Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Food. Books. What's not to love? With the end of 2015 looming, I've decided that I need a new reading challenge for 2016. While I review cookbooks for different publishers, take part in the bi-monthly challenge Cook the Books , and am at the helm of a year long Book Club Cookbook Cooking Project , I recently came across the Foodies Read Challenge 2016   hosted by Heather at  Based On A True Story . I have just boxed up shelf-loads of books as we prepare for a major house remodel. But I have left enough out to attempt this challenge. I hope you'll enjoy following along. I will post the titles I've read, beginning in January, as well as linking to the monthly lists at  Based On A True Story . You should gain some great titles to add to your own shelf - or use as gifts for your favorite foodie bookworm. Heather has five Foodie Read Challenge Levels... Short-Order Cook: 1 to 3 books Pastry Chef: 4 to 8 books Sous-Chef: 9 to 13 books Chef ...

One of  February challenges  for the  Jamie Oliver Food Revolution  Ambassadors ( I'm the Monterey #FRD2015 rep! ) is to... Cook for Your Loved Ones! We've been watching Season Two of Mind of a Chef , featuring Chef Sean Brock. He does a Low Country Boil in one episode. And it looked positively amazing. My twelve-year-old requested a clambake on the beach for our Valentines' Day dinner. What a fabulous adventure! Click for that recipe post: Sweethearts' Seafood Boil . Earlier in the day I made bacon roses, Potato Roses, and perfectly poached eggs. Because my three have more pronounced sweet tooths than I do, I usually make a treat as well...some kind of truffle. This year, a couple of days early, I made Rosewater Truffles with Rose Crystals . They were delicious if I might say so myself. Did you cook for your loved ones on Valentines'?  What did you make?

This challenge is one that I failed. Well, I failed it as far as my friend who levied it is concerned. Richard's challenge was actually for me to buy Hot Pockets in a box and heat them in a microwave.  I knew I was going to fail based on those criteria alone. First, I would never buy Hot Pockets in a box; second, I don't own a microwave. But I was determined to make Hot Pockets that I would be proud to serve. In that regard, it was a huge success. I even heard murmurs... let's tell her that it wasn't quite right. Then she'll have to make them again. I raised the question on social media about favorite Hot Pocket flavors and the one that sounded good to me: sausage and mushroom. So, I started with some empanada dough and stuffed it with a saute of Italian sausage with shitakes and oyster mushrooms. Ingredients  makes approximately 5 half-plate sized pockets Dough 3 C flour 1 egg yolk ½ C butter 1 C milk, warmed (I used whole milk) ½ ...

When I saw this Twelve Loaves Challenge on one of my favorite blogger's - Heather of girlichef - streams, I decided to join the fun. Bread? Herbs? Yes, please. My younger son has become quite the gardener this summer. So, I had him bring me a bunch of herbs from his garden. He gave me a mixture of parsley, two kinds of mint, chives, two kinds of oregano, and thyme. I've been meaning to make stuffed parantha for quite awhile, so I decided to take it off my to-cook list and make it for this project. Done. Parantha is a compound of the words parat and atta which literally means dough ( atta ) layers ( parantha ). Ingredients For parantha 3 C whole wheat flour 1 T olive oil warm water to knead the dough, I used about 1 C 1 T fresh herbs, minced For filling 3 new red potatoes, boiled 1/4 C fresh herbs, minced  1/2 t ground coriander 1 t ground cumin freshly ground salt freshly ground pepper butter (to cook the parantha) Procedure Plac...

We Should Cocoa meets Random Recipes. Those are two different monthly cooking challenges. And they are colliding for the month of February. Since I never pass up the chance to challenge myself in the kitchen, I'm in!  Click to read the full details:  here   and  here .   If you want to join the fun, you have till February 26th to pick and cook your random chocolate recipe. Step One:  collect the cookbooks. I have an embarrassingly large number of cookbooks whose covers have never been cracked. In this case, I only put chocolate and cake cookbooks in the running. Step Two:  pick the recipe. The Kitchen Elves - and my Love - helped. They love games...and especially delight in anything that unnerves me. 'Let's find something Mommy would never usually make!' First, they each picked a cookbook from the stack and randomly opened to a page.     Then, I let them hash it out. They voted. They cajoled. They swayed th...

Okay, I was intrigued by this challenge : to write a recipe in 132 characters or less. So, I gave it a shot... #140food Earthy Braised Lamb Shanks. Dredge lamb shanks in flour. Brown in oil. Braise for 3 hours in coffee and beer with shitake mushrooms And here's my actual, verbose recipe post . Think they'd turn out the same? Probably not.

When my friend posted this on her Facebook wall, my culinary gears immediately started to spin. She wrote: "So, Auntie Cam, Gabe has a food challenge for you...Tonight in his bath he was making a concoction in a cup. He added broccoli and cucumbers and noodles...then an interesting combo of strawberries and Brussels sprouts...I told him I was going to ask  you to come up with a strawberries and Brussels sprouts recipe for him. Any ideas?" Of course I have ideas! And I just wish I could give my intrepid lil' culinary genius a hug and a kiss tonight. Thanks for the inspiration, Gabe. As soon as I get my hands on a stalk of Brussels sprouts, I am making this! Blanched Brussels Sprouts Salad with Stawberry-Balsamic Vinaigrette For Gabe with Love from Auntie Cam Brussels Sprouts, as all cruciferous vegetables do, get bitter and sulphury when they are overcooked. You can do this salad raw, but I prefer to blanch the leaves so they are a little bit more sweet. This ...

Andrew Wilder, of Eating Rules , started this three years ago - a month of eating only unprocessed foods. And while we are a household that eats very little packaged food, we do have processed ingredients. But, on second look, Andrew offers this: "Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with whole-food ingredients. I call it “The Kitchen Test.” If you pick up something with a label (if it doesn’t have a label, it’s probably unprocessed), and find an ingredient you’d never use in your kitchen and couldn’t possibly make yourself from the whole form, it’s processed. It doesn’t mean you actually have to make it yourself, it just means that for it to be considered “unprocessed” that you could , in theory, do so." Since I could make my own pasta, pasta from the store can fit the bill?!? But even though I make my own jam, I don't make my own sugar...how does that fit into the rules? I'm guessing ja...

One of the great things about being part of a community of foodies is that different blogger's posts encourage me to stretch and cook something challenging or new-to-me. Love it! I came across this invitation from Nayna of the  Simply.Food blog: " Inviting Adventurous foodies to cook for flavours of Singapore event." Okay, I'm in! The rules - "Prepare a vegetarian dish with Singaporean flavor and flair. And do it during the month of January." I can do that. Perusing her suggested websites for recipes, my mouth began to water at the combinations of spices and I could just imagine the aroma that would be drifting from my kitchen. Though many different dishes caught my eye - bean curd with crab sauce and coconut pork, for instance - the limitation of making a vegetarian dish drew to me this dessert, a colorful carrot pudding. Scented with cardamom and studded with cashews, it's delicious and so easy! So while my husband and older son were working on...