the zen kitchen

sous vide chicken wings

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:15:48 +0000

sous vide chicken wings

I was recently reading an article on Serious Eats about double-frying chicken wings. The author calls for them to be fried at a relatively low temperature (225F or so) for a long while to par-cook them, after which they can be chilled/frozen/held at room temperature [...]

Wedding Officiant in South Florida

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:41:33 +0000

If you need a wedding officiant, look no further.

I can’t say enough nice things about South Florida Gets Married. Professional, courteous, caring, and delivers a quality product. What more could you want from your wedding officiant?

A wedding officiant can make your wedding day sparkle!

If you haven’t [...]

christmas in a cookie

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:10:53 +0000

Several years ago, my wife and I visited the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. While there, I picked up a cookbook that highlighted the area’s desserts. I was very surprised to see how many of them used douglas fir – yes, the Christmas tree – as a flavor. So apparently it’s edible and can [...]

eggnog cupcakes

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:07:53 +0000

Got leftover eggnog from a Christmas party? Use it for these cupcakes!

Eggnog Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups (7.5 oz) all-purpose flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp table salt 1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg 8 TB unsalted butter (room temperature) 1 cup (7 oz) granulated sugar 2 large eggs (at room temperature) 1/2 cup [...]

grind your own meat

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:00:11 +0000

I can’t say enough what a difference it makes to grind your own meat when making hamburgers, meatloaf, meatballs, chili, or anything else that requires ground meat. I use the KitchenAid Grinder Attachment since I already own a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and it does a great job. It’s also easy to clean since it [...]

easter pies

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:41:39 +0000

Since my sister and her family recently moved to North Carolina, my mother and my littlest sister drove up there for Easter. My mom and I usually make the traditional Italian Easter pies on Holy Saturday and serve them up on Easter Sunday. We were fortunate to be invited to a friend’s house to celebrate [...]

american-style lasagna

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:06:10 +0000

This isn’t authentic Italian lasagna. It’s authentically Italian-American. It’s meaty, cheesy, saucy, and good. It’s lasagna like my mother and grandmother make — comfort food to the highest degree. It’s also easy. This could all be put together inside of an hour (and then baked for an hour).

1 package Barilla no-boil lasagna sheets 2 [...]

easy chocolate cake

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 20:48:15 +0000

I’ve blogged about chocolate cake before (a loooong time ago), but the recipe requires a good amount of cake-making technique, mainly due to the creaming of the butter & sugar. I’ve witnessed plenty of people do this improperly (usually they don’t let it go long enough), so I decided to re-vamp the [...]

corned beef, cabbage, & twitter

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:46:21 +0000

Interesting graph of the twitter trends relating to corned beef vs. cabbage for the last week:

I have no idea why there could have been a divergent spike in cabbage tweets on Sunday and Wednesday nights. Any ideas?

happy st. patrick’s day!

dominic@dominicchurch.com (Dominic Church) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:56:37 +0000

At about 7:00 this morning, I pulled the briskets out of the brine and rinsed them per Ruhlman’s instructions. I sprinkled each of them with another tablespoon of The Spice House’s corned beef spice mix (mustard seeds, Moroccan coriander, Jamaican allspice, Zanzibar cloves, Turkish bay leaves, Indian dill seed, [...]