Hungry? Where do you go for inspiraton?

HALLIE EPHRON: As you all know, I love to cook. I'm writing this on last week's Valentine's Day and as soon as I'm done typing, I'm heading into the kitchen to make a corn and crab bisque.

Like every good bisque it starts with bacon--cook it crisp, crumble it, and use the fat to sautee the vegetables. You cut corn off the cob and then simmer the cobs in heavy cream and chicken stock to create a base. There's a bunch more steps involving the bacon fat and onions and leeks and chanterelles and sherry, and at some point you add potatoes and then the corn. At the END you sauté crab meat in butter and add it. Serve with fresh herbs on top. I'd never made it but it seems like the perfect luxurious dish for my valentine.

I still use cookbooks, and I have file folders bulging with recipes. But these days my go-to site for recipes is Epicurious. It's loaded with wonderful ideas, and often I'll print off 2 or 3 same-but-different and merge them to my taste. Frankenfood.

The comments are helpful and sometimes crack me up. Like this, for one of their recipes for soft shell crab with wilted spinach:
 

"I substituted red snapper for the soft shell crabs and kale for the spinach, and cut down on the amount of vinegar. It turned out very well."

When you want to cook up something sensational and special, where do you go for inspiration?

RHYS BOWEN:  Valentine's dinner was garlic jumbo prawns in a balsamic glaze, with crispy garlic potatoes and asparagus. Yummy.
When I was young I used to try out new and complicated recipes on guests, much to my husband's dismay. You've never tried this before? He'd wail. Usually they turned out okay, except for the turban of sole that collapsed in a big  mess all over the plate when I turned it out. 

These days I stick to tried and true recipes, ones we know we love. We often serve guests a curry, which John does awfully well, or a leg of lamb with roast potatoes. Sometimes I browse my many cookbooks, especially for appetizers and desserts, or look online but I have to confess we often wind up taking guests to a nice restaurant!

LUCY BURDETTE: Mmmm, That crab and corn bisque sounds divine! I save recipes all the time, from the New York Times, the Washington Post, a variety of email lists I belong to... and if I want to make something I haven’t tried before, I usually start by googling. Then I skim over the recipes that show up and pick and choose my ingredients and methods.

I also get obsessed with ingredients from time to time – this year it’s Rancho Gordo. I can’t wait to make the shrimp and hominy stew that came in their latest email. I had to order a bunch of stuff just to be sure the hominy and the smoked pimento were on board in my kitchen!

JENN McKINLAY: That bisque sounds delicious. What a lucky Valentine, you have. I actually loathe cooking. I find the day to day meal planning to be utter drudgery. Thankfully, I married wisely and Hub and I split the cooking, which makes it tolerable.

I should say that while I find daily cooking tedious, I love to bake. I am a cookie, pie, and cake machine and bake every week, usually a couple of times so there is always a dessert around here or two. I love cookbooks and have a solid collection. For fresh inspiration, I hit Pinterest and I have a subscription to All Recipes (a website inspired the print version) both of which I enjoy.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, Jenn, the planning! Is the worst. I say: just TELL me what to make, and I make it, but don't make me think of it.

That said, when I get inspired with an idea, I go to various cookbooks and online to see the different ways people make it--say, beef bourgignon or lemon chicken, and take the parts from each that I like.

For Valentines day, ooh, I forgot it was valentines day, But my cooking fun is to see what's in the fridge, and then see what I can make from it. So we had sirloin tips on fresh spinach with yellow tomatoes and black olives and bleu cheese.  it was SO pretty--and delicious!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I actually don't mind the meal planning. Usually I do it on Saturday or Sunday, and then do the shopping for the week.

My downfall is not managing to cook everything I plan and so I end up wasting stuff at the end of the week. My other downfall is cookbooks, which I am just swoony crazy about. I made a resolution that this year that I would try to actually cook one thing from every cookbook I keep on my shelves! But, alas, aside from the standards that pull up again and again, I am much more likely to try something new that I find on the Internet when I'm looking for ways to use that food in the fridge! (What can I do with fresh English peas and butternut squash, for instance, when the hubby likes neither...)

I like Epicurious, too, Hallie, and love the NYT recipes. Oh, and I follow cooking blogs (big trouble) my most favorite being Deb Perlman's Smitten Kitchen. She's such a good writer than it's even  fun to read about things I'd never make.

Rhys, I want your balsamic shrimp recipe! And, Jenn, I wish I had the metabolism to eat all those goodies you make. I'd probably be a better baker...



JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Jenn, I, to, suffered the "I hate to cook" period, and why not - when you're cooking for hungry teens, it's all about shoveling the greatest amount of calories and nutrition for the most reasonable price, in a form they won't turn up their noses at. It has a lot more in common with being a coal stoker on a steam engine than anything else. 


That being said, I'm starting to enjoy cooking much more these days, mainly because the only person I have to please is me. Vegetarian? Fine. Ancient grains? Bring it on. "Weird" soups? Okay.

When I'm cooking to impress, my inspiration comes from magazines. (I feel very old-fashioned.) I love the recipes in Southern Living, for instance, and Better Homes and Gardens has some great stuff as well. I'm not a cookbook reader - to me, they're user manuals, not literature. I have enjoyed some that combine history with recipes, but otherwise... lets just say I'm not leafing through them at bookstores. So general-interest magazine recipes are just right for me - pretty pictures to spark my interest, but usually NOT instructions that go on for two pages. For instance, any recipe that begins, "cut the corn off the cob" is too much work for me. Gimme a can opener, let's get on with it.

HALLIE: PS on the crab bisque. It was a near disaster. I'd bought dried chanterelles which turned out not to be 'dried' so much as petrified. The plastic package was broken, and they must have gone bad because no matter how much hot water I used to reconstitute them they remained woody. I had to remove them from the soup, tiny piece by tiny piece. 

After that, it was delicious.

What are your go-to places for meal-planning inspiration? And it's ok if it's your takeout menu drawer.

Debs' Absolutely Fabulous Granola

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have been promising this recipe to my fellow REDs for some time and I thought today would be the perfect moment to share. We need something autumny/crispy/ yummy that will make our houses smell divine and keep us fortified for the week.

The original recipe is from Deb Perelman's SMITTEN KITCHEN and is called Big Cluster Maple Walnut Granola, but I've adapted it quite a bit. You can just call this version DEBS' GRANOLA. You can adjust your types of nuts and fruits and the amount of sweetener, but the most important thing is the egg white, so don't leave that out!

DEBS' GRANOLA

-- 3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
--1 cup unsweetened shredded or flaked coconut
--1/2 cup raw walnuts, 1/2 cup raw pecans, 1/2 cup raw almonds, all roughly chopped
--1/2 cup flax seeds (I use the golden toasted flax seeds from Trader Joe's)
--1/4 tsp cinnamon
--1/2 tsp Kosher salt
--2/3 cup maple syrup
--2 Tbs coconut oil, melted
--1 large egg white
--1 tsp vanilla
--3/4 cup dried unsweetened cherries, roughly chopped
--3/4 cup dried wild blueberries

Instructions

1--Preheat oven to 300 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2--In a large bowl, stir together the oats, coconut, flax seed, cinnamon, salt, and the chopped nuts.

3--In a small bowl whisk egg white until frothy. Add maple syrup, vanilla, and coconut oil to the egg white, then mix liquid into dry ingredients.

4--Spread the mixture onto the parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer about 1 inch thick. It should look like this.

5--Bake in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes, turning the pan at least once. Check regularly to make sure the granola is not burning around the edges. You might need to turn up the oven temperature just a bit.

6--When the granola looks golden, take the pan out and place it on a wire rack. I just use the top of my gas stove. Let it cool completely, then very gently lift up clusters of granola with a metal spatula.

Here's where I really go off the reservation with this recipe, because for me at this point, the granola clusters are still very sticky. I put the pan back in a 200 F oven for at least 30 minutes, then turn the oven off and leave the pan in the oven until the granola is completely cool. I usually leave mine overnight.

7--When cool and dry to the touch, break granola into your desired size clusters. Gently stir in the dried fruit, then transfer granola to an airtight container.

Here's my last finished batch.

The really bad thing about this is that you'll never want to eat store-bought granola again!

Enjoy, and tell us what you're cooking for autumn!