Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous, Sides, Vegetarian

Oatmeal

May 18, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Oatmeal

Recipe for steel-cut oats –

Once you try this you may not go back to instant oatmeal. Steel-cut oats includes the whole oat kernel, cut up. These take longer to cook. Instead of cooking it for an hour or more, ignore the package directions and try it this way.

For 2 servings –

The night before – boil 2 cups of water with a little salt. Add one cup of oats (maybe with a handful of pomegranate seeds or dried currents), stir, turn off the heat and cover.
The next morning – add one cup of water (or ½ and ½ water and milk), stir, bring to a low boil then simmer for 10 minutes.

5 Reasons You Should Eat Oatmeal Every Day

Oatmeal! Oatmeal! Oatmeal!

Brown-Butter Chocolate Oatmeal

Miscellaneous

Ice Cream Sandwiches

May 11, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Ice Cream Sandwiches

It’s not summer yet but almost. That’s ice cream time. Cones are OK but my favorite is an ice cream sandwich.

The Classic

I wish this one was sold locally – a Neapolitan in wafers.

Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

Klondike – not just bars

These even look like Oreos

Is a Ding Dong really an Ice Cream Sandwich if it’s made with “frozen dairy dessert?”

National Ice Cream Sandwich Day – August 2nd

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Portfolio and Yelp

Miscellaneous

Deconstructed Recipes

April 20, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Deconstructed Recipes

Marina Ekroos says, “I wanted to inspire people to think about what they eat.”

. . . The very first photo was the Cinnamon Rolls recipe. . .

. . . steps that are represented in the photographs were made into the final dish instead of throwing everything away. This food was shared with neighbours and friends.

More on Marina Ekroos and her recipe deconstructions.

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Portfolio and Yelp

Miscellaneous

Forging a Kitchen Knife

April 10, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Forging a Kitchen Knife

A while back my daughter Kristina gave me a frying pan. It wasn’t just any frying pan, this one was hand crafted by a friend of hers, Marsha Trattner. Masha is a metal worker of the first order. She’s a welder and blacksmith making both functional and artistic items. Her site – She-Weld

Bridget and I recently went to one of Marsha’s forging classes. We started small, making some simple hooks to get a feel for the forge and tools.

Then we started on the main project – making a knife out of a rail road spike. Wei was our instructor and a natural blacksmith. He thoroughly explained every step and checked-in on us often to see how we were doing.

Forging a Kitchen Knife — The heat from the forge singed the hair off my arm.

The basic idea is to heat the metal to make it malleable and then hammer it to draw it out and shape it. Sounds simple but it takes a hell of a lot of hammering, enough to leave me with a sore arm the next day.

After the forging the next step is fine tuning. That’s the grinding. You start with the blackened piece of metal that was once a railroad spike and finish with a shinny and sharp knife.

Miscellaneous

Eat Sumo Style

February 27, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Chanko Nabe (sumo soup) by Naomi Sloman

Chanko Nabe

Eat Sumo Style

Sumo wrestlers want a weight advantage. They average over 400 pounds and work to keep that bulk. They do it by eating Chanko Nabe almost every day. It’s a sort of stew or hot-pot with lots of protein, a delicious broth and varying ingredients. In itself it’s not particularly fattening but in the quantities that it’s eaten, plus lots of beer and a nap after each meal, it does the job.

From Gurunavi

Eat Sumo Style — OSAKA, JAPAN – The Sumo Stable holds open day events for sumo fans to watch their training sessions, take part in sumo exercise classes and eat ‘chanko-nabe’ or ‘sumo stew’; a favourite dish in the diet of sumo wrestlers. (Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

From Atlas Obscura

Chanko Nabe Recipe from Epicurious

Miscellaneous

New York Times – Squab: A Primer

February 16, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

New York Times – Squab: A Primer

The New York Times Food section just did an interesting illustrated article called – Squab: a Primer.

According to Wikipedia – squab is a young domestic pigeon, typically under four weeks old. . . It formerly applied to all dove and pigeon species. . . More recently, squab meat comes almost entirely from domesticated pigeons.

There’s more to pigeons than the ones raised for food and the others you see on city streets. Some people race them as a hobby. There’s also the sport of triganieri that originated in Modena and is still practiced in New York today. And others just like the look of the fancy pigeon breeds.

Some pigeon facts –

A pigeon can fly as high as 6000 feet, at an average speed of 75 mph and cover 600 to 700 miles in day. They’ve passed the ‘mirror test,’ – the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror. They are one of only 6 species and the only non-mammal able to do that. These facts apply to the ones you eat as well as the ones in the street.

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Writing Site and Yelp

Miscellaneous

Chinese Cookbook Illustrations

February 13, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Chinese Cookbook Illustrations

This is definitely worth a look if you interested in Chinese cooking. Even if you’re not, the recipe illustrations are something special.

The Illustrated Wok, a new print collection of hand-illustrated Chinese recipes from 40 chefs around the world. The book pairs each chef with an artist who produces striking and frequently surreal interpretations of the recipe.

Miscellaneous

Family Dinner

February 6, 2018 robiulo Leave a comment

Family Dinner

A family dinner – click on the links for the recipes.

Antipasto – We started with some cheese, suprasade and caponata.

Sunday Gravy – It doesn’t heave to be Sunday for Sunday gravy – pasta and meat simmered in the gravy. This time it was hot pork sausage and beef short ribs.

Gladiatore String-Beans – A very old recipe.

Giambotta – This is a vegetable stew with a twist.

Spezzatino con Piselli – The main course, veal stew with peas.

Soufritte – This was one of my mother’s specialties. Her’s was made with beef heart and lungs, and calve’s liver. I use liver but with chicken hearts and sirloin.

Espresso – How else do you end a meal?

Miscellaneous

Murray’s Sturgeon Shop

December 13, 2017 robiulo Leave a comment

My favorite – the classic lox and cream cheese on a bagel.

Murray’s Sturgeon Shop

I consider myself lucky to live just around the corner from Murray’s. I don’t even have to cross a street to get there. Murray’s Sturgeon Shop has been located at 2429 Broadway since 1946 and although the shop is small and unassuming, it’s famous throughout the City. They deal in specialty foods from egg salad & spinach sandwiches to Bulgerian Osetra caviar ($189.00 per ounce).

Miscellaneous, Sides, Vegetarian

Gladiator Diet

November 29, 2017 robiulo Leave a comment

Pollice Verso (With a Turned Thumb) by Jean Leon Gerome, 1872

Gladiator Diet

I guess everyone has heard of the Paleo Diet – that’s what people ate 10,000 years ago. It’s basically meat, nuts, fruit and vegetables. There’s something a little more current, well, from about 2,000 years ago, the Gladiator Diet. It’s what Roman gladiators ate to stay in fighting condition. And surprisingly, it was almost a completely vegetarian diet.

Barley Gruel

Oat and Seed Cakes

No meat and potatoes for these guys. They ate mostly barley, beans and some pasta too, often flavored with fish sauce, trying to put on enough weight to cushion those sword and spear wounds in the arena. That wasn’t enough to strengthen their bones so they drank a sort of “sports drink,” a mix of wood and bone ash to build up calcium. They also drank goats milk and water but no wine. This combination of food and drink made them fit and tough.

String Beans a la Gladiator (based on what we know they ate and what was commonly available in Rome back then)

Ingredients:

1 lb. string beans
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 chopped onion
4 tbsp gaurm*

*The Romans used a fish sauce called garum. The modern equivalent is colatura di alici.

Preparation:

Boil the string beans for 5 minutes. In another pot sauté the onion in oil until soft, translucent and just beginning to brown. Add the drained, cooked string beans to the onions, add the colatura di alici and about 1/2 cup of the water you boiled the string beans in. Taste for seasoning. Colatura di Alici can be very salty and you may not need any more salt. Simmer for a few minutes and serve.

String Beans a la Gladiator

Some more information on the Gladiator Diet here –

BBC

Archaeology

Science Daily

Definitely not part of the Gladiator Diet

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Writing Site and Yelp

Oatmeal

Recipe for steel-cut oats –

Once you try this you may not go back to instant oatmeal. Steel-cut oats includes the whole oat kernel, cut up. These take longer to cook. Instead of cooking it for an hour or more, ignore the package directions and try it this way.

For 2 servings –

The night before – boil 2 cups of water with a little salt. Add one cup of oats (maybe with a handful of pomegranate seeds or dried currents), stir, turn off the heat and cover.

The next morning – add one cup of water (or ½ and ½ water and milk), stir, bring to a low boil then simmer for 10 minutes.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

It’s not summer yet but almost. That’s ice cream time. Cones are OK but my favorite is an ice cream sandwich.

The Classic

I wish this one was sold locally – a Neapolitan in wafers.

Klondike – not just bars

These even look like Oreos

Is a Ding Dong really an Ice Cream Sandwich if it’s made with “frozen dairy dessert?”

National Ice Cream Sandwich Day – August 2nd

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Deconstructed Recipes

Marina Ekroos says, “I wanted to inspire people to think about what they eat.”

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Forging a Kitchen Knife

Eat Sumo Style

New York Times – Squab: A Primer

Click here for updated GALLERY II

Family Dinner

Murray’s Sturgeon Shop

Gladiator Diet

Reveries and Recipes