Treats from the Tipsy Turtle

One of Tom's favorite homemade dishes is orzo casserole, my riff on a baked orzo dish created by celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis. Her recipe calls for fontina cheese, which I used dutifully for a while, until I realized (1) I didn't think fontina was all that special and (2) my family didn't eat the leftover fontina cheese and it tended to get wasted. I use Gruyere instead. It's a flavorful, easy to grate cheese and leftovers are delicious on soda crackers! Since today is his 25th birthday, he requested that I make it for dinner. Of course! Today's cast. Yes, you are seeing three kinds of cheese, cream and butter. This is not at all diet-friendly. This is a multi-pan, multi-tasking recipe. Have all your ingredients out on the counter and ready to go because once you start, you don't have the luxury to hunt around for the things you need. The chicken broth was added to a pot and brought to a boil. This is what your orzo will cook in. In the m...

I remember liking the lettuce wraps at PF Chang but it's been such a long time since I had them, I honestly don't remember if this recipe is an accurate cheat. Oh well. We like lettuce wraps. We'll pretend. Today's cast. The recipe calls for ground chicken. I had pork. The important thing to remember when browning the ground meat up is to keep smashing it so it ends up in small crumbles rather than chunks. I finally bought a ceramic ginger/garlic grater. You can't beat it for getting the most out of fresh ginger. I added the ginger to the pork along with a diced onion, garlic, shoyu, hoisin, and rice wine vinegar. Sriracha is an optional ingredient. We like some heat so I substituted Momspice! Finely chopped water chestnuts--I like chopping them; they are a nice crisp chop. Like bell pepper. I know. Weird. The water chestnuts and chopped green onion were added. My family likes green onion so I put in extra. Mānoa lettuce--it...

One of the fun things about purchasing directly from the farmers is trying the products I might not normally buy. This week's delivery included half a pound of dragon tongue beans. Aren't they cool? I ate one of them raw. Though they are thicker than the average green bean, they are actually quite tender and crisp. There's a slight sweetness to them as well. Raw green beans taste, well, green. Since I didn't have enough dragon tongue beans for a full recipe, I supplemented with green beans. Here's today's cast. I always parboil my beans. They can be eaten immediately afterwards or, if you intend to do a quick sauté, it'll be really fast--these took about three minutes. When I buy the big bag of Costco green beans I always trim and parboil the entire thing at once. I bag them in smaller amounts and store in the fridge or freezer. Saves steps later! The green beans barely took 3 minutes in the boiling water before they were ready--we're...

The last of Tom's beet harvest. Since we ate an abundance of roasted beets last week, I decided to boil the rest and pickle them. Refrigerator pickle recipes are great; they're easy to make and ready to eat in a very short period of time. One day I'll learn how to can so I can preserve them longer. Not today. I was looking at two different recipes with slightly different ingredients. After I took this picture, I put the beets on to cook. Then I realized these ingredients were for the other recipe. So pretend there are beets in this picture. This is today's cast! This is a great shot of the inside of the chioggia beet. I put them onto boil. They were small beets but they still took about 30 minutes after the water came to a full boil. In the meantime, I mixed the brine ingredients in a medium pot. The mixture is heated until the sugar dissolves completely. A few minutes at a simmer and that's it. The cooked beets were drained and the ski...