Monthly Archives: December 2013

king trumpet mushrooms: because every party needs a fungi.

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close your eyes for a moment and think about every type of mushroom you have ever eaten.

in no particular order, my list includes: morels, white button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, chanterelle, portabellas, creminis (which are technically just baby portabellas), hen-of-the-woods, shiitake, brown clamshells, white clamshells, porcini, matsutake, enokitake, maitake, and king trumpet mushrooms.  there might be some others, but those are the main ones i can think of.  honestly, i think fourteen different kind of mushrooms is pretty good right off the top of my head.  what was your score?

while you are distracted with this fun little mental exercise, i guess i’ll go ahead and get to the point of this post.

true, this post is about mushrooms as i am sure you have already guessed.  but this post is also about a swedish guy named carl linnaeus.

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yuzu, part deux: the fruit of my loins.

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remember a few posts back when i made yuzu pasta and my girlfriend whipped up an amazing batch of yuzu cupcakes?

while i would like to pretend that culinary curiosity was the only force of nature which inspired such an amazing post, the truth is not quite as glamorous.  we cooked an entirely yuzu themed meal because we had so many yuzu we didn’t even know what to do with them.  we literally had so many we were bathing in them.

we worked hard, and when all was said and done, we had accomplished a great feat.  we breathed a deep sigh of elation and continued with our lives.  two yuzu recipes had been born out of a desire to let no fruit go wasted, and that was nothing to be scoffed at.  after all, necessity is the mother of invention.

like any normal person would after living through such a trying ordeal, i thought i was done with yuzu recipes for the year.

as it turns out, i was sorely mistaken.

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fish and taters: england got it all wrong.

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frankly, i’m not a big fan of british cuisine.

as a quick disclaimer, i’m not making some sort of grand proclamation denouncing the deliciousness of all food served in the united kingdom.  britain has become a country rife with cuisine from all kinds of cultures, so much so that i have a few friends that joke about tandoori chicken being the national food of the uk.  i will gladly agree with any person asserting that britain has some really tasty food.

i don’t like british cuisine because, once you ask that person who asserted the deliciousness of british food to provide an example, the first thing they come up with is fish and chips.

not mince pie.  not bread pudding.  not kebabs or tandoori chicken.  fish and freaking chips.

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diced! voting is officially open.

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hi there pmk readers, the moment of truth has come!

voting for the diced! competition on Rantings of an Amateur Chef is officially open for business.  if you guys have the time (and feel like supporting a meager poor man in his grand dream to become the creme de la creme of internet chefs), swing on by the poll and cast your vote for my recipe, inverted mini-cumberland pies.

thanks again for the support, everybody.

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diced! (and shameless vote grubbing).

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hey there, pmk readers.

i’ve been a good blogger over the past few months, haven’t i?  i’ve never asked you to do anything that might make you question my moral scruples, right?  we get along already, don’t we?  i’ve shown you all kinds of recipes.  you’ve given me all kinds of great feedback and comments.  i’ve thrown joke after crappy joke your direction.  together, we’ve transformed pmk into a budding, goofy, readable cooking blog.

in fact, i’ve gotten so almost-popular that i’m in a cooking competition for the first time ever.  the competition is called diced! and it is being hosted on Rantings of an Amateur Chef.  for round one, the competitors were asked to make an appetizer out of corn, corn flakes, and corned beef.  i thought long and hard, cooked my recipes, took some photos, and sent it into the fray to represent me in this culinary showdown.  i personally think it came out amazing.

but sadly, no matter how good my recipe looks or tastes, in the end it is the votes that count.  so i have a favor to ask of all your followers out there: pop on by Rantings of an Amateur Chef, scroll to the bottom of my recipe for inverted cumberland mini-pies, click on the tiny little like button, and tune in on the december 7th to cast your vote to keep me in the competition.

thanks guys, i owe you one.

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Diced!: Misha – Inverted Cumberland Mini-Pies

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guess what?

i’m participating in my first ever cooking competition. the showdown is titled “diced!” (named for its food network counterpart, “chopped!”), and it is being hosted on none other than the illustrious Rantings of an Amateur Chef. i am one of six participants.

here’s the part where i need your help. the four contestants who get the most votes on the polls move on to the next round. it would be absolutely excellent if i could be one of those four. so if you have the time and feel like extolling the virtues of pmk, swing on by Rantings of an Amateur Chef, like my post, and tune in on the 7th this month to cast your vote for me.

thanks in advance!

Rantings of an Amateur Chef

Today we have an entrant for the first course of the Diced! competition. Contestants were instructed to create or find a recipe for an appetizer, soup or salad containing the following ingredients: Corned Beef, Canned Corn, and Corn Flakes. They were instructed to make their dish and create a blog post about it, including pictures. You can help determine who advances to the next round. After the last post, I will post a poll where you can vote for contestants to move on. Vote for the post you like the best. You can vote because of the inventiveness, the yummyness, the use of ingredients, the quality of the writing and pictures or for any other reason. The poll will be active for one week only. Check back and vote. In the event of a tie, the Ranting Chef will choose who advances. More information about Diced! can be found 

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wasabi mac: now that’s what i call using your noodle.

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in today’s rapidly globalizing society, it seems like you can find at least one restaurant of almost any major country’s cuisine regardless of where you go.  there are french restaurants in china, chinese restaurants in the united states, japanese restaurants in canada, and italian restaurants in japan.  you get the idea.

i think some people (incorrectly) assume that these cuisines make it across borders and oceans relatively intact.  when a country imports the food of another nation, it tends to insert a its own local flair.  a chinese person eating at a chinese restaurant in america would, more than likely, be very confused as to why the food is audaciously titled “chinese food,” seeing as it bears almost no resemblance to the cuisine they ate growing up.  conversely, many chinese people i have met in japan insist that the food served in chinese restaurants in japan is better tasting and more authentic than the food served in chinese restaurants in china.

but i digress.  this post isn’t about how nations get foreign cuisine all wrong.

this post is about the world’s most misunderstood condiment.

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