Reel Chow Blog

Culinary Postings from the Original Gourmet Craft Service Industry Insider

Review: Cheese for Dummies

Jenn and I are the type of couple who enjoy reading cookbooks. Call us crazy, but we do. As someone who worked as a designer in Manhattan for over twenty years, I’m always checking out vintage and new cookbooks for their typography, book design, and photography. As a writer, I judge the clarity and art of the prose. Of course, as the chef who comes up with the vast majority of our original Reel Chow recipes, Jenn is always putting to test the dishes we find in new additions to our always-growing collection of cookbooks. Jenn is also surprisingly critical of how recipes are presented, and it helps dictate books and dishes she’s drawn to.

Although we read a wide range of cookbooks, there’s one genre we’ve avoided consistently, and that’s the “for Dummies” series of titles. This hasn’t entirely been a conscious decision. It always seems when we’re supporting our local independent booksellers, we’re consistently drawn to more expensively-produced cookbooks, with beautiful design and professional photography.

Cheese for Dummies by Laurel Miller and Thalassa Skinner. ©Reel Chow

Cheese for Dummies by Laurel Miller and Thalassa Skinner. ©Reel Chow

We partnered with Haystack Mountain for our last wine and cheese pairing (posted in two parts). During our conversations with the folks at Haystack we came in contact with Laurel Miller, one of the coauthors of Cheese for Dummies. Written with Thalassa Skinner, Cheese for Dummies is a great place to start assembling your knowledge on the dairy product humans have been obsessed with for 4000 years.

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Green Summer Marinade for Chicken

Reel Chow Original Recipe!Always on the lookout for something new and healthy, I do a lot of recipe reading, get tips from friends, and find interesting new dishes at restaurants. Call me a relentless seeker of healthy dishes which are new to me, I just love learning about all things culinary, and try to stay away from making staples for Ron and I and our guests to enjoy.

Here’s a new creation of mine, influenced by a Haitian dish I’ve only read about. Once I read about the Haitian marinade, it got my mind racing, and I wanted to create my own. Here’s my Green Summer Marinade for Chicken!

This delicious vegetable combination of green bell pepper, shallot, and parsley was pureed to use as a thick marinade. I took four organic chicken breasts and covered them in this fresh marinade then chilled them for four hours in the refrigerator before cooking them. Not only did our loft smell beautiful, but the chicken came out juicy and to die for.

Served with a side of brown rice and green salad, I honestly think you need to try this recipe for yourself. I promise you won’t be disappointed, and this comes from a person (me) who is not a fan of green bell pepper. If I see a green bell pepper sliced up in salad, I pick them out and ask my husband if he would like my peppers, or I toss them—which I hate to admit—but that’s the truth. Not so in the case of my Green Summer Marinade for Chicken.

Organic chicken breasts in the Summer Marinade, served with a side of salad.

Organic chicken breasts in the Summer Marinade, served with a side of salad. ©Reel Chow

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Bella Mushrooms with Toasted Pecans

Reel Chow Original Recipe!As the days get warmer, there seems something natural in us demanding we no longer need heavy, winter comfort food. More vegetables become available in stores, and outdoor grills get uncovered and cleaned in preparation for good times with friends and family. More on that after today’s recipe.

Here’s a great creation that just cries out, “Spring!” Made with simple ingredients, this is a light and healthy side dish which goes best with steak and chicken. When toasted, the raw pecans add a hint of nutty sweetness to the earthy mushroom flavor. Adding one-half of a tablespoon of honey brings all the flavors out and joins them, creating a light and tasty addition to a spring meal.

Baby Bella Mushrooms with Toasted Pecans.

Baby Bella Mushrooms with Toasted Pecans. ©Reel Chow

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Lentils with Roasted Tomatoes and Feta

I had this lentil dish at my cousin in-law’s house and loved it so much I had to re-create it. Sharyn added gorgonzola cheese to her dish, which was really delicious. For my re-creation, I added feta instead, along with some fresh home-grown chives from our loft.

Lentils with Roasted Tomatoes and Feta.

Lentils with Roasted Tomatoes and Feta. ©Reel Chow

This dish is healthy and super easy to make. I roasted the tomatoes with sea salt and black pepper, plus a little light olive oil. The lentils were cooked with plain water and no added salt.

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Sapporo-Roasted Chicken

My mother-in-law recently gave me a beautiful pottery to roast chicken. At the center of the dish is a cup-like structure to set the chicken on vertically, with a hollow center for liquid of your choice. For this recipe I chose Sapporo beer to place in the center of the dish, then stuffed an herb mixture under the chicken’s skin. I also sprinkled sea salt and black pepper on the outside of the chicken. My 4.5 pound organic bird roasted for two and a half hours. It came out juicy and flavorful, just as I hoped and hungered for.

On one of our trips to Napa, Ron and I ate at The Wine Bounty Hunter, where we thought it would be funny to get a similarly-cooked chicken roasted with a beer can inside it. With the gift from my mother-in-law, it dawned on us we could now recreate this Southern classic, but not have any aluminum contamination from cans. It’s a double-win!

Sapporo Roasted Organic Chicken with a side of organic beet and dill salad tossed in an orange vinaigrette.

Sapporo Roasted Organic Chicken with a side of organic beet and dill salad tossed in an orange vinaigrette. ©Reel Chow

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Honey Roasted Vegetables

I first fell in love with this dish one year ago at Easter. In 2012, Ron and I went to Montclair, New Jersey to have dinner at his cousin Sharyn’s home. Sharyn was also featured in this post. She made the most delicious meal, which I’ve been dreaming about ever since.

For Easter of this year, I was so happy to see what she was making for dinner: my favorite honey roasted veggies, which she made the previous year! Huge chunks of vegetables tossed with sea salt, black pepper, olive oil, and honey, then roasted for 40 minutes until browned, sweet, and juicy. Below is my attempt at recreating Sharyn Taylor’s dish.

Honey Roasted Veggies.

Honey Roasted Veggies. ©Reel Chow

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Herb Salsa!

Reel Chow Original Recipe!I love growing herbs year-round in our loft. I use heirloom, or at least non-GMO seeds, which always seem to taste better. Even if they didn’t, I’d still feel better about eating them than something patented by a laboratory. Here’s a great original dish of mine which utilizes healthy, fresh herbs. It’s incredibly easy to make, I hope you’ll enjoy whipping some up yourself.

Herb salsa is possibly the healthiest side to any protein dish. It’s a blend of parsley, thyme, rosemary, dill, shallots, garlic and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Add it to steak, chicken, fish, or pork. It’s even tasty on top of a sunny side up egg at a Sunday brunch.

Herb salsa served with beans and egg on a crispy blue corn tortilla.

Herb salsa served with beans and egg on a crispy blue corn tortilla. ©Reel Chow

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Carrot Beet Bisque

Reel Chow Original Recipe!I enjoy making and eating classic carrot-ginger soup. This recipe loosely follows the classic, but adds a punch. It’s not a true bisque because it contains no cream or crustaceans. More accurately, it’s a mock-bisque, but that just sounds wrong as the title of the dish, so welcome to my Carrot Beet Bisque!

I added one beet, green apple, whole cloves, one garlic clove, fresh-pressed ginger root, along with fresh thyme and dill. As I often do with my original recipes, this contains no butter and no dairy—just pure vegetables and herbs cooked in part-broth and part-water. Afterwards, it is pureed and topped with crispy roasted kale. I think this is my favorite soup of all time, and that says a lot, as I’m a serious soup-lover.

Carrot Beet Bisque.

Carrot Beet Bisque. ©Reel Chow

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Jenn Egatz on Living Arts

Jenn recently appeared on Living Arts, hosted by Jackie Suarez. Jackie questioned her about Reel Chow and Stitched Tailors. Thanks to the producers of the show, we’re able to embed the episode below.

We’re currently working on our own video projects. Keep checking back for future Reel Chow videos covering recipes, food prep, and kitchen gear reviews. Until then, eat well.