food

I've seen plenty of Asian sesame snacks like this, but there's apparently a very similar Greek one.  Can you guess which of the above is from Greece and which is from Taiwan?  Both are packaged in 100g bars of sweet sesame goodness, but there's one important difference: the Taiwanese version has a bit of salt in it.  The ingredients listed for the Greek one are: sesame(67%), glucose syrup, sugar, and honey; the Taiwanese one contains sesame(66.7%), sugar(20.7%), maltose(7.5%), and salt(0.1%).  It's funny to think that there's probably corn in the Greek one, given that glucose syrup is usually made from cornstarch. 

This recipe is based on Paula's. I reduced the butter, caramelized onions, and replaced the celery with asparagus.   Celery supposedly doesn't have much of a taste for some people, but I find it rather unpleasant.  I considered using frozen peas, but I already had fresh asparagus so in that went.  The proportions of the recipes come out to about 3 cups of vegetables, 2.5 pounds of meat, and about 3 cups of sauce.  Onions reduce quite a bit when you caramelize them, so I sarted with more onion.
 

I decided to have a tea party with a few lovely friends and made some crème brûlée based on the recipes at Cooking for Engineers and Food Network.  The amount of egg yolk varies between recipes and in my experience, most people won't notice the difference if you skip the vanilla bean and just use vanilla extract.  Paula Deen has a chocolate version.

Ingredients:

• 16 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 quart of heavy cream
• 1 vanilla bean

Instructions:

Some of my favorite recipes are extremely simple, and I have a few favorite ingredients I use regularly, but it's good to have a variety of herbs, spices, and seasoning mixes to keep your food exciting.  Here's a list of the seasonings and stuff I happen to have next to the stove.  I'm not attached to any particular brand, but the ones with built-in grinders are nice and I've listed the ingredients for the mixes.

The regulars: