Playing With My Food ~
A journal about food, thought, travel, and life; by Chef & Raconteur Chaz French.

Archives for March 2012

Misadventures in gluten-free baking

No, I am not going “Gluten-Free” or “GF” it ain’t happening. But I have friends with gluten issues from confirmed celiac, to people who just feeling better without gluten, so I’ve decided to see what’s involved in faking gluten.  So far what’s involved is a lot of money!  Baking gluten-free is fucking pricey. Ingredients from […]

Baked Sundays

Welcome to Baked Sundays, wherein I bake and share on Sunday.  The photos at least you get today, the recipe was a first draft, so while you’ll get to see my chocolate/ginger/yogurt cake, and I get to eat it, you have to wait a bit to try it yourselves. Happy Baked Sunday! Tweet

Orange Loaf for Lionel

So, my buddy Lionel is a dessert man but he prefers the use of chocolate to be limited; he feels it’s overused in desserts, and he has a point. And it was a chocolate orange bread from Nigella Lawson, that got me thinking about an orange loaf, but I didn’t want a pound cake, or […]

Persian Kotlet

Kotlet is a Persian dish made from ground meat, mashed potato, onion, herbs and spices.  It’s damn tasty, and dead easy to make.  If you can make a meatball, you can make this, it’s that easy.  It’s also an easy way to impress your friends with how ‘cultural’ you are. ;^)  Serve with rice and […]

Penzeys Spices

People often ask where I shop, when I lived in the NYC metro area my answer when it came to spices was Penzeys at Grand Central Market.  Since moving to Berkeley I’ve had to get my Penzeys fix via their website. I got a shipment from them on Friday, a small order really.  Penzeys doesn’t […]

Why I decided to quit facebook…

Hello there, as you might have noticed things around here are getting a little livelier, lemmetellya what happened. In the process of finding a new place to live, I also had to set up a place to stay as a backup for 11 days, (odd, yes, long story not being told).  The house I was […]

What Remains…

Gets a makeover. I used the leftover beer braised oxtail, and salsa verde to make a twist on Heuvos Rancheros.  Here I simmered the oxtail meat in the salsa verde served with two eggs over medium, refried beans, and corn tortillas, with a few dashes of Tapatio hot sauce. Tweet

Salsa Verde With Roasted Tomatillo

  This is a fast easy recipe for a salsa verde that is bright and flavorful. Salsa Verde – Time 30 minutes, Yield aprrox 2 cups. Ingredients: 1 pound tomatillos 2 teaspooons olive oil 1/4 cup red onion, minced 2 cloves of garlic, minced 1/3 bunch of cilantro, finely chopped 1 jalapeno or 1/2 an […]

Oxtail tacos with cuitlacoche, goat cheese, and salsa verde

Cuitlacoche is a fungus that grows on corn, in the United States, the FDA has gone to great lengths to eliminate this blight known as “Corn Smut,” in parts of Mexico they intentionally inoculate corn with the spores that deform the kernels and grow these fungal tumors.  They are intensely delicious, and they’re now being […]

Beer Braised Oxtails

Ingredients: 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed or 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh, chopped 1 tablespoon dried parsley 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 2 dashes cayenne 1, two inch piece of green chili, minced (polbano,or other mild-medium chili) 3 cloves of garlic, minced 1/4 cup ruby red grapefruit juice 1 bottle (12ounces) Lagunitas IPA 1 1/2 to […]