Chef Tom – Crying Tiger Buttered Steak

Something delicious by one of my very favorite chefs, Marion Grasby, from Australia. Back in May, I wrote about making compound butters. This is an excellent demonstration of the technique. Cooking a beautiful steak and then slathering it with a flavored butter is the height of luxury.

Pat Blythe- Catch up…..Christmas kiboshed…..and music

This week’s column is a bit of a mish mash. It’s been six weeks since my last writing and so much has happened (or not happened)! Where to begin?? Let’s see….another variant tanking Christmas and New Year’s Eve for so many of us; a giant roast turkey all dressed up with nowhere to go; dating my couch; a quiet but lovely New Year’s Eve; Christmas decorations still hanging about, and the storage bins to put away; the closing of “indoor damn near everything”; back to dating my couch, but now we’ve got a threesome going with the fridge…..yep, so much has happened!

Chef Tom, The Tourtière, and the Sonically Silky Bruno from Mars

For my neighbors to the North. Here’s something you might all be familiar with, but it’s a helluva idea for leftovers. Good on its own, too, of course. This is from one of my favorite food authors, Sam Sifton, from the New York Times. The recipe is an undertaking, but so worth the time. Pay attention to what Chef McMillan says below.

Chef Tom – A Little on the Side: Not Just For Thanksgiving Anymore

Editor’s Note – Submitted before American Thanksgiving, Chef’s column offers up some recipes that are perfect for the cold winter months ahead as well as the traditional holiday meal. Swerve these anytime the need arises for comforting additions to your dinner that also bring with them fine reminders of family gatherings and good times. Thank you.

My favorite Thanksgiving side dish has always been the stuffing. Especially the crispy bits. Savory, carb-y, fatty…you know, all the good stuff. One of my go-to flavor enhancers that I figured out way back in the mid-seventies when I was just starting out on my culinary career, is caramelized onions.

Miso Hungry

If you’ve never had anything with miso in it, it’s an amazing, beautifully umami, easy to use miracle-food that’s chock full of all kinds of healthy stuff. Japanese have been making it for millennia. If the only way you’ve experienced it is as an accompaniment to some yummy sushi, then you’d do well to know that this odd looking paste can elevate just about anything you cook.

The ingredients that give the following recipe its name, miso and maple syrup, are strong characters, but they play well with each together. Their flavors are warm and satisfying, mellow and not immediately knowable at first, hovering in that space between sweet and savory. Coarse-crumbed and sturdy, easy to slice, easy to serve at both breakfast and to pick up and nibble in the afternoon. Good with butter and jam or with a little cheese. And it keeps well: It’ll hold at room temperature for about 4 days.

Pat Blythe – Musings…..thanks…..a few shows…..and music

Is it me, or are the days and weeks running into each other? It feels like I just finished a column and here I am writing another…..albeit late as usual. Today was one of those days where you just seem to bounce from one thing to the next. A 3am bedtime call after spending hours editing today’s podcast, was not conducive to an early morning rise, simply to rush downtown and open my maw for the dentist. Two hours later and I feel like my mouth has received the white glove treatment. Mr. Clean and the Lysol Lady have thoroughly cleaned and sanitized my mouth. Everything is now shipshape and spotless…..just don’t eat. It’s kind of like after your mom cleaned, tidied and dusted the living room. You couldn’t sit anywhere!

Roxanne Tellier – Move It On Over

I’ll just put it out there .. I hate moving. I like looking at other houses that are staged to sell, and imagining what it would be like to live there. I like watching DIY experts slap $40 worth of paint onto walls, transform a wood pallet into a piece of luxurious furniture, and change a blah room into a stunning piece of art. In the past, I myself have spent major dollars and worked insanely long hours, hoping to make a sow’s ear into a silk purse. DIY porn. It’s a thing.

Chef Tom – Chicken with Mushrooms, High South, and Sam

I made this over the weekend. Man is it good. Rich with the cream, but hey, cream is a whole food, and the natural saturated fat is good for your brain. You need this dish to feed your head, so you can figure out what’s for dessert..

Chef Tom – The Big Push

Simple, stripped down, unplugged, call it what you will. This is bachelor food, college dorm eats, too tired to cook snacks, I’m-the-only-one-eating-but-I-still-want-something-tasty kinda food.

Chef Tom – Food Fusion and The Silk Road Ensemble

Not to be confused with CON-fusion. Some ultra-PC folks wax expert about cultural appropriation. Well, the one place where that construct has no business being, is in the kitchen. Every dish you cook has had multiple influences from multiple cultures. Even if I were relegated to only cooking white boy food from Northern California (eeew), there would be zero recipes that I could cook that hadn’t originated from someplace OTHER than my own neighborhood. Even my own neighborhood evolved from countless cultures other than my own.

Fusion is the result of natural evolution, IMHO. The world is one big magical soup. The parable of Stone Soup makes my point. Without the generous influence from the other cultures around us, life would be unbearably dull.