If you don’t have cable or aren’t getting your fill of watching me cook, I recently worked on two really fun projects. They were completely unrelated to each other and yet somehow both involve poultry:

Copyright: Bravetart

A BraveTart Thanksgiving

My friend Stella Parks runs one of the most amazing food blogs I have ever read over at bravetart.com, complete with beautiful photography by her friend Rosco.  She does everything from baking cakes that match her couture to recreating a giant slice of cake, Legend of Zelda-style.

For her Thanksgiving blog, she enlisted me with the task of preparing a Heritage Turkey as part of a decadent-yet-down-home feast.  Stella and Rosco record the experience in exquisite detail, so it’s best you just hop on over to her blog and read about it there.

Suffice to say, it was a delightful and delicious experience, and I’m just honored that she would entrust me with handling the centerpiece of her feast.

EatChicken.com Videos

The National Chicken Council recently posted several video segments I filmed for them on their eatchicken.com website. They came over to Lexington a few months ago, turning my own kitchen into a little studio and having me demonstrate several chicken recipes I developed.

Here’s one on Chardonnay Chicken Thighs:

You can watch two of my other videos, Fiesta Chicken Wraps and Pulled BBQ Chicken on their website or on the National Chicken Council’s YouTube channel.

Bok bok!

It’s been months since I’ve updated my blog, but surely such a long absence means that I’ve been brewing up something really, really special, right?

Well, in between cooking gigs, filming LEX 18 segments and planning a fall wedding, I managed to make one of my wildest dreams come true:

Yep, that’s me!!! On the Cooking Channel website!!! I’m still pinching myself.

Come November 7, I will be hosting a new show on the Cooking Channel called “From the Kitchens of…” I’ll be visiting and speaking with experts from familiar brands and demonstrating products and recipes from their test kitchens. I am over the moon with excitement, and I really hope you have a chance to tune in and tell me what you think.

Oh, and please pardon the dust…

My sister and I are going to be making various updates and upgrades to my website over the next few weeks. The premiere of the show got scheduled so much sooner than we had anticipated, and while we’re thrilled, we’re also trying to play catch up and get things in place to help spread the word.

Thank you for sticking with me through all of this!

We’re staying in a hotel in Richmond, which boasts an incredibly diverse (well, not really diverse, seeing as how it’s more than 50% Asian) population.  You know what that means…tons of great restaurants with cheap, delicious eats!  The commute to work is about 45 minutes total, with some healthy walking and a 25 minute train ride in between.  It’s been really great to see familiar faces from Beijing, be it fellow catering employees or USOC members.

We worked the first day after we arrived, but had Saturday off to explore.  We wandered out to Granville Island, where I had the world’s most wonderful almond croissant.

The market on Granville Island is just incredible, with fresh produce, local treats, seafood markets, live music, and loads of delicious eateries.

What does one make with smoked dino bones?  Dino stock, perhaps?

We somehow got reeled into the most hilarious street performance featuring Byron from England, a crazy man who tied himself up in chains and had us in stitches.

Nothing poor about my oyster poor boy!  I’ve never had bigger or meatier oysters in my life.

After lunch, we ferried across the bay and walked up the beautiful Seawall to Stanley Park.  Vancouver residents are incredibly fit and outdoorsy and with the gorgeous weather we’re having, everyone was out and about picnicking, riding bikes, rollerblading, or just strolling along.

It is beautiful here!  We’re gearing up to get busier at work as more people come into the city, but I’ve really enjoyed the past few days.  I’m a happy camper!

Tomato soup is one of those things that tastes better to me now than it ever did as a kid. Perhaps its because my palate has become so mature and refined due to my impressive cooking expertise and countless gourmet meals that I prepare each night…NOT!  Haha…if you know me at all, you know I love a chicken nugget as much as any 5 year-old and that I still love all the nostalgia-evoking foods from my childhood.  Funyuns, anyone?

I think the reason why tomato soup tastes so much better now is because it IS so much better now.  Back then, I only knew Campbell’s.  Then I got to know Panera and Whole Foods and I fell in love.  And now that I can make my own, I am in total tomato soup lust.  My favorite culinary school lessons were soup-making and sauce-making.  If you already know how to make both, congratulations…you just saved yourself a lot of moolah.

What usually makes tomato soup so good is the addition of cream; my standard recipe uses butter and flour to form a light roux and is finished with heavy cream. This genius version is totally dairy free, lower in fat, and draws upon a traditional Italian technique that incorporates bread for smoothness and body.

I adapted it from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe and it is totally tomato-riffic without all that fat to dull the flavor.  And it’s not too thick or too sweet, like many others. This homemade soup is worlds better than the canned variety and so much cheaper than buying it in a deli or restaurant.

Serve it with a grilled cheese, tuna melt, or on its own with my adorable tiny grilled cheese croutons!  It is guaranteed to make your snowy day feel extra toasty.

Tomato Soup

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 rib celery, diced
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 3 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• 3 slices white bread, crusts removed and cut into cubes
• 2 cups chicken stock
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Grilled Cheese Croutons

• 8 slices wheat or white bread
• 8 slices American cheese
• 4 tbsp butter, softened

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a medium stockpot over medium-high heat. Sweat onion and celery until softened and translucent, about 4-5 minutes. Add dried basil, tomatoes, sugar, and bread. Bring soup to a simmer and cook; during this time, the bread should begin to fall apart.

Remove pot from heat and add remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Using an immersion blender, puree soup until smooth. Strain the soup through a sieve and bring back to a simmer, add chicken stock, and season with salt, pepper, and a touch more sugar if desired.  Serve with grilled cheese croutons.

To make grilled cheese croutons, assemble four sandwiches with 2 slices cheese each. Lightly butter the outsides of the sandwiches and grill over medium low heat until very crisp and well browned. Remove from heat, trim the crusts, and cut sandwiches into small ½ inch squares.

Yup, this little cook is getting hitched!  Perhaps I’ll post good little housewife recipes like meatloaf or fruitcake.  Or perhaps I’ll post “Brigitte & Michael attempt to get skinny for their wedding” recipes.  Or maybe, just maybe I’ll try my hand at recreating some traditional wedding foods in the process of writing my wedding menu.  We’ll see…

To make up for my sad absence, I’m posting some pictures of things I’ve either made or happily eaten (or made, then happily eaten) in the past few months.  Here goes!

Oh hello burger, mahi mahi fish & chips, onion rings, and shake from Taylor’s Refresher.  We had a fantastic trip to San Francisco to attend the wedding of one of my besties!  Thanks, Kris, for getting married in Michael’s favorite city.  We celebrated by eating.  A lot.

Happy Halloween!  Um, maybe you can file this away for next year?  My famous nutella-filled sugar cookies, recreated with a pumpkin cutter and a little round biscuit cutter for the inside frame.

Baggies of homemade caramel corn for our trick-or-treaters.  I know this makes you wish you lived in our neighborhood.  And that you were a kid.  In a costume.  On Halloween night.  Or you can just be my friend.  Friends get caramel corn too.

I became a little obsessed with Libby’s Pumpkin Roll around Thanksgiving time.  You can thank my friend Beth for that.

I think I made 3 in one day.  Then I made 2 more for turkey day, including one for my next door neighbor, Joe, who lets us drop a turkey in his fryer every year.  Hurray for deep fried turkey!  Despite the deep frying, Joe is trying to cut back on his sugar & fat intake.  The cake portion of this pumpkin roll has no oil or butter, so I felt quite victorious.  I even bought fat free cream cheese (a first) and some of that Smart Balance spread (unchartered territory) to make a lowfat filling.

Heed my warning: do not attempt to do this.  The whole thing liquified once I started beating it, so I added extra powdered sugar in a pathetic attempt to rescue it.  It did not work.  And it did not taste good.  Joe got full fat cream cheese and butter instead.  Sorry to Joe’s wife, Barb.  I tried!

Since I’d already surrendered to the full fat version, I went ahead and drizzled it with some homemade caramel sauce and toasted almonds.  Joe ate 2 pieces for breakfast that day.

And because it’s Michael’s favorite, I made a pecan pie.  The crust recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated and uses vodka to add moisture, but inhibit gluten formation.  HELLO, this is the best crust I’ve ever made.  Crumbly, buttery, tender, and flaky.  It is crust perfection.  Seeing as how I do not drink, I now have a reason to collect those tiny vodka bottles from airplanes.  PIE CRUST!

Since this pecan pie was so easy, I decided to make it laborious and make pretty crust.  The family has become difficult to impress, so I have to go the extra mile if I want them to oooh and ahhh.  Sigh…

This brings us to Michael’s birthday cupcakes.  Our neighborhood Christmas party was the night of his birthday, so I made his favorite cuppy cakes to share with everyone.

Happy Birthday, Prather!  Three years ago, I bought M some birthday candles for our first birthday celebration together.  To my dismay, when I went to put them on his cake (red velvet, of course), I realized I’d erroneously purchased “Happy Retirement” candles, which have been sitting in our pantry ever since.  I brilliantly figured I could play Scrabble with the letters and spell out his last name.  Wanna know what I did with the rest of the candles?  Stay tuned…

Merry Christmas!  Buche de noel, anyone?  I made this when my amazing, beautiful, loving, kind mother came to see me in Kentucky for the first time!  Growing up, we ALWAYS had a buche for Christmas.  I can’t remember a year when there wasn’t a buche, complete with meringue mushrooms for all us kids to fight over.  It was usually from a Vietnamese bakery and it had the most lovely mocha icing and light sponge base.  I tried Martha’s recipe and thought it was quite tasty.  Most importantly, my mum was proud and liked it so much she ate two pieces.

We spent an entire day cooking together, which warrants a whole other post.  It was the first time we’d really cooked together, despite the fact that we’re both avid cooks and that she is solely responsible for my love of food.  We cooked up a big Vietnamese feast that night and had Michael’s entire family over to meet mom and to celebrate his dad’s birthday.  Here’s where the rest of those candles come into play…

It’s a wee hard to make out, but it reads “Pity men, ee!”  M and I Scrabbled for days with these letters…”piety meen, minty peee, tip my neee, yip mentee” and so on.  Hey, if you can come up with any better, I’m all ears.

And that concludes the highlight portion of this post.  I’m still cooking every Tuesday on LEX18 and we’re ironing out the kinks with the uploading of recipes and videos for your cooking and viewing pleasure.

Is there a recipe I can whip up on TV for you this year?  Something you’d like to lighten up or just recreate?  I often draw a blank when figuring out what to make each week and I love to know what everyone’s eating, cooking, or craving.  Leave me a comment and I will happily tackle it.   Thanks in advance for the idea!

They are crazy good–moist, sweet, and somewhat reminiscent of a really gourmet, homemade ho-ho.  But sooo much better.  I get excited just writing about them, but the best moment is that anticipation before you take the first bite, as you’re carefully unwrapping one and licking the frosting from the plastic wrap.

Wrapping them individually in plastic wrap and allowing them to sit just makes them moister and gives the icing & cakes some quality bonding time.

Whoopie Pies (adapted from Bon Appetit)

Yield: 18 whoopie pies

For the frosting:

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 oz cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups marshmallow cream such as Marshmallow Fluff
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• pinch of salt

For the cakes:

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk

I have taken these to many a party and they are always a crowd pleaser.  I took a batch to a tailgate party for Saturday’s UK game and you wouldn’t believe how much love and attention they got.  Strangers were ogling them and I had to swat several stray hands away from my precious loot.

One guy chased us down the street and asked if they were for sale and wouldn’t you believe it, Michael, always the salesman, sold him one for $2 (hey, things are always more expensive at ball games).  He happily forked over a $2 bill and I sincerely hope he enjoyed the whoopie experience.  If you’re out there, $2-whoopie-pie-guy-from Saturday’s game, please get in touch with me and let me know if it was worth your while.

I apologize for my blogging hiatus/laziness, so thank you for sticking with me and continuing to visit my site!  I’ve been gearing up for a busy month of work and travel and just landed in NY yesterday morning, where I promptly proceeded to get my feed bag on.  Wonton noodles with roast duck in Chinatown?  Check.  Beard papas?  Check.  Coffee & biscotti gelato on a homemade cone?  Check.  I love this city.