I like to think of Sous Vide like a little crockpot in a bag. The polar opposite of the pressure cooker, sous vide is a great way to get perfectly cooked food every time. It uses a precise temperature-controlled water bath to cook meat, veggies, and everything in between to an exact specification. …
Sugar Cookies with Buttercream Frosting
Decorating Mama T’s famous Holiday sugar cookies has been a tradition in my family before I could even say the word “butter”. Every year, my Mom whips out about four dozen of these bad boys and we go to town on making the most interesting frosting colors to decorate our cookies with. The highlight of this year was our Millennial Pink frosting, which I believe was aptly named. …
Why You Should Spatchcock Your Thanksgiving Turkey
The first time I saw a spatchcocked turkey, I thought the cook had brutalized the poor thing. It definitely looked nothing like the roasted turkey that I was used to seeing in every food photo pretty much ever. So I politely asked, “uh… what’s with the bird?” It was then that I learned about the wonders of the spatchcocked turkey from the cook’s point of view: It may not be pretty, but damn it makes hosting Thanksgiving dinner a whole lot easier….
Sweet Potato Rolls with Rosemary Maple Glaze
When it comes to last minute dinner parties, typically I’m the one rushing to the grocery store, flying around the kitchen, and yelling at the boys to clean up their respective messes before everyone arrives. Thankfully this weekend I got to experience the other side of dinner parties: being the guest! …
Pumpkin Pie Bites
Fall is really here! In Southern California, fall usually means pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks coupled with 90+ degree weather. However, my favorite season finally made its wonderful appearance this week as temperatures cooled down to a much more bearable 70 degrees during the day (absolutely freezing, I know). This new + improved – and decidedly more seasonally appropriate – temperature has already made me start craving all things pumpkin and Thanksgiving themed. I blame the weather for the many pumpkin recipes that I will be posting this week. Prepare your stomachs….
Purslane: The Super Weed
While attempting to tackle the growing colony of weeds that have taken up residence in my vegetable garden this past weekend, I came across a plant that looked pretty similar to what I was just served at a fancy restaurant. I did some googling and found that it was called purslane. I decided that if a restaurant could serve it, so could I – I yanked it up by the roots and dragged it back to my kitchen for some test runs. …
Homemade Pumpkin Purée
I’m going to be straight with you. I may or may not have googled where the accent mark in “pumpkin purée” goes before posting this recipe. I mean come on, two e’s? How many does the word really need??
Purée rant aside, let’s get back to the real topic here: pumpkin pie!…
The Hunt for the Prickly Pear
While hiking in one of my favorite haunts near my house, I stumbled upon (and nearly right into) a HUGE patch of prickly pear. Having seen the spiny, pink and green fruit in the grocery store on occasion, I more or less knew what I was looking at. My limited experience with prickly pear cactus, however, meant that I was woefully unprepared to snag any to take home with me. …
Summer Fig + Honey Tea Cake
If you happened to peruse my last post about my new fig obsession {Fig, Caramelized Onion + Goat Cheese Tart}, you’ll already be in the know about my stealthy acquisition of some of my neighbors’ figs. Now that I have access to so many of them, you could say I’ve become a bit fig crazed. For many, the fig is an acquired taste. They’re only ripe for a short amount of time, usually insanely overpriced, not easy to find, and frankly a bit weird. If you are lucky enough to have access to a fig tree, you don’t have to worry about most of these drawbacks. Hence, my fig insanity.
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Meet the New Family Members: Chickens!
As you may have noticed, I have taken a brief hiatus from The Kitchen Flamingo as of late. Being lazy is certainly part of it, but more importantly.. we have new additions to the Kitchy Flam family! These little babies are already growing up so fast… they’ll be full grown chickens before I know it….