cream, fruit, savory and Tim Burton inspired (to complement the current Tim Burton retrospective exhibition at LACMA). What a great theme for pies!
You can find the winners at this link. For some reason this year just bakers' names were announced, not the pie names. And if you were in line for tasting, you were far from the stage, so it was really hard to follow who won what during the event.
However, I love that Best in Show went to a Classic Apple Pie, as making a perfect classic trumps trendy flavors all the time in my book.
A lot of articles and blog posts give insider views of entrants/bakers, judges and contain lovely pie photos. I'd love to show you what it was really like there. The exciting, crazy energy and the pies after being cut into.
Nut Pies
Cream Pies
Aside from banana cream pie, this isn't my favorite category. A Banana Cream Pie and Banana Nutella Cream Pie both placed in the awards. I tried to get a taste of the Banana Nutella Pie, which looked like a cloud of heavenly cream, but did not want to fight the crowd to get to it.
The original is made with a butterscotch filling, but this Crack Pie with Chocolate version really rocked. The chocolate, not over-sweet, held equal billing with the crumbly crust.
Tim Burton Inspired
The winner in this category, Emily Baker's James and the Giant Peach Pie did indeed have a whole peach perched on top.
This Beetlejuice Pie of green tea mousse and 'slimed goo' tasted and looked beautiful, but unfortunately, the photo is too shady. The goo part had a good seedy texture.
This Dr. Pepper, Pepita, Pink Peppercorn Pie also sounded and looked interesting. I'm not sure what movie or character it references. Pepita is the Spanish word for pumpkin seeds.
Some of my friends and I snuck some chairs out of Ray's restaurant to sit and eat a bit to make room for the many, many other tasters in line.
That red stained plate reminds me of a painter's palette.
Fruit Pies
That red stained plate reminds me of a painter's palette.
Fruit Pies
This Bourbon Peach Pie with Crystallized Ginger Crust really won it hands down among the fruit pies I tasted. The crust held up without getting soggy and the peaches tasted sweet and tart, just how I like them.
Cherry pies are among my favorites too. By this time I was sticking to the unusual and impossible to pass up pies, knowing my appetite was dwindling with each passing minute.
Cherry pies are among my favorites too. By this time I was sticking to the unusual and impossible to pass up pies, knowing my appetite was dwindling with each passing minute.
Savory Pies
The Filipino Chicken Adobo Pie with sesame seed latticed crust succeeded well. Very tasty, balanced filling with right amount of crust.
The Individual Aussie Meat Pies had a flaky, light crust. I found the meat filling a bit too salty, although overall a great effort.
It's always a treat running into my friend Cecilia Fabulich and trying her food. This Herb Tomato Pie had cheesy, quiche-like, bright flavors. She's competed and won many cooking competitions.
The Mushroom Forest Tart is a great idea, but also felt that it was a bit strong on salt and the mushroom garnishes dried out a bit. The vegan Fried Chicken Picnic Pie next to it looked interesting as well.
One of my very favorites of the day, Terry Sweeney's Persian Tart (won the savory 1st place ribbon), really brought taste and creativity to the game. Just standing near it, the herbal and savory scents wafting by totally drew me in. His friendly demeanor made it even more appealing.
The filling of shredded chicken blended beautifully with tamarind, fenugreek and other fresh herbs and spices.
The Good Food site posted the recipe and mentioned his plans to make the same pie with lamb cubes too. That might even take it to more stratsopheric levels of tastiness.
After taking the tiny bite I requested, I regretted not taking the full slice he originally offered me. Had there not still been a very long line, I would have gone back for seconds of only this glorious pie.
Uncertain Which Categories....
The filling of shredded chicken blended beautifully with tamarind, fenugreek and other fresh herbs and spices.
The Good Food site posted the recipe and mentioned his plans to make the same pie with lamb cubes too. That might even take it to more stratsopheric levels of tastiness.
After taking the tiny bite I requested, I regretted not taking the full slice he originally offered me. Had there not still been a very long line, I would have gone back for seconds of only this glorious pie.
Uncertain Which Categories....
I saw a sign for Artichoke Heart Pie and expected to see a savory tart with sliced artichoke hearts on top. This one looked more like a lime colored pumpkin pie. And surprise #2 was that it was not savory, but sweet!
It tasted fine, although it was a bit hard to wrap my head around it. The presentation could have been more indicative of the ingredients, in my humble opinion.
It tasted fine, although it was a bit hard to wrap my head around it. The presentation could have been more indicative of the ingredients, in my humble opinion.
I felt bad looking at pies or locking eyes with bakers and saying 'no' to their offer of a slice. I would have tried them all if I could, but never do well with large quantities of sweets.
There's always next year too. Cannot wait!
Labor Day Family and Foodie Weekend
It's rather exciting to introduce my first guest post, talking about some fun meal ideas in San Diego area. This post comes from Asif Khan of The Vaporware Blog (on cloud computing), which just goes to show that techies are foodies too!* * * *
I had planned to catch up on a whole lotta nuthin over the Labor Day weekend. The wife and kid were visiting relatives and I had the whole place to myself. Then my mom and sister called me on Friday and asked if they can come over. Fine, I said. We'll make it a dominos and Netflix night.
It didn't quite turn out that way.
We decided to turn it into an epicurious weekend by using whatever random items I had left in our mostly empty fridge. I made a quick trip to Sprouts Farmers Market to pick up some steak, salmon and chicken but not much else.
Here's a taste of what we ate.
Drinks
Squeeze some lime into a cup of Pellegrino sparkling water. Add a dash of your favorite rum with blue agave nectar and hand-crush strawberries to complement the flavors.
Steak and Salmon
I wanted to break in my new grill and try out a little technique that a grilling-fanatic friend taught me to get perfect grill marks. The entree was steak or salmon.
I sauteed some onions and portobello mushrooms in garlic butter for the side dish.
The salad was whole tomatoes from our backyard vine with a splash of chili-infused olive oil and kosher salt.
Spinach, capers and goat cheese omelet
I don't eat eggs very often so when I make an omelet, I use whatever ingredients I have in the fridge.
First I lightly sauteed some spinach, onions, tomato and green chili in olive oil. The onions were sliced so thin, that they practically melted into the mix.
Next, I whipped up the egg batter.
Here's my secret to making fluffy, light and tasty omelets. Vigorously mix two brown eggs (darker yolk) with sour cream, garlic paste, kosher salt and egg beaters and pour into a stainless steel (or non-stick) pan coated with unsalted butter.
Add the sauteed mix and add cilantro and goat cheese on top of the eggs at the very end, just before folding over.
Grilled Jamaican jerk wings
This was easy to make but tastes so good...especially if you like your wings extra spicy. I buy real jerk marinade from an authentic Jamaican restaurant in Solana Beach.
Rub a small (!) amount on the wings and throw them on the extra-hot side of the grill to keep the outside crisp and to allow the inside to stay moist and juicy as it continues to slow cook on the warm side of the grill.
Dessert - Greek Yogurt with Berries
We then had greek yogurt for dessert.
Drizzle with some blue agave nectar (notice the recurring agave theme?), powdered cinnamon, blueberries, walnuts and garnish with strawberry slice (to go along with the crushed strawberry in the cocktail).
Add a splash of rum if you're feeling adventurous!
Mojarras fritas
Our final meal before we said goodbye was at one of my favorite authentic Mexican mariscos (seafood) restaurants near our house, El Rinconcito.
This place is so authentic that we practiced how to order in Spanish using Google Translate because not everybody there speaks English!
This place is so authentic that when I first looked it up, it got only one star on Yelp. OK enough of my Bourdain impersonation and onto the food.
I insisted that we get the mojarras fritas (fried whole tilapia fish). Damn this fish is so tasty. You can have it with the arroz y frijoles (rice and beans) it comes with but I prefer to make a taco out of it.
Take a flour or corn tortilla, slap some frijoles and shredded cabbage on it then add pieces of crispy fish to it.Top this bad boy with some avocado/habanero salsa and dive right in.
I strongly recommend some ice cold Mexican cerveza (beer) to wash it down.
You won't be disappointed!
