The New Chef's Journal

A couple weeks ago my girlfriend and I went apple picking at the Stribling Orchard in Markham, Virginia. If you're looking for a place to go apple picking near DC, I'd recommend it. It's a beautiful spot and all of the fruit I've gotten there has been excellent. Their store also has delicious baked goods, salad dressings, salsa and bbq sauce. The recipe I got from the Food Network calls for 6 Jonagold apples, which are a hybrid of Jonathan and Golden Delicious. Since the orchard didn't have any Jonagolds, I just used 3 Jonathans and 3 Golden Delicious. I made the crust using Amish butter from the Agora Farms stand at Eastern Market. Amish butter was recently recommended to me and I was amazed at how much better it tastes that Land O' Lakes or Country Crock. It's great on bread and it really enhanced the flavor and texture of the crust. Ingredients Piecrust: 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup shortening 6 tablespoons cold water, plus 5 table...

Now that its turning into Fall and getting a bit cooler I've really been craving soup. The surprisingly good chicken and corn chowder from Harris Teeter inspired me to try and make my own. This recipe comes from Cooking Light magazine via myrecipes.com. The recipe suggests that you should be able to have this recipe on the table in half an hour. It took me a little bit longer than that, but it was still quick and convenient. You could definitely make this on a weekday night for dinner. The soup wound up very rich and flavorful, especially considering its lighter chowder using 2% milk instead of half-and-half or heavy cream. Ingredients 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup chopped onion 1/4 cup chopped celery 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 3 cups 2% reduced-fat milk 2 cups chopped roasted skinless, boneless chicken breasts (about 2 breast halves) 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels (about 3 ears) 1 teaspoon chopped fresh or 1/4 teas...

This recipe is one that I've made several times for company and I'm always happy with the results. The recipe comes from Giada De Laurentiis. Giada is a great resource for me as I'm fairly obsessed with pasta. The sauce in this dish is a pink cream sauce that's subtle but very flavorful. This is one of my favorite dishes to cook. I served the pasta with a simple salad of mixed greens, chopped walnuts, dried cranberries and goat cheese, with a creamy balsamic vinaigrette. Ingredients 1 pound penne pasta 1/4 cup olive oil 1 pound medium shrimp, peeled, and deveined 4 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus extra for seasoning 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus extra for seasoning 1 (15-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained, roughly chopped 1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 1 cup white wine 1/3 cup clam juice 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream 1/2 cup grated P...

This summer, when it was preposterously hot and humid in DC, I started looking around for some nice cold dessert recipes. I found this recipe for iced chocolate on David Lebowitz's website . His recipe is based on the frozen hot chocolate served at Serendipity in New York. The drink is essentially a very dressed up version of a chocolate milk shake. The melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder really help to take it up to another level. Unsurprisingly, this was a very rich and delicious dessert. Definitely worth trying at home. Next time I'm in Manhattan I'll have to try Serendipity, as everything I've heard about it sounds great. Ingredients 3/4 cup (180ml) whole or lowfat milk 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-process 8 chocolates or 4 ounces (115g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped 1 1/2 cups (6 ounces, 175g) ice cubes 2 to 3 scoops chocolate ice cream or chocolate sherbet Directions 1. In a small saucepan, heat two-thirds of t...

When I was visiting my friends Anna and Justin in Madison, WI last month we went to a Sichuan Chinese restaurant called Fugu Asian. As a spoiled New Yorker, I was shocked to find such good Chinese food so far from the East Coast (though the Chinese food in DC's Chinatown is remarkably underwhelming). Fugu had some amazing and highly authentic dishes. In fact some of the dishes on the menu were far too authentic for me to actually try: ox tongue, pork kidney, pork intestine, intestine in hot pot. And that was just on the menu that had been translated into English. Anna's already talked a good deal about Fugu on her blog,  Dining and Opining , so I won't go into too much more detail on it. My favorite of the various dishes we ordered was eggplant in garlic sauce, also known as Sichuan eggplant. This was an amazingly dish, with a very unique flavor that Anna and Justin informed me was Sichuan peppercorn. This is the description wikipedia offers for Sichuan peppercorn: ...

A week or two ago I started craving tortellini salad, so I decided to make my own Mediterranean version. The salad is my own combination and the dressing comes from allrecipes.com . I'm very happy with how this turned out, but most of the credit should go to Danielle M. who posted the dressing on allrecipes. It was an absolutely perfect Greek dressing. It was delicious and simple to make. This is definitely something I'll be making again. The one mistake I made was that I stored the dressing in my fridge, when the recipe calls for it to be stored at room temperature. After a couple days the the oil and herbs clotted and got gross, which was a waste of very good dressing. Ingredients For the salad: 20 ounce package of cheese tortellini One pint grape tomatoes One red bell pepper One yellow bell pepper 8 ounce can sliced mushrooms 1/4 red onion sliced thin 3 ounces crumbled feta cheese For the dressing: 1/2 cup olive oil 1 1/4 teaspoons garlic powder...

I recently took a trip to visit some college friends in Madison, Wisconsin. While there I teamed up to make dinner with my friend Anna, the author of the food blog Dining and Opining , which discusses both recipes and the historical, environmental, political,cultural and health impacts of food. Since Anna and her husband Justin are vegetarians, I needed to find a vegetarian recipe. They also requested that I make something that could use up as many of the vegetables they had received in their most recent CSA (community-supported agriculture) box, as they were going out of town for week. To meet these requirements I decided to use a baked penne with roasted vegetables recipe by Giada DeLaurentiis, though I did not follow it closely. Giada's recipe calls for the following vegetables: 2 red peppers, cored and cut into 1-inch wide strips 2 zucchini, quartered lengthwise and cut into 1-inch cubes 2 summer squash, quartered lengthwise and cut into 1-inch cubes 4 cremini mushrooms, ha...