Phatbugger

Dehydrating Cherry Tomatoes

We have a surfeit of cherry tomatoes coming out of our summer garden. I have actually taken to dehydrating them. The texture of the dehydrated tomatoes really ends up depending on the temperature you choose to dry them at. Dry them at 130° to 135° F and you would end up with a crisp dried…

MainDish

Ground beef Kebobs

A lot of the Middle eastern and North African cuisines produce Kebobs from ground meats; lamb mostly but occasionally goat. Beef is a completely acceptable substitute. This version is made with Ground beef and if I had to pin it to any one of the countries of the region, I would probably pin it to…

Condiment

Chermoula

Chermoula is a dressing or condiment that spans across continents. Another name for essentially the same thing is Chimichurri. Chermoula is North African and Chimichurri is Argentinian. Can’t you tell the North Africans were in Spain for a while…. My version hews closer to the North African version. The Argentinians tend to make theirs a…

BREAD

Baguettes, plain, non sourdough

I used to think that cake making etc. is an exact pursuit where you have to measure exactly and temperatures have to be exact and that bread baking is more slack in its requirements. However, I have come to realize that bakers no matter what they bake tend to be sticklers with a good healthy…

BREAD

Bread Making… Revived

A long time ago I used to bake bread couple of times a week. Then life happened, Engineering Corporate career, two Children, schools lots of work travel etc., and it all went into hiatus. This corona virus induced isolation regimen and the resulting shortage of good bread at the stores prompted me to get the…

Appetizer

A summer appetizer

Spring is struggling to make its presence felt in New England even as we get to mid May. I thought I would describe a mid summer kind of appetizer that is both easy to make, pretty spectacular to look at on the table. It is very tasty and touches all of your taste sensations…. Ingredients…

Uncategorized

I am baaaack……

I had a few mishaps including a php incompatibility issue. My problem with my original site was that I had a bunch of custom stuff that I had put in my page. These led to the site breaking when WordPress moved to a different version and it took me a bunch of time before I…

Uncategorized

A little Hiatus… and the return

I have been away awhile since life kind of got crazy. Our dog, Baxter fell ill and it ended up being a brain tumour. We went through the radiation therapy etc., and are now in the dog is getting better but we don’t quite know how long we have with him. Granted it looks optimistic…

OpinionsandPontifications

Chicken and Rice, World citizens….

I thought I was going to put up a chicken and rice recipe that I did at home. But when I started thinking about it, I realized that these two ingredients have travelled the world together and should actually qualify as World Citizens. What I mean by that is that there are versions of…

MainDish

Cous Cous with CHICKEN (Yep I said Chicken)

Traditionally Cous Cous with a Meat and Vegetable stew is always Lamb. I have played with this before by using Beef; I tend to use something like chuck or other tougher stewing kind of cuts of Beef instead of cubed Lamb leg or shoulder. I decided it was time to really play with this and…