Category: Food

C.H.I.P.S

  • July 17, 2016

Yesterday we visited a potato chip festival held in Saratoga, the home of the potato chip as a snack food.

We weren’t quite sure what to expect (it was the ‘first annual’) as we each paid our $4 entry charge.

What we found was a big room full of chip companies handing out free product! There were no restrictions and organizers handed attendees as many carry bags (to hold samples) as they wanted. It was chip madness!

KLS won a shirt and we looked at a historical display, but this was very much about the generous free samples. There were smaller companies as well, sampling their wares (which included jerky).

Although we literally left with as much as we could carry, it wasn’t until we got home and emptied out the bags that we realized how much we had got…

Almost everyone had multiple bags of samples and we saw some with many more than us! In retrospect it was all a bit greedy and shameful and we were clearly overcome by the abundance of items available.

Suffice to say we won’t be buying chips for months!

Recipe Time!

  • February 28, 2016

Today I’m going to share my (well, KLS’s) recipe for french fries, aka ‘chips’. Here’s a preview: 

 
To start, grab a couple of these: 

 
Wash and cut them then soak them submerged in water for 20 minutes. 

 
Take them out, dry them off and they’ll look like this: 

 
Now things get interesting. You’ll need to get your hands on a fancy-shmancy ‘air fryer’ like this one KLS got for Christmas: 

 
Put the chips in the drawer, sprinkle with a tiny bit of vegetable oil, salt and pepper like so: 

 
Close it up, set for 20 minutes and walk away. Here’s when you play with a cat, or complete a few levels of P&D, or even do a quick blog post. Before you know it: 

 
Delicious! 🙂

Spaghetti a la Supertaster

  • September 9, 2015

Over five years ago I introduced the world to my personal spaghetti recipe. Since then I’m sure you’ve all been wishing I’d given more detail and today I’m happy to oblige!

I present therefore the step-by-step pictorial recipe for my delicious version of spaghetti bolognaise!

  
Start by cutting about 1/3rd of a yellow onion into small pieces. 

 
Sweat the onion in a light sprinkle of oil. If it gets clear (or even worse brown) you’ve gone too far!! You’ll want to put a big pot of water on high heat now as well for the pasta.

 
Add half a pound of 93% ground beef. 

 
Stir it up with the onions, and cook on medium heat until it looks like this: 

 
Have a nibble at this point. If it’s delicious and meaty you’re on the right track! 

 
Next you want to add a single beef stock cube and stir it in. Let it simmer for a minute or so and taste it again. Unless you’ve ruined it, it should taste a bit like Vegemite now. 

 
The water should be boiling now, so put in a decent portion of spaghetti. The exact amount is up to you, but you’ll want to have enough so you won’t be sad but not so much you’ll get fat! Leave the spaghetti cooking and return to the meat. 

 
Open a small tin of tomato paste and remove a small amount. There are two important notes here: the paste has to be unflavoured, and you need to add less than you expect! It’s more for colour than flavour! 

 
Stir it in well until it looks like this: 

 
And last but not least, add a pinch of salt, ideally from a Rilakkuma shaker: 

 
Now cover it and let simmer on low heat while the spaghetti finished cooking. It will look like this once it’s al dente: 

 
Everything is ready! The recipe is enough for two portions, so plate half the meat and pasta with style… 

 
And enjoy with an adult beverage: 

 
This is an easy to prepare meal with a refined and manly taste. The delicate blend of salty and salty tastes is sublime to those with the unique palette of a supertaster and I’m sure if you give it a try you’ll enjoy it as much as I do 🙂