By now you've heard about our campaign to produce a cooking show in 2016. If you haven't, check it out here: igg.me/at/kitchenshamancooks. To celebrate the project, we're having a party in Phoenix -- and you're invited!
Join us Saturday, October 24th (6 - 8 pm) at Urban Beans Cafe in Phoenix for an evening of fun, food, and a preview of what you can expect from our cooking show.
I recently attended the 4th Ave Roosevelt Row Chile Festival here in Phoenix, AZ. While there was no program that listed time of events, including the chef demos, there were many food vendors with unexpected vegan options.
UB pulled jackfruit tacoHere in the Southwest we celebrate the blend of chilies and chocolate, a combination that was the pride of the Aztecs and was in abundance at the Festival. My favorite coffee shop, Urban Beans, dished up a chili dipped in chocolate.
It’s the fall season which means all things pumpkin, from pies to lattes, ravioli to smoothies. Grocery stores are stocked to the rafters with orange covered boxes and cans. This is also the time of year I purchase sugar pie pumpkins, cut them open, gut them, and roast them to make a pumpkin puree to last throughout the year.
Pumpkins are a symbol of the fall harvest. They invoke in us the feeling that summer is over and winter approaches. As the leaves on trees turn, pumpkins are harvested and piled up in attractive displays in the grocery stores, ready for us to pick, choose, and buy.
After months of planning, we're pleased to announce that we are launching a crowdfunding campaign today, October 1st. We want to turn the things you love about this blog into a web series and we need your help.
We have created a number of videos showing you recipes, cooking tips, and me eating things and you can see them on the Kitchen Shaman YouTube Channel. We want to take this to the next level, renting equipment and hiring a professional crew to bring you a higher quality program. We're asking you to help make that happen.
The month of October brings one of the days that all my friends love to celebrate: Halloween. But before we jump ahead to the time of the veil lifting between the living and the dead, let’s look at what foods are celebrated this month.
It’s National Vegetarian Awareness Month and if you don’t know about this, it just means you can start looking at your beans, rice, fruits, and vegetables in a different way.
Now that I don’t cook in professional kitchens, I can sit back and take an objective view of my chosen career. It’s a brutal job. We ran morning to night. Food is all I thought about. Personalities were a focus. Who I was working with that day affected my mood.
girlcooking_bwIt may seem like cooking is a solo act. Something that you do in your own home, alone, or one lone wolf competing against other renegades to win some title or money, but that really isn’t the case. In the professional culinary world it takes a team of people – sometimes dozens or even hundreds – to create an enjoyable dining experience, one plate at a time.
Chocolate and chilies, as we’ve discovered, go together. I’ve played with this dessert aspect in a chili chocolate mousse and there are several chocolate bars on the market that celebrate the marriage of these two foods, but what about the savory realm? There isn’t much documentation that states the Aztecs combined chocolate in their main dishes. Chocolate was a drink not an ingredient to be added to food.
I decided to experiment with the combination in the savory realm. I took quinoa (from South America) and added chilies and chocolate (from Central America and Mexico). The heat of the chilies plays off the chocolate and binds into the quinoa bringing a bite of contrast to your mouth.
Chocolate pervades every part of our society, from candy bars to hot cocoa, from truffles to molten lava cakes. Most of us enjoy a good chocolate bar any day of the week and a steaming mug of cocoa can warm the soul on a cold winter’s evening. Chocolate is the food of lovers, given on Valentine’s Day to show devotion. Supposedly cacao contains some aphrodisiac qualities, but before you exchange Viagra for chocolate, remember that this has not been proven yet.
However you like your chocolate, what exactly are you enjoying and why? Reams of paper and millions of computer bytes have been used to explain chocolate, argue its merits, and dispel or repute myths.
National Potato Month is underway and I hope you are all enjoying this glorious, versatile food. If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that potatoes are one of my favorite foods -- and a favorite of the Spouse as well.
In honor of this month-long celebration, take a look back at some of the recipes I've shared that feature the potato.
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