campbells recipes: November 2010

The Christmas Gift Guides are Online

Jordon just finished up his Christmas Gift Guides for 2010. Check them out below and if you are looking for the limited edition 2009 versions, they are included as well.

November 1st | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Tween Boys
November 4th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Sports Fan
November 8th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Outdoorsman
November 11th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Wives/Mothers of Your Kids
November 15th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Really Smart People
November 18th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Toddlers
November 22nd | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Husbands and Fathers (guest post by Wendy)
November 25th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Geeks and Gadget Lovers
December 2nd | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Road Warrior

In case you are looking, here are the 2009 Gift Guides

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Breakfast in bed

When you are a loving husband whose wife develops gestational diabetes and is put on bedrest, what do you do? Create the most adorable breakfasts ever. via

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Half Price KitchenAid Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Stand Mixer

After the rebate, it’s 50% off and only $250. To us GMC’s tagline, it’s professional grade. The mixer can effectively mix up to 14 cups of all-purpose flour per recipe and produce up to 8 pounds of mashed potatoes.

via

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Christmas Gift Ideas: Your Husband & All of the Men in Your Life

I posted a Christmas Gift Guide for JordonCooper.com this morning; Christmas Gift Ideas for the Men in Your Life. Some gadgets, some video, some sporting ideas and some ideas that I had no idea that Jordon wanted until he told me. I hope it helps you with some ideas for what to get your loved one for Christmas and takes a bit of stress off the holiday season.

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What your waiter won’t tell you

Readers Digest asked two dozen servers from across the country tell you if they could get away with it? Well, for starters, when to go out, what not to order, what really happens behind the kitchen’s swinging doors, and what they think of you and your tips. Here, from a group that clears a median $8.01 an hour in wages and tips, a few revelations that aren’t on any menu.

On Christmas Day, when people ask why I’m there, I might say, “My sister’s been in the hospital,” or, “My brother’s off to war, so we’re celebrating when he gets back.” Then I rake in the tips.
If you make a big fuss about sending your soup back because it’s not hot enough, we like to take your spoon and run it under really hot water, so when you put the hot spoon in your mouth, you’re going to get the impression—often the very painful impression—that your soup is indeed hot.
I’ve seen some horrible things done to people’s food: steaks dropped on the floor, butter dipped in the dishwater.
I get this call all the time: “Is the chef there? This is so-and-so. I’m a good friend of his.” If you’re his good friend, you’d have his cell.
Trust your waitress. Say something like “Hey, it’s our first time in. We want you to create an experience for us. Here’s our budget.” Your server will go crazy for you.
If you walk out with the slip you wrote the tip on and leave behind the blank one, the server gets nothing. It happens all the time, especially with people who’ve had a few bottles of wine.
If you’re worried about cleanliness, check out the bathroom. If the bathroom is gross, you can be sure the kitchen is much worse.

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The story of Gordon Ramsay, the television chef and restaurateur whose personal and professional life is starting to unravel...

This comes from The Independent

For Gordon Ramsay, the past few weeks have been like living in his very own Kitchen Nightmare. Only it has extended beyond his kitchen and into every other room of his house. Like an unwatched pot, the TV chef's personal and professional life has boiled over in spectacular fashion, leaving the mother of all cleaning-up jobs.
Not that anyone is rushing to pull on the Marigolds; quite the contrary. In typical fashion, Ramsay has heaped more coals this weekend on to a fire he lit three weeks ago when he sacked his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson. Specifically, he claimed his wife Tana has much to learn about what her father gets up to when not running restaurants, lashing out after his wife's parents wrote to their daughter, urging her to dump the man she married 14 years ago, aged 22.
The father of four was in combative form last week. Barely days after claiming he wouldn't be talking to the press about the farce enveloping his globe-spanning business empire, Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH), the chef penned an extraordinary open letter to his mother-in-law, Greta Hutcheson. He used it to heap innuendo on her husband's "complex" private life that left "many of my key staff feeling they have had to cover on his behalf". Ramsay, 44, who admitted hiring a private detective to follow Mr Hutcheson, added: "His away days were rarely what I thought they were." As if the insinuations weren't character assassination enough, Ramsay went on to denounce Hutcheson as a "manipulating and controlling... dictator". He also asked Mrs Hutcheson to stop "punishing" her daughter.

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Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good Recipe

Amazon picked some of their favourite cookbooks of 2010, including their favourite, Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours

It includes this recipe, Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

Ingredients

1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds
Salt and freshly ground pepper
¼ pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into ½-inch chunks
¼ pound cheese, such as Gruyère, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into ½-inch chunks
2–4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
4 strips bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped
About ¼ cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
About 1/3 cup heavy cream
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Directions

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment, or find a Dutch oven with a diameter that’s just a tiny bit larger than your pumpkin. If you bake the pumpkin in a casserole, it will keep its shape, but it might stick to the casserole, so you’ll have to serve it from the pot — which is an appealingly homey way to serve it. If you bake it on a baking sheet, you can present it freestanding, but maneuvering a heavy stuffed pumpkin with a softened shell isn’t so easy. However, since I love the way the unencumbered pumpkin looks in the center of the table, I’ve always taken my chances with the baked-on-a-sheet method, and so far, I’ve been lucky.
Using a very sturdy knife--and caution--cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think Halloween jack-o’-lantern). It’s easiest to work your knife around the top of the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. You want to cut off enough of the top to make it easy for you to work inside the pumpkin. Clear away the seeds and strings from the cap and from inside the pumpkin. Season the inside of the pumpkin generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet or in the pot.
Toss the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper--you probably have enough salt from the bacon and cheese, but taste to be sure--and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be well filled--you might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it. Stir the cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin. Again, you might have too much or too little--you don’t want the ingredients to swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (But it’s hard to go wrong here.)
Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours--check after 90 minutes--or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Because the pumpkin will have exuded liquid, I like to remove the cap during the last 20 minutes or so, so that the liquid can bake away and the top of the stuffing can brown a little.
When the pumpkin is ready, carefully, very carefully--it’s heavy, hot, and wobbly--bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you’ll bring to the table.

Storing
It’s really best to eat this as soon as it’s ready. However, if you’ve got leftovers, you can scoop them out of the pumpkin, mix them up, cover, and chill them; reheat them the next day.

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Can the “IKEA effect” combat obesity?

Wired shows us how making supper is good thing.

The Ikea Effect is a psychological bias first identified by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely. The concept will make perfect sense to anyone who has struggled to put together a bookshelf based on an inscrutable set of instructions. Although the furniture might look like crap — I always have a few leftover screws — the flimsy assembly of molded plywood feels like a masterpiece. (That shelf isn’t supposed to be straight, right?)
In one study, the behavioral economists asked people to fold origami and then bid on their own creations. As expected, the subjects were consistently willing to pay more for their own folded paper creations. In fact, they were so enamored of their amateurish designs that they valued them as highly as origami made by experts.
It turns out that the Ikea effect also applies to food, at least in mice. The experiment was simple: Mice were trained to push levers to get one of two rewards. If they pressed lever A, they got a delicious drop of sugar water. If they pressed lever B, they got a different tasting drop of sugar water. (This reward was made with polycose, not sucrose.)
The scientists then started to play mind games with the mice, as they gradually increased the amount of effort required to get one of the sweet rewards. Although the mice only had to press the lever a single time to get the sugar water at the start of the experiment, by the end they were required to press the lever 15 times.
Here’s where things get interesting: When the test was over and the mice were allowed to relax in their home cage, they showed an overwhelming preference for whichever reward they’d worked harder to obtain. More lever presses led to tastier water. (The scientists measured these preferences in a variety of ways, including an analysis of “licking microstructure”. Preferred foods lead to a faster rate of initial licking and longer duration of “licking bursts.”)
The scientists conclude the paper by speculating on why such an effect might exist. They argue that the association of effort and deliciousness would have been an adaptive association back when calories were scarce, and we’d sometimes have to work hard to end up with a rather disgusting dinner:

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Christmas Gift Ideas for Your Wife/Girlfriend

Jordon wrote up a Christmas Gift Guide for your wife/girlfriend. If your husband struggles with Christmas gift shopping, send him an e-mail and tell him to check out Jordon’s gift suggestions for wives. He has some ideas for any budget.

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Don’t fuss over fresh pasta, the dried stuff is better

From The Atlantic

When I tell people I am opening a pasta restaurant they ask, "Will you make all your own?" And I am intrigued that for so many people it's the automatic assumption. In a way it's so very American, as I find we Americans are always so impressed by and obsessed with technique. I love to make pasta and I think I make a pretty great delicate egg pasta suitable for pappardelle or tagliatelle or ravioli, but it's not the technique that fascinates me—it's the whole dish, all the myriad shapes and sauces and pairings and the multitude of ways that some carbohydrates, perhaps a little protein, and some vegetables make a meal that people can and do live on day in and day out.

I grew up on "dry" pasta. On the menus in the trattorias we ate in, pasta was listed under past'asciutta, dried pasta. At my friends' houses, that was what was served. There was no shame or sense that it wasn't a magnificent thing in itself. In Italy the production of dried pasta is very tightly regulated, so it's a stable and reliable product. So-called "fresh" pasta was something to make at home or buy from a specialty store for special occasions, at least in the more Southern Italian areas of Tuscany and Rome I grew up in. And in my mind, since there is no regulation on how it's made, it's less reliable and often inferior to artisan dried pasta.
Artisan dried pasta is usually made from carefully selected wheat, and the dough is extruded through rough bronze dies that give it a slightly jagged texture. The pasta is then dried over 48 to 72 hours, curing better than it would with a quick blast of heat. The resulting texture is part of what brings balance to the dish. The sauce and a little starch cling to it and bind to hold better as a sauce.

Dried pasta is also a product that can sit in your pantry for a couple of years without too much deterioration and it will basically always cook up the same way. It's got great texture every time, and there's no excuse not to always have it on hand. Somewhere along the line fresh pasta came to be thought of as the better product, and it's not. I would argue that a lot of times it's not really fresh. Fresh pasta is grand when made in the home or by some highly skilled Bolognese chef, but most that is available here and in Italy is made on an industrial scale. Giant machines fill the pastas, seal them, and cut them, and I am not convinced that beautiful delicate egg pasta can ever really hold up to those machines. So the dough is tougher than what you really want in a delicate egg pasta and more often than not I find it kind of gluey.

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Meat cut diagrams for some of your favorite Nintendo characters.

Prints are available (via)

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10-Minute Shrimp Soup Recipe

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups water
1 package Oriental flavour ramen noodles
1/2 cup green onion – chopped
1 medium carrot -- julienne strips
4 1/4 ounces shrimp -- rinsed and drained
soy sauce -- if desired

Directions

Heat water to boiling in 3 qt saucepan. Add noodles. Cook about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until noodles are tender. Stir in contents of
seasoning packet, onions, carrot and shrimp; cook until hot. Serve with soy sauce.

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Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

Another great Yorkshire Pudding recipe from scratch that is a great addition to the holidays.

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour
1 pinch salt
1 pinch pepper
2 egg
1 1/4 cups milk
2 tablespoons meat, drippings
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh thyme, leaves

Directions

In a large mixing bowl whisk together flour, salt and pepper, eggs and milk until you have a smooth batter.
Add rosemary and thyme leaves.
Allow mix to refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Preheat a non-stick muffin tin in oven for five minutes.
Add fat and heat until fat smokes.
Carefully ladle batter to fill each cavity half way.
Bake in oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until crisp and golden on top.

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Crunchy Mini Crab Cakes Recipe

Ingredients

8 soda crackers, finely crushed
2 cans (120 g each) canned crabmeat, drained
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup (50 mL) finely chopped green onions
4 tsp (20 mL) light mayonnaise
1/2 tsp (2 mL) hot pepper sauce
1/4 tsp (1 mL) Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp (1 mL) dried oregano leaves
1/4 tsp (1 mL) grated lemon rind
1/3 cup (75 mL) corn flake crumbs
2 tbsp (30 mL) grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

In large bowl, combine crackers, crabmeat, egg, onion, mayonnaise, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, oregano and lemon rind. Divide mixture into 12 portions and pat into small patties, about 2-inch (5 cm) rounds; set aside.
In large, shallow dish combine corn flake crumbs and cheese. Coat all sides of patties in crumb mixture. Place on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 400°F (200°C) 8 minutes, turn and cook 8-10 minutes longer or until crumbs are golden brown. Makes 12 mini crab cakes.

Serve warm with heated pizza sauce for dipping.

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Warm Crab Spread Recipe

Ingredients

1 pkg (250 g) light cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup (50 mL) light mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp (1 mL) pepper
1/2 cup (125 mL) dry white wine
2 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup (50 mL) grated Parmesan cheese, divided
1 pkg (227 g) imitation crab meat, Flake Style, chopped, divided
2 tbsp (30 mL) chopped fresh parsley

Directions

Beat cream cheese, mayonnaise, garlic and pepper until smooth. Gradually beat in wine. Stir in green onions, 2 tbsp (30 mL) Parmesan cheese and half the crab.
Spread evenly in 8” (20 cm) pie plate; sprinkle with remaining crab and Parmesan. Bake at 375°F (190°C) about 20 minutes or until bubbling. Cool slightly; sprinkle with parsley. Serve with crackers.
Hint: For convenience, prepare this spread up to 24 hours ahead; cover and refrigerate. Bake, uncovered, at serving time. Also great baked and served chilled. Instead of wine, substitute 1/2 cup (125 mL) chicken broth.

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"Joe's Crab Shack" Crab Dip Recipe

Jordon and I love Joe's Crab Shack and this a fabulous recipe from the legendary restaurant.

Ingredients

2 oz Cream Cheese, softened
4 tsp. Diced Yellow Onion
1 Tbsp. Butter, softened)
4 tsp. Finely Diced Green Pepper
1/2 Cup Sour Cream
1/4 tsp. Seasoned Salt
1/8 tsp. Paprika
1 Tbsp. Mayonnaise
1/4 Cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
1 (6 oz.) can Crab Meat (drained) **Use fresh crab meat if you can!
Fresh Diced Green Onion, for garnish
Fresh Chopped Parsley, for garnish
*optional* dash of hot sauce for a little kick

Directions

Mix cream cheese, mayonnaise, sour cream and butter until smooth. Blend in seasoned salt and paprika. Stir in yellow onions, crab meat, green pepper, and mozzarella cheese. Place in a lightly greased small shallow baking dish and place in a preheated oven at 350 degrees until mixture bubbles, about 10 – 14 minutes. Serve dip with unsalted or very lightly salted corn chips.

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Crab Corn Puffs Recipe

Ingredients

1 pkg (227 g) Imitation crab, chopped
1 tbsp (15 mL) seafood seasoning
1 pkg (220 g) corn muffin mix
1 egg
1/2 cup (125 mL) creamed corn
1/2 cup (125 mL) shredded mild or medium Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup (125 mL) diced tomato
1/4 cup (50 mL) milk
1/4 cup (50 mL) minced celery
1/4 cup (50 mL) sliced green onions

Sauce:

¾ cup (175 mL) sour cream
1-1/2 tsp (7 mL) seafood seasoning
Hot pepper sauce, to taste (optional)

Directions

Mix imitation crab and 1 tbsp seafood seasoning with all remaining ingredients.
Generously grease 12-cup mini muffin pan. Fill each muffin cup with about 1-1/2 tbsp (22 mL) batter. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Remove from muffin pan and cool on wire rack.
For sauce, blend sour cream, seafood seasoning and hot pepper sauce, if desired.

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Asian Salmon Soup Bowl Recipe

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tbsp lime or lemon juice
2 tsp grated fresh ginger root
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
2 oz vermicelli pasta, broken in half
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
1 can salmon, skinless and boneless
1 cup snow peas, halved diagonally
2 green onions, sliced
cilantro (optional)

Directions

In saucepan, bring to boil broth, lime juice, ginger root and crushed red pepper. Stir in pasta and carrot; simmer 4 minutes.
Add salmon, snow peas and green onions; continue simmering for 2 minutes or until heated through.

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Chicken alla Cacciatora Recipe

Ingredients

1 tbsp garlic oil
75g/2½ oz pancetta cubes
6 spring onions, finely sliced
1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
500g/1lb boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
½ tsp celery salt
125ml/4½fl oz white wine
1 x 400g/14oz can chopped tomatoes
2 bay leaves
½ tsp sugar
1 x 400g/14oz can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (optional). You can also serve it with steamed rice. I prefer Basmati rice.

Directions

Heat the garlic oil in a pan and fry the pancetta, spring onions and chopped rosemary for 2-3 minutes.
Add the chicken pieces, sprinkle in the celery salt and stir well.
Pour in the wine and bring to a simmer, then add the tomatoes, bay leaves and sugar. Cover with a lid and leave to simmer for 20 minutes.
Add the drained cannellini beans, if using, and simmer until the beans are warmed through and the chicken is completely cooked through.
To serve, divide among four serving dishes.

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So you want to be a chef by Anthony Bourdain

Good advice for young cooks

I am frequently asked by aspiring chefs, dreamers young and old, attracted by the lure of slowly melting shallots and caramelizing pork belly, or delusions of Food Network stardom, if they should go to culinary school. I usually give a long, thoughtful, and qualified answer.
But the short answer is “no.”
Let me save you some money. I was in the restaurant business for twenty-eight years—much of that time as an employer. I am myself a graduate of the finest and most expensive culinary school in the country, the CIA, and am as well a frequent visitor and speaker at other culinary schools. Over the last nine years, I have met and heard from many culinary students on my travels, have watched them encounter triumphs and disappointments. I have seen the dream realized, and— more frequently—I have seen the dream die.

He also has this

Nobody will tell you this, but I will: If you’re thirty-two years old and considering a career in professional kitchens? If you’re wondering if, perhaps, you are too old? Let me answer that question for you: Yes. You are too old.
If you’re planning on spending big bucks to go to culinary school at your age, you’d better be doing it for love—a love, by the way, that will be, almost without a doubt, unreciprocated.
By the time you get out of school—at thirty-four, even if you’re fucking Escoffier—you will have precious few useful years left to you in the grind of real-world working kitchens. That’s if you’re lucky enough to even get a job.
At thirty-four, you will immediately be “Grandpa” or “Grandma” to the other—inevitably much, much younger, faster-moving, more physically fit—cooks in residence. The chef—also probably much younger—will view you with suspicion, as experience has taught him that older cooks are often dangerously set in their ways, resistant to instruction from their juniors, generally slower, more likely to complain, get injured, call in sick, and come with inconvenient baggage like “normal” family lives and responsibilities outside of the kitchen. Kitchen crews work best and happiest when they are tight—when they operate like a long-touring rock band—and chances are, you will be viewed, upon showing up with your knife roll and your résumé—as simply not being a good fit, a dangerous leap of faith, hope, or charity by whoever was dumb enough to take a chance on you. That’s harsh. But it’s what they’ll be thinking.

Read more here. For the record, I am 40 which means that instead of culinary school, I started The Cooking Blog.

Technorati Tags: Anthony Bourdain

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2010 Christmas Gift Guides

Jordon has brought back his Christmas Gift Guides for 2010 with a Christmas Gift Guide for Tween Boys and has released his schedule for the rest of them. Here is the schedule and the links to last year’s Christmas gift guides.

November 1st | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Tween Boys
November 4th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Sports Fan
November 8th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Outdoorsman
November 11th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Wives/Mothers of Your Kids
November 15th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Really Smart People
November 18th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Toddlers
November 22nd | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Husbands and Fathers (guest post by Wendy)
November 25th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Geeks and Gadget Lovers
December 2nd | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Road Warrior

In case you are looking, here are the 2009 Gift Guides

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Garlic Tuna and Pasta Recipe

Ingredients

130 g angel hair pasta
1 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon
2 cans flaked light tuna - garlic & hot pepper
1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes, halved

Directions

Put a kettle on to boil. Pour the contents of the kettle into a large saucepan.
Bring back to a boil and put the pasta in to cook for the length of time specified on the packet (2-3 minutes).
Scoop a cup of the cooking water out and keep to one side, then drain the pasta and return it to the hot pan.
Put the olive oil into a small pan and, using a zester gadget (or a grater), add 3 tsp lemon zest. Heat gently until sizzling.
Mix the tuna with a 1 tbsp of the pasta cooking water to loosen it. Stir the lemon oil into the pasta, and add the tuna, heating the mixture gently.
Squeeze half the lemon into the mix, and cut the other half into two wedges.
Season the pasta and stir in the halved tomatoes. Serve with the lemon wedges to squeeze over.

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The Key to Stress Free Christmas Shopping

With the start of the Christmas shopping season upon us, I posted some tips on my personal weblog on how to have a stress free Christmas shopping season.

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A Healthy Big Mac? Good Morning America shows us how

McDonald's Here is how they did it.

The key to re-creating the Big Mac is obviously perfecting the sauce. Some say it's simply Thousand Island dressing, but the clever folks at McDonald's deserve much more credit for this masterpiece we crave. To re-create the sauce, I had to ensure that I had a supply that I could taste on its own -- away from the other great flavors this burger stacks. So I requested "extra on the side." The friendly woman behind the counter didn't flinch. She quickly produced a sundae cup half filled with the salmon-colored sauce. When I took a big sniff, all I could smell was a chemicalesque aroma. Tasting, on the other hand, yielded that wonderful flavor. Several tastings and I was convinced. The secret ingredient? Mustard. Simple yellow mustard. Add that and a pinch of sugar to a Thousand Island-style sauce, and you'll be surprised how closely it resembles the real deal.

Click on the link to find the rest of the recipe.

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Ingredients

Directions