Meet Bazil, our basil plant.

Over the past few months, Dan and I have been growing our own herbs including parsley, basil, dill and chives. This is fairly easy to do and creates a really fresh flavor to your sauces, meals and garnishes.
We start with seeds or seedlings and then transplant them to bigger pots when they're about 5 inches tall. They can grow right on your window sill indoors if you get enough sunlight. Of course, growing them outside is optimal, but if you can't, there's always grow lamps. We also use Daconil fungicide to keep the brown spots away, and Miracle-Gro, Organic Choice plant food. They also make a good garden soil for your pots.

Here's some baby basils we grew from seeds packets, courtesy of Geico (I know, didn't make any sense to me either when I got them in the mail but i'll take it!)

And once they get big enough, they will grow fairly large. Here's our pride and joy, Bazil the basil!
He needs a lot of water, almost daily, and plenty of sunshine. We keep him outside in full sunlight. Beautiful!

Buffalo Chicken Wings

If you think a restaurant is the only place you can get good buffalo wings you are poorly informed. I would even venture to guess that most restaurants don't even get them right and what you "think" are good chicken wings, are actually mediocre. The only way you'll be able to find out what good chicken wings are will be to taste them. Once you do that you'll understand what I've meant by the above. For good Chicken wings visit:

Amici (Mount Sinai, New York on route 347)
Mandalay Beach Bar (Clearwater Beach, Florida)
The Anchor Bar (Buffalo, New York)

So, when you think of the chicken wing, you should think of four things, and ranch dressing should not be one of them by the way. You've got wings, to and include, drumettes and winglets, the "sauce", blue cheese dressing, and celery. Now this is another one of those "no place to hide" recipes, as I call it. There isn't much going on so if you skimp out and get crappy ingredients, they won't knock your socks off. Lets start at the top....

Chicken wings, in their growing popularity conjoined with our ever effective capitalistic economy unfortunately inevitably yields one resort. Higher demand = Higher Prices. So, the best way around this is to buy the least processed chicken wing you can get. What do I mean by processed? I mean, buy the drummette and the little wing attached together. Cutting them apart takes a little bit of knowhow and maybe 15 minutes, but if you are making enough for a party or at least 4 people, you can definitely save some bucks. So, by your chicken from your local market. Do your best to get wings that aren't completely covered in gelatines fat and you have to make sure that they are fresh. When you get them home, rinse them under some cold water and set them on a racked baking sheet to dry. Go get your sharpest chef's knife and a poultry cutting board and take hold of one wing. Place it with the V of the drummette and wing facing away from you. If you rub your finger on the joint between those two parts you will feel a knuckle. There are a 100 different ways to actually seperate these two but basically you need to place your knife in the center of the knuckle and push down with some vigor. If you need help, call me. I'll explain in detail. Anyways....

The Sauce:
Listen, it's nice when people say, yeah I made my own bbq sauce, oooohhh I made homemade ketchup try it... But look, someone, somewhere, already figured out the best buffalo sauce recipe. There is no point in trying to duplicate it's magic, it's impossible and will probably cost you a lot of money on imported peppers. This sauce is the one and only Frank's Red Hot. It was the original sauce back in Buffalo, NY and in my opinion (and probably more than half of the rest of the countries) it makes the best wing. All you do is heat it gently in a pan and stir in cold butter until you get the desired heat level. That's it. Thats the sauce. No garlic powder, no salt, no cumin and smoked hungarian paprika. None of it. As Alton would say, all that's another post.

Blue Cheese:
I'm a big fan of making my own blue cheese. It's terribly easy and it lets you control the blue cheese you have in the dressing. I get the brown labeled store brand blue cheese from whole foods and it works excellently. Just search until you find one you like. The recipe is simple. Add a little half and half to mayonnaise until it looks like a loose chowdah. If you want a cup of dressing then it's about 1/3 cup mayo and 1/3 cup half and half. Add a little salt and garlic powder and pour in the blue cheese. I can't say how much, it just needs to be "enough." Let this sit in the fridge for at least an hour. Overnight is better but you should use it within 5 days or so.

My computer battery is running out of power and I need to wrap this up.

The best way to do the wings is:

Make sure they dry very well on the rack, you can pat them with papertowels if you get anxious. Salt them about 5 minutes prior to cooking. Heat up Canola, Peanut, Safflower etc oil to 350 degrees in a medium to small saucepan. The idea is you are going mimick deep frying (like in our hamburger recipe) for about 10-12 minutes or until they are golden brown and cooked through. Do them in batches, so you don't crowd the oil and drop the tempereture too low. That will make for a soft wing. After the wing is cooked you simply add it to the hot sauce and toss till coated. Put them right in the serving dish and repeat until all the wings are completed. They are amazing, the blue cheese is a great compliment. Need to wrap it up but I'll elaborate and re-write some stuff later.

Shepherd's Pie

What do you do with leftover ground beef from your baked ziti (see previous post) and a bag of potatoes in your cupboard that are threatening to be ready for planting? Add in a healthy vegetable of course: I chose carrots, and Voila! You have the ingredients for Shepherd's Pie.



Boil water in a 4 qt. pan and peel 5 large potatoes. Let cook for approx 10-15 minutes until just soft enough but not too soft. Mash in a separate bowl with 3 tablespoons butter, 1/3 cup of milk and a tablespoon salt. Grate a half cup of cheddar cheese into potatoes for cheesey potato topping.

Next, oil a frying pan and start browning a chopped onion with 1 tsp paprika. Add ½ pound ground beef, salt to taste, tsp dried sage, tsp parsley and 1/2 tsp celery seed. Drain excess fat from beef, then add 3/4 cup of beef broth to mixture.

Boil more water. Peel and fine chop 3 carrots. Bring to boil and add them to beef mixture. Adjust paprika and salt to taste. Now you're ready to layer the beef mixture in a casserole dish. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top. Top with grated cheese and/or paprika to finish. Bake in a 400 oven for 25 minutes or until browned. Mmmm. Enjoy!

Baked Ziti

So, it's been weeks since the last time we posted. I (Dan) have been working towards going to culinary school and while working full time, this have been quite hectic. So, we've got some leftovers and limited time and we are going to throw together a delicious baked ziti.

Baked ziti, along with half the other Italian-American meals, has only four or five central ingredients and is pretty easy to throw together. Make sure the quality of your ingredients are good, there is no room to hide.

First things first, fill a 4 quart saucepan with water and put on the range to boil.

Now the Sauce:

I started with a 28 ounce can of San Marzano Tomatoes, Crushed. Heated a couple of tbsp of olive oil in a saucepan and added 4 cloves of garlic until browned. Remove the garlic and add the tomatoes. Cooking time will depend on how you like your sauces. I like mine with a deeper cooked tomato flavor, rather than a sweet/bitter raw tomato flavor. I cooked the sauce for about 20 minutes on medium and the raw flavor was more or less cooked out. I turned the heat to low and added a tsp each of basil, red pepper flake and oregano. Stir it will and let it simmer on low for about 5 minutes. Remove it from the heat and stir in a tabelspoon of roughly chopped fresh parsely.

Add 1 pound of pasta to the water, which should now be boiling. Don't forget to salt your water as well. Cook it until it is a little less than al dente. If you fully cook it, the pasta will over cook in the oven.

Drain the pasta well and mix in 6 ounces of Ricotta cheese, 4 ounces of shredded mozzarella, 3 tbsp of freshly grated parmegiana regiana, and enough sauce to coat. Mix everything well and top with some shredded mozzarella. Cover well with tin foil and bake for 35 minutes at 350. Remove the tin foil and raise the temperate to 400 until the cheese begins to brown. Yum!

More to come soon.