Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Join The Hundred-Foot Journey 5 ingredient challenge.  Submit your culinary creation using all 5 ingredients. Ready, set, cook! (from the movie's Facebook page ) Okay, since it doesn't read "...using only these 5 ingredients..." I am adding a few others - broth, marscarpone, and a cheese. Here's our Hundred-Foot Journey Brown Rice Risotto. This isn't too much of a challenge; we use most of those ingredients all the time. A challenge might have been to cook with urchin. But, we did that already, too. Here is D's Spiced Coconut- Sea Urchin Soup . Ingredients  makes 8 servings, required ingredients for the challenge are in bold 2 cloves of garlic, minced 2 T butter splash of olive oil 2 C sliced fresh mushrooms (I used a medley of mushrooms from Far West Fungi that included oysters, trumpets, and shitakes) 4 C organic short grain brown rice 6 C stock 2 C boiling water 8 oz marscarpone cream 4 mild Italian sausages fleur de sel ...

When I saw that Love & Olive Oil was hosting a Tamales Kitchen Challenge  this month, I was very excited. I needed an excuse to make  nacatamales again. However, the instructions came with a caveat: "...but they do need to be traditionally wrapped in corn-husks…." Hmmm...Honduran  nacatamales  are traditionally steamed in banana leaves instead of corn husks. Not wanting to break the rules of the challenge, I sent Lindsay and Taylor a message. The answer: "They're wrapped and steamed in the same way right? If so, definitely ok!" Fantastic. Here we go. So, while R went to his mandolin lesson, the Enthusiastic Kitchen Elf and I went to the Asian market for banana leaves and the Mexican market for Salvadorean cream (it's like a thin sour cream). Our nacatamales aren't completely traditional because I cook the meat before stuffing them and I also skipped the lard. This recipe made approximately 24 nacatamales . When you're working wit...