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.

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. 

Chef Tom – Upping Your Kabab Skills While You Listen to Mugham

Yes. I know. Upping Kabab skills and enjoying Mugham may not be familiar to most of you, but they will be by the time you finish this column. Food and Music are Life.

Now let us begin ….

Chef Tom – Peaches and Passion

Peaches are my favorite fruit. Firm, ripe, juicy. Can’t be beat. We’re in mid-peach season. Eat as many as you can, as often as you can. Here are some yummy recipes to whet your imagination and tantalize your tastebuds.

Chef Tom – TOMatoes

Tomato season. My favorite time of year. All the colors, flavors, textures and…juice. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. When something is in season, eat as much of it as you can. In season means the produce is at peak nutrition. Have tomatoes every day if you can. You’ll maximize the good-for-you.

With tomato season comes all the stone fruit. Their sugars and acid are perfect matches for tomatoes, especially peaches and nectarines. Go for a variety of colors and shapes to make each dish more appealing. Experiment with your own combinations.

Here are just a few of my favorite recipes.

Chef Tom – Salad Niçoise

“Sometimes people mistake the salad bowl for a lawless place of disorganized and mismatched ingredients, chopped and discarded – dried cranberries on pumpkin seeds on soggy corn – which offends even me.”

Chef Tom – ¡Esta muy caliente!

Aguas frescas, water-based fruit drinks, are a cool way to make your fresh fruit go further—especially in the summertime when you might have a larger watermelon than you know what to do with, or peaches that are starting to shrivel.

Chef Tom – Hail Caesar!

Caesar salad is often a crowd pleaser. Here are a couple of versions sure to get your guests drooling, and standing with their plates at the door of your kitchen.