Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Last year was the first time I made hoecakes to celebrate Presidents' Day . Actually it was the first time I'd ever made hoecakes at all...forget about making them for a specific event. I was inspired by my friend and culinary genius Jenn of Rook No. 17  who always does everything with such panache. The boys loved the hoecakes...and I actually knew where the book was this year.    So, we read George Washington's Breakfast by Jean Fritz and cooked Hoecakes v.2 before I dropped the boys off with my parents and headed to work. Although, I didn't check my pantry last night and when I dug into the flours, this morning, I discovered that we didn't have any cornmeal. I had corn flour. Same grain, different texture, right? I say 'close enough.' It worked for us. 1 C white whole wheat flour 1 C corn flour 1 t baking powder 1 T raw sugar 2 large eggs 1 C organic milk 1 T freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice 1/2 C butter, melted Put all of the dry ingredients in...

Here's the third installment of the Food Matters Project , the brainchild of Sarah of 20somethingcupcakes and Kate from Cookie + Kate . When I read the mission - cooking through The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman who espouses eating more plants, fewer animal products and processed foods, and the positive impact of those choices on us and our planet - I was in. Each week we will all - here's the ' we ' and we've grown to just over two dozen fellow foodie bloggers - cook the same recipe, posting our interpretations and adaptations. This week Heather, of girlichef.com  and a personal favorite of mine, assigned us Mark's Roasted Red Pepper and Walnut Pesto. [Recipe is below.*] Click here for our hostess's post. Or click here , and look in the comments, to see what the others whipped up. I substituted ingredients to match what we had on-hand and to accommodate personal preferences - my family isn't big on walnuts. Then I used the pesto as a ...

Dylan took us to Bolivia for dinner tonight. His dinner - and dessert - featured three very common Bolivian ingredients: peanuts, potatoes, and coconut. Our main dish was a version of Pipían de Gallina (Peanut-Stewed Chicken).  There are versions that are complicated; I found a version that was fairly simply and used peanut butter. Okay, maybe that isn't the most traditional recipe, but it tasted good! olive oil minced garlic chopped fennel chicken boullion chicken, boneless, skinless and cubed salt and pepper to taste carrots, coined potatoes, cubed organic peanut butter Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium-high flame. Add the garlic and fennel. Saute until slightly brown. Add chicken and cook through. Add carrots, potatoes, salt and pepper and cook till fork tender. Pour in boullion, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 10 minutes. Whisk a little of the hot broth into the peanut butter to thin it out a bit. Then stir the peanut butter into ...

We are continuing with the 'B's in our cooking around the world adventure, venturing to Bhutan for dinner tonight. A dinner with Bhutan-esque flavors, I suppose, since I didn't use the correct meat or the correct grain. Oh, well. It was tasty. Bhutan is a small, land-locked nation that is sandwiched between India and China in the foothills of the Himalayas. And its cuisine does seem to echo both of those traditions in a way. Bhutanese Chicken This recipe is typically made with chunks of chicken as a spicy stir-fry. I had chicken drumsticks, so we went with that. I didn't have any Bhutanese red rice - just ran out - and didn't want to go to the store; so I served the chicken with plain ol' brown basmati rice. 3 T cornstarch 3 T white whole wheat flour 1/2 t ground paprika 1/2 t ground ginger chicken butter olive oil 3 T sesame seeds 2 T minced garlic 1/4 C roasted bell peppers (I had yellow) 2 T minced fresh ginger 1/4 C  soy sa...

We headed to West Africa for a Beninese feast tonight. Present-day Benin was the site of the African kingdom of Dahomey and, then, a French colony. And its cuisine reflects both its location on the African continent, on the Gulf of Guinea, and its historical ties to France. Riley cooked, Dylan folded laundry (to stay out of the way), and, for his part, Jake had Benin-born Angélique Kidjo streaming on pandora. A full family affair on this Friday night... Riley and I created a Benin-style Crab Stew that was a mixture of a few different Beninese recipes. Slow-stewed okra and tomatoes were a delicious base for this seafood concoction. "Mushed" and "smashed" seem to be the texture of choice for Beninese food. They have a dish called 'Pâte Rouge' which translates, literally, as "red paste." Not a very appetizing name, in my opinion. I opted to cook cassava and plantains until 'mushable' and then I put Riley to work with the potato masher. ...

This wasn't a real recipe I found from Benin, but rather a combination of a few different recipes. I liked the flavors of  sauce gumbo (slow-stewed okra and tomatoes) and ago glain (crab seasoned with pili-pili ). So I combined them and came up with this. Pili-pili most often refers to African Birdseye peppers, but since  pili-pili simply means "pepper-pepper" and is a generic term for any African chile, I used a poblano chile I had in the fridge. I learned this today: the name for okra sounds like 'gumbo' in several African dialects. For something to be called a gumbo, it should contain okra. Interesting. okra poblano chile minced garlic sliced tomatoes chicken boullion crab meat, cooked and cleaned paprika smoked sea salt In a large flat-bottomed pan, soften the garlic and chile in a pat of butter with a splash of olive oil. Add the tomatoes, okra, and chicken boullion. Cook until the okra is cooked through. There's a reason Peace Corp volunteers...

We are continuing with the 'B's in our cooking around the world adventure, venturing to Belize for dinner tonight. I found two simple recipes that could be whipped up while helping the boys with homework and still feeling behind after our glorious four day weekend. One ingredient is ubiquitous in Belizean cuisine: the coconut. They use every part of the coconut. The dried husk is used for stoking the cooking fires; the water, milk, or cream is a drink or the base of sauce; the meat is grated for a number of uses. I used coconut milk in the rice and beans and to simmer the fish. Yum-mo. Belizean Rice and Beans brown basmati rice red kidney beans, cooked coconut milk water minced garlic pink Himalaya salt flower pepper Mix all the ingredients in a medium pot and cook the way you would usually cook rice. Belizean Fish Stew fish coconut milk tomatoes fresh herbs minced garlic paprika pink Himalaya salt flower pepper In a large flat-bottomed pan, bring the...