I absolutely love green chiles. I don’t know what it is, I don’t remember when it started, but anytime I can have green chiles added to a dish, I jump at the chance. I’m particularly fond of them as a cheeseburger topping, and I’ll never understand why more establishments don’t offer them as a standard burger topping. Green chiles are a fantastic delivery for heat and spice, as well as a variety of textures depending on how they are prepared and served.

Yet, green chiles are one of those ingredients that we often use pre-prepared, when making them at home is actually unbelievably simple. Scratch cooking in general often can seem like a daunting task. The thought of creating an ingredient just to be used in a dish can often feel like you’re over-complicating things, but when the opportunity presents itself it should be embraced, not avoided. Read the rest of this entry »

I decided I was finally an adult the day I realized that I could eat cupcakes for dinner. And not just any cupcakes, but the best red velvet cupcakes in New York City, or anywhere else as far as I’m concerned, from Two Little Red Hens.

Working long hours and late nights in financial services meant that meals were pushed off entirely, or relegated to a quick snack to be shoveled in mercilessly between spreadsheet updates. On one especially arduous evening, I forewent dinner, in hopes of getting home earlier. Weary, but back uptown I passed Two Little Red Hens and decided that tonight, I would sup on cupcakes.

After all, I had a job, two degrees, and I paid my rent on time. One bite into a sumptuous red velvet cupcake, and the day’s events washed away. For a brief moment, all was right with the world. I knew, in that moment, that a cupcake can indeed be therapy. A cupcake can indeed make the world a better place. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big fan of trying to find the original versions of popular foods. Not necessarily because the original will always be better, but because it provides great perspective on how a dish has evolved over time. Some dishes have been around so long, and gone through so many permutations that chasing down the “original” would be difficult for anyone who isn’t a food historian.  Also, it’s just cool to be able to say that you’ve had the original hamburger, or visited the original Nathan’s hot dog stand, or that you ate pizza from the country’s oldest pizza oven.

So you can imagine my excitement, this past Christmas, when my sister showed up with the original Boston Cream Pie in tow. One of my favorite desserts it was certainly a staple of my college years in Boston, but somehow I had never actually gotten around to eating it at the place it was invented – The Parker House in Boston. I have no excuse, but luckily that mistake has now been rectified. I’ll get into whether or not it was worth all the fuss, but first a tiny history lesson. Read the rest of this entry »

Usually when we do Kickstarter rounds up, it is for great looking board games. This week though, we’re going to the kitchen for two that I automatically pledged my support for.

Combat Kitchenware

Status: Funded!
End date: December 13, 2012
Minimum Pledge to get it: $45 for a pan
Expected release date:  January 2013

What is it: A frying pan with a sword handle. And it it’s dishwasher safe! IT IS A SWORD-PAN!

Why you should pledge: What part of IT IS A SWORD-PAN didn’t you understand? I originally thought our Baker’s battle-whisk and our Chef’s frying pan buckler were good, but a sword-frying-pan? That is absolutely absurd but so incredibly perfect.

If you don’t want a Teflon coated pan, stainless steel and cast iron are available – and there are two different handles to pick from: the hero and the villain. As a project, I give them my highest praise: I wish I had thought of this.

As an added bonus, there are a limited number of cast iron Christmas pans available for a holiday release.

Das Horn: the Definitive Drinking Horn

Status: Funded!
End date: December 12, 2012
Minimum Pledge to get it: $35
Expected release date: February 2013

What is it: a plastic horn goblet with a stainless steel rim

Why you should pledge: I can’t be the only one who wants to be a viking. While I regularly feel like I was born in the wrong century, this is  the kind of chalice that deserves to be in your kitchen. Besides the fact that it holds almost two beverages (and it is shaped like a horn), it’s genius in its execution. Oh, and it comes with a neck strap since you can’t set it down.

With enough support, it will also include a display stand that will make this an epic accessory on your mantle. So go pledge your support!

Cookbooks are a weird business. How can you tell when one is good? Is it because the recipes are new and innovative or because the directions actually make sense? It gets even weirder when cookbooks are inspired by works of fantasy. But that didn’t stop The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook from seeing print.

Long time readers of Castles and Cooks know we’ve dabbled in our own Harry Potter inspired recipes, like Pumpkin Juice and Butterbeer. So when I received this book as a gift, I was quite excited to open it up and discover what secrets it held – especially in comparison to my own recipes! Would their Butterbeer be similar to mine or a completely different take?

That’s when the first realization of this book sunk in: this book takes almost every mention of food from the Harry Potter series and has recipes for them. But that includes the most mundane and muggle recipes, like mashed parsnips, buttered peas and fried eggs with bacon. These aren’t the recipes I’m after – how would you cook a blast-ended skrewet? Or what about all those fantastical ice cream flavors at Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour? Hell, one of the recipes is just crispy fried bacon. While another recipe is a gammon of bacon and another is scrambled eggs with bacon. I love bacon, but how many different times do I need to see it? Read the rest of this entry »

As part of our ongoing series COOKING FOR ONE, we look at the challenges, advantages, and unique circumstances that people face when cooking by themselves. In this installment, we look at how to deal with grocery shopping for one.

Through out our COOKING FOR ONE series, we’ve talked about a wide range of issues that single cooks face. While not completely exhaustive, the discussion has touched on most of the major themes and problems that people who cook alone can face. It seems appropriate to bookend the series (for now) with a book recommendation.

The Pleasures of Cooking for One, by Judith Jones. To long-time food readers and home cooks, the name should sound familiar. Jones is the famous editor at the Knopf imprint, who is renowned for he work as the editor for culinary luminaries like James Beard and Julia Child.

This isn’t just another cookbook, and quite admittedly I’m not really a fan of cookbooks, if for no other reason than the Internet is the perfect repository for a million recipes, so having a book of just a few seems little strange. I prefer books that are about cooking and try to push readers to improve and expand their culinary repertoire, which is exactly what The Pleasures of Cooking does. Read the rest of this entry »

In the whirling dervish of cooking competition shows that Food Network has morphed into, Chopped stands out amongst the best. Essentially a condensed version of Iron Chef, the show has four chefs making up to three courses (appetizer, main course, dessert) using a list of mandatory ingredients which are revealed at the start of each round. To keep things interesting, the combination of ingredients are often times strange and usually include one “what the hell?” addition.

After each course the dishes are judged by a rotating panel of three chefs ranging in degrees of celebrity - if Scott Conant isn’t on the panel I change the channel half the time - and one chef is eliminated. Eventually, the final two cheftestants take part in a one-on-one dessert showdown to decide a winner. It is here where the show falls apart. Read the rest of this entry »

Castles and Cooks is proud to welcome back our first guest writer on the site – Bill O’Dell! A long time player of Magic, Bill loves what we’re doing here and offered up a new deck idea along with a corresponding recipe or two! Welcome back! – Jesse the Baker

One of my favourite deck types besides combo is tribal. And while Innistrad wasn’t as tribal happy as say Onslaught, the one shining light besides the angels were the humans. Their light would not be extinguished and unlike the darker magical critters of the night, they can keep multiplying endlessly without needing a host.

OK fine, humans do need a female host – but are we really going to get into a biology lesson now? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pretty sure the people at the Dunkin Donuts near my office hate me. I rarely order the same thing twice and often make sure to order the most absurd things on the menu (I still haven’t tried the meat munchkins). But after testing the fates last year with the Captain America Tri-Cup Coolata, I’ve been reluctant to eat or drink much of anything from Dunkin. Well, until they decided to pair up with Men in Black 3 instead of The Avengers.

As a kid, we had the first Men in Black on VHS and I’m pretty sure I watched that tape into oblivion. We very rarely every got videos since my mom said we only watched the same ones over and over again, but that seems to be a self fulfilling issue. So while I have no interest in seeing Men in Black 3, I can’t say no to new donuts. Read the rest of this entry »