#goodeats Archives

Eat a Little Better with Sam Kass

By threejamigos | May 9, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

I received Sam Kass’s book, Eat a Little Better: Great Flavor, Good Health, Better World to review QUITE a while ago. I wasn’t too busy and it wasn’t because I didn’t feel like looking at it. On the contrary, I really liked the book and kept finding recipes I wanted to try before posting. For those of you not familiar with Sam, he was the personal chef to President Obama’s family and worked with FLOTUS on her healthy eating initiative. Yes, I am biased and really wanted to like this book (plus he is easy on the eyes-I didn’t just write that, did I?). Luckily I can, in good conscience say, its a winner.

Eat A little better My fridge — Work in progress. Yep, all those fruits and vegetables were hidden in the bins below.

I love the stories about the White House, the first family and Sam’s tips on healthy eating and cooking. The first change I implemented was rearranging my fridge. I moved my fruits and vegetables to bowls and see-through containers. Now, when I open the door my weekend farmer’s market bounty is staring me in the face instead of hidden in the “the crisper”. No longer out of sight, out of mind. Be honest, who hasn’t pulled out an unidentifiable fuzzy green object that might have once been an apple or orange, or worse a forgotten cucumber that morphed into a slimy swamp creature…ewwwww.

Those ignored apples stashed in the crisper? Placed front and center, a visible “I’m here” reminder, turned into a couple of delicious apple crisps.

The recipes are straightforward, uncomplicated, some healthy, some homey, some both. Right up my alley. I LOVE sweet potatoes so a recipe for a trio of dips/toppings for baked sweet potatoes caught my eye. It reminded me of an absolutely scrumptious charred sweet potato with a bone marrow Salsa Negra appetizer I had at Cala in San Francisco. The potatoes were tender, smoky and sweet. Borrowing from Smitten Kitchen, I slow roasted the potatoes in the oven and finished them under the broiler for that nice char. The toppings, an herbalicious sour cream, and a brown butter orange juice were a snap to prepare. I nixed the bacon dip and made the topping for Kaddo, an Afghani dish of braised pumpkin topped with two sauces, a tomato meat sauce, and a garlic-mint yogurt sauce. The sweet potato stood in for the pumpkin, pretty yummy. It deserves its own post which is coming soon.

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Sweet Potato In-skin Mash-ups

Ingredients

4-6 Whole Roasted Sweet Potatoes I used Smitten Kitchen recipe see link

Brown Butter-Orange Juice

6 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into chunks
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
Kosher salt

Herbed Sour Cream

3/4 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh chives or green onions
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Kosher salt

Instructions

While sweet potatoes are roasting you will have plenty of time to throw these sauces together.

Brown butter-orange juice

Place butter chunks in saucepan, preferably a light color one so you can see the butter turn color. Place over medium heat and let the butter melt and bubble, swirl the pot occasionally. The butter will foam and then start to color. Watch carefully, the milk particles will turn a nice toasty brown, remove from the heat and pour butter into a heatproof bowl.
Stir in orange juice and 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Make a slit lengthwise in each potato, season with more salt. Smoosh it with a fork and drizzle the sauce on the sweet potato.
Serve immediately.

Herbed Sour Cream

In a small bowl, combine sour cream, chives, thyme and lemon juice. Mix until well blended. Season with a 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Split potato, season with salt and place a generous dollop of the sour cream in the potato.
Serve immediately.

Next, Butternut Squash and Kale Fried Rice. The sweetness of the squash meshed well with the saltiness of the bacon and the slight bite of the kale. Surprisingly good and easy to make. Feel free to use any kind of rice, use a mix of green onions and yellow onions and season to taste with soy sauce. DON’T SKIP THE EGG.

Leftover roast chicken? Sam’s tasty recipe for Chicken Salad was the perfect answer. Red onion, crispy green beans, fresh thyme, and mayo to bind. A breeze to put together. For a touch of sweetness, grapes or diced apples would be a nice addition.

How could I not try the dish featured on his cover? Braised Chicken with Olives and Oranges. Bold, bright flavors, sweet from the oranges and tangy from the olives, like tennis a love match. Even better the second day when the flavors mellowed and melded together.

You can see why it took me so long to review!

His Slow Roasted Pork served as the base for a couple of quick and delicious meals. I still had plenty left despite continually pulling shreds of pork off the bone and popping it into my mouth.

Eat A Little Better Slow Roasted Pork — Slow Roasted Pork out of the oven

First meal-CARNITAS. Topped with a cabbage slaw, homemade salsa, cilantro, and onions on warm corn tortillas, darn fine tacos.

Eat A Little Better Carnitas Tacos — Carnitas Tacos

Second meal-Rigatoni with Pork Ragu. Onions, tomatoes, slow roasted pork and a handful of grated Parmesan, so simple and satisfying.

So, verdict? Wonderful, simple, straightforward cookbook with some sage advice. I plan to use this book a lot. Hope you will too.

The Sheldon Trifecta (Maui Eats Part 2)

By threejamigos | March 19, 2018 | Comments 2 comments

Are you a fan of Top Chef?

For those of you who are, go ahead and skip to the next paragraph.

For those of you who aren’t…shame on you! Just kidding. Hubby and I love this show and have been watching it religiously since it first came on the air. Taking advantage of the popularity of reality TV land competition, Bravo came up with a show pitting cooks against each other. Think of it as Survivor for Chefs. Thirteen Chefs battle it out for weeks until “there can be only one”.

Every week a new cooking challenge results in the elimination of one of the chefs by a panel of judges. The judges include Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, Gail Simmons and a rotation of guest chefs. They and the guest chefs are all rock stars in the culinary world.

The Real Hunger Games

This isn’t your cook me something yummy and may the best dish win. This is, make me a Michelin meal out of ingredients you find in a gasoline station mini-mart or the office vending machine.

My favorite episode is restaurant wars. They divide into teams, come up with a concept, build a dining space to match the concept and menu, and boom make it happen on a limited budget of both time and money. Needless to say, it’s quite entertaining.

One of my all-time favorite contestants is Sheldon Simeon from Hawaii. Sheldon is the classic island boy, laid back, and cooks straight from the heart. His grandmother served as his inspiration. His food roots, Asian/Filipino/Hawaiian home cooking with a twist that elevates simple to sublime. I jumped on Team Sheldon early and was totally bummed when he did not win. He went home to the islands back to Star Noodle on Maui.

So, of course, it became my mission on this trip to eat at there.

Put Star Noodle on your Maui bucket list.

The food is delicious, it is down-home comfort food that starts with impeccable ingredients and finishes with a contemporary flair. The chicken wings were sweet, salty, spicy, crispy, and light. The garlic noodles are simple but packed with flavor. If you like pork belly…get the Pinoy version of Bacon & Eggs, sizzling chunks of pure porky goodness with a perfectly cooked 6-minute egg that oozes over the pork, yum. Elvis would be jealous.

The malasadas, come to the table as little pillowy bites of sweetness accompanied by chocolate and caramel sauces. If Leonard’s malasadas had hipster kids, these would be it. Ironically I thought the ramen was just ok, but then again I’m from Cali y’all where good ramen can be found everywhere.

Halfway between Kaanapali and the Maui Airport, sits Leoda’s Kitchen & Pie Shop. It’s across from the beach off of Honoapi’ilani Hwy (try to say that 10 times real fast) in an unassuming strip, if you blink, you will miss it. On my way to a Henry Kapono and Friends concert, I made a pitstop at Leoda’s. I chose the banana cream pie, Island Lime Pie, and 2 savory hand pies.

Bananas for Banana Cream Pie

The standout was the banana cream pie. Yum. The hand pies had too much crust and not enough filling. I LOVE crust so this was surprising me, wishing for a bit more filling. I kept the banana cream pie to share with the birthday girl.

So there we were Pam, Randi, and me sitting on the lanai overlooking the beach, eating pie, fresh mangoes, and papayas, sipping on our morning coffee-paradise found.

Checked out Henry of Cecilio & Kapono. One of the best-known musical duets from the islands, folk meets island music. While my friends were dining at Roy’s I was enjoying the music of Henry Kapono which immediately transported me back in time to my first visit to the islands.

On the way to the airport…because I can never get enough island grindz, we stopped at Tin Roof. We were fifth in line before the joint opened. Might have been first if we hadn’t stopped for gas..just sayin’. Tin Roof is Sheldon’s casual eatery, actually, it’s strictly take-out. There is a bench in front but that’s where everyone sits waiting to get in. Life’s 1st world island problems…

The star of Tin Roof is the bowls. Poke’, Pork Belly, Mochiko Chicken. You can choose to have the mains with rice or garlic noodles. I liked the poke bowl the best. The food here is fresh and flavorful, broke da mouth not the bank good. He has these vegan-like dessert Pono Pies that for me were just meh. I’d rather head out for shaved ice at Ululani’s instead.

All I can say is so many places to eat, so little time….my review of Sheldon’s eats was totally objective and professional…I am not at all starstruck and I offer proof.

HOLY JUMPING CATFISH, SHELDON WAS AT TIN ROOF!!!! So I asked to take one photo, yeah..I’m a groupie.