| On hunt for Easter leftovers recipes
When I was a kid, Easter was always one of my favorite holidays. You wake up in the morning, and there's your basket with a few toys and lots of candy.
What I find funny is that when I was a kid, the candy lasted a couple of days, but now my kids' candy sits around and the dog will eat half of it. The rest I end up tossing during the summer.
Of course, I should mention the great Easter meals we would have. They were nothing gourmet but just a great home-cooked meal: nice ham, homemade potato salad and green-bean casserole.
The nice thing about a big family meal is the leftovers. I should say spending time with family, but leftovers are better.
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New cookbooks promising speedy meals
When it comes to getting dinner on the table, speed isn't enough. Americans have come to demand gourmet style and flavors from cookbooks that promise fast and easy meals. How does the latest crop hold up?
"Hands-off Cooking," by Ann Martin Rolke (Wiley, 2007, $17.95)
The gist here is that the best fast meals are those that need not be tended to. And so while Rolke's recipes aren't fast by the Rachael Ray 30-minute-standard (the caramelized-onion brisket takes almost seven hours), they are designed to require little hands-on time.
Which is why rather than total start-to-finish times, Rolke offers what she calls hands-off time with each recipe. This does leave prep time a mystery, but she believes it's better to know how long you won't spend at the stove while the recipe cooks.
Bread pudding made in jiffy
Bread pudding doesn't have to be difficult. What started as a budget dessert to use leftover or ``day-old'' bread has become a gourmet, complicated dessert. But it doesn't have to be that way. Even a desperate cook can bake a beautiful bread pudding -- in fact, 12 of them. Today's recipe for Individual Cinnamon-Raisin Bread Puddings makes 12 servings with only about 15 minutes of active work. No double boilers, no standing over pots whisking and stirring, no temperamental, unpredictable maneuvers and no weird ingredients. It's just uncomplicated comfort food that even a novice baker can pull off in a jiffy. INDIVIDUAL CINNAMON-RAISIN BREAD PUDDINGS 1 lb. loaf cinnamon-raisin bread (see note) 4 tbsp. ( ½ stick) butter 2 cups heavy or whipping cream 1 cup low-fat or whole milk, or half-and-half .
FreshDirect And Rosa Mexicano Launch Exclusive Line of Chef ...
NEW YORK, April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- FreshDirect, one of the nation's leading online gourmet food purveyors and delivery services, continues to evolve its selection of prepared foods by launching all-new "Fresh Dining" meals and ready-to-grill items created in partnership with renowned New York City restaurant, Rosa Mexicano. Award-winning chef Roberto Santibanez, Culinary Director of Rosa Mexicano, recently collaborated with FreshDirect's chefs to create a selection of savory, restaurant-worthy dishes perfect for any fiesta. "FreshDirect is delighted to be working with Rosa Mexicano and its talented culinary director, chef Roberto Santibanez," said Steve Michaelson president and CEO of FreshDirect. "The meals in this new line are not only delicious and flavorful, but bring customers an easy way to enjoy authentic home-style Mexican cuisine in the comfort of their own homes." Packaging for the new "Fresh Dining by Rosa Mexicano" features a special valve designed to steam the meal, allowing a variety of raw ingredients to be cooked together.
Make-it-yourself mayo? It's not really that difficult
FORT WORTH, Texas - Most people assume mayonnaise is something you buy in a jar. So what if I told you that you could make your own mayonnaise at home in less time than it would take you to go to the store and buy it? I'm not sure how the idea arose that making mayonnaise at home is a complicated and esoteric process, a task that only gourmet cooks and chefs dare tackle. Yes, the classic whisking-by-hand method can be a little tricky, but with a blender or food processor, it takes just 10 or 15 minutes, and the hardest thing about it is scraping every bit out of the container. If you've never eaten any mayo besides the bought stuff, the rich flavor and delicate texture of the homemade kind will come as a revelation. The bonus for the cook: By presiding over the transformation of egg, oil and liquid into a magically thick, billowy emulsion, you get to feel like an alchemist.
24 hours in the Nitzana dunes
Even long-time Negev residents can't remember such a tremendous profusion of spring blossoms like the ones they've been witnessing during the past few weeks in the dunes of Shivta and Nitzana. Stretching out on either side of the empty road that leads across the border to Egypt are purple carpets of stock (mantur), yellow carpets of Negev groundsels and soft, undulating expanses of verdant vegetation. But the main attraction in this excursion is desert agriculture. The green agricultural areas and large hothouses are not something you necessarily expect to see in a region that receives an average of just 50-100 millimeters of rainfall per year.
In the early centuries C.E., the descendants of the Nabateans grew olives and grapes here by using the rainwater and floodwaters that collected on the loess soil, via a complex system of terraces, small dams and drainage ditches.
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