Light a fire in your kitchen this weekend! That's our advice for beating off the freezing cold; there are way too few degrees on the thermometer right now. So heat it up! Fire up the oven, or the gas burners, or just light up a few chili peppers in your weekend batch of stew. The more heat, the better.
Here are a few more ideas for heating up your kitchen this weekend through cooking, eating, and maybe some drinking too.
• Easy, make-ahead, and portable breakfast ideas. More than 25 great ideas in the comments, too.
• Lighter pasta! 8 light yet rich pasta sauces and a tip on making use of pasta water for creamier sauces.
• Cheese and wine recommendations: stinky cheese and lighter-alcohol Riesling.
• Here's a great tip for making easier stock at home.
• Beets: the single-beet lunch, and homemade borscht.
• Eight ways to make steamed vegetables more delicious.
• A beautifully serene yet homey kitchen in San Francisco.
• How well can you use chopsticks?
• Stewed prunes: far, far more delicious than you might think.
• Beans are the centerpiece of our lighter menus this month: try this polenta and beans recipe with homemade tomato sauce, and check out this book too.
• Why don't pigs make cheese? As always, there are some fascinating comments, including one from a pig farmer.
Have a great weekend! It's a long one; Martin Luther King Jr. Day is Monday, and we'll have a few special posts on Inauguration Day eating and drinking.
How To Make Cake Pops
How To Cook a Steak: 15 Recipes for a Weeknight Valentine's Meal
Like us on Facebook
Our reading list
RSS Feed (Atom)
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Valentine's Ice Cre...
Before & After: Trashed Hutch Turned Vanity Dresser 
A Contemporary Space in the Queen City 
Comments (18)
SmittenKitchen posted a recipe for light wheat bread (here: http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/light-wheat-bread/ ) that I think I'm going to try my hand at. I think I might make a vegetable beef soup to go with some homemade bread. Mmmmm. :)
Got a white plume chicken at Jeffrey's at Essex Market, salting today, roasting tomorrow!
Just whipped up some hummus and scarfed a lot of it down with veggies and half a tortilla. We're doing chicken jalfrezi tonight (with jarred simmer sauce) and I'm going to try to make chapati for the first time.
It's about 80 in LA. Maybe this should be renamed the NYC and Northeast Corridor Kitchn?
I baked a loaf of Bittman no knead bread this morning as had gotten it started yesterday before work. For the first time ever, it stuck to the cast iron dutch oven I use to bake it in. I didn't do anything different this time so I am curious as to why it stuck and therefore came apart when I tried to remove it. It was done in the middle and tasted delicious with a wonderful crust but looks a little messy just the same. I am reseasoning my pan so maybe thats all it needed. Outside of that, my husband harvested our Meyer lemons and started soaking the rinds in vodka for limoncello in a months time. It's not quite 80 degrees here in Northern California but certainly feels like spring so I'm not sure how much cold weather fare we'll be partaking in the next couple of days.
Having left overs of yummy chicken marbella that I made last night with wildrice. Chicken marinated in red wine vinegar, oregano, garlic, spanish olives, capers, prunes..then cooked with bottle of white wine and brown sugar. Made wild rice with soaked dried cranberries in sherry, pine nuts, mint. The two dishes reminded me of the time I spent in Spain. Left overs are the best.
It really IS freezing over most of the country including "the third coast," the Gulf. But I digress. Peppers are on my menu here in the Deep South. In fact, I have a Tex-Mex lasagna recipe on tap for Sunday supper. Layers of corn tortillas, refried beans, a salsa-like tomato layer, lotsa chiles...reconstituted dried chipotle and diced Anaheim...and cheese. Can't wait.
I am with expat... in denial, cooking cuban food :-).
Doesn't matter. Bread is bread. I made yummy bread in this weekends cold. I also made the superb salad of spicy greens, pears, manchego, and toasted pepitas. I can't remember where I found it, but it was through here. It was splendid. Not only a keeper, but a regular menu item.
Uh, yeah - it's 80 degrees and sunny here in L.A. Not every Kitchn reader lives in the freezing cold, AT.
That being said, we are actually trying NOT to heat up the house with oven and stove flame. It's all about grazing cold foods this weekend, like a big bowl of cold yogurt-based chicken salad with black pepper water crackers, eating chilled sugar snap peas raw with blue cheese dip, tall glasses of sun tea with ice and lemon, spiked with a shot of spiced rum, and working our way through a giant container of espresso gelato. YUM! Enjoy your frozen tears of misery, Midwesterners!
So cruel Bx! But I have to say, you meals sound delicious and reminds me I need to make curried chicken salad with some breasts in my fridge.
Not so cold up here in BC either, but like a few of you, I'm currently baking some bread.
Very jealous Bx, as in Chicago we just went through one of the coldest days in Chicago history.
I agree with Squirrely, your means sound delicious.
I made a big pot of chili yesterday.
Today I'll probably bake some bread and I think we're eating Steak and Eggs for supper.
Yum!
vegetarian matzoh ball soup.
We're snowed under in Boston. Made Bavarian soft pretzels with the kids.
Ah, you're annoyed with mentions of how cold it is for many of the readers of this blog. I'm jealous of all the good citrus you're getting in California at farmer's markets.
Let's call it even. You go make some Meyer Lemon sorbet and I'll sit here in my cold apartment.
Wait a minute ... that's not really fair is it?
Send me some of that sorbet, I won't need to use the freezer to keep it cold.
Chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel frosting!!