The video below is of two young kids (5 and 9) cooking up a recipe from the Alinea Cookbook. Co-owner of Alinea and also co-author of the cookbook, Nick Kokonas, puts his two children to work on the Pheasant with Shallots, Cider and Burning Oak Leaves recipe. It’s pretty fun to watch, and you get to see the kids making a cider gel, plucking oak tree branches, and ultimately eating the hot skewered pheasant balls. I like when one boy says that the dish they are preparing is only medium-ish in difficulty. Sure it is, kid.

If you aren’t familiar with the restaurant Alinea (pronounced uh-lin-ee-uh), it is one of the best restaurants in the United States, and its owner and head chef, Grant Achatz, is one of the most celebrated chefs in America. The food is – to say the least – fabulously creative but also not that easy to prepare. I’ve never tried making one of his recipes myself, but I did eat at the restaurant a year ago and loved it. You can read about my experience here. While there, I also had the oak branch pheasant balls that the kids are preparing in the video.

The pheasant dish is one of Chef Achatz’ most well known, and it was even featured on Martha Stewart recently. It’s not the most difficult of his dishes to make, but it is a memorable one. Chef Achatz likes to integrate meaningful aromas into his food, and for the oak skewers, the leaves are ignited to give off the smell of burning Autumn leaves while you eat your bite of pheasant. It’s quite creative and pleasing.

If you or your kids are interested in learning how to cook from the Alinea cookbook, there are websites dedicated to preparing Chef Achatz’ recipes. Alinea at Home is a good one, and on that site there is a step-by-step tutorial on the pheasant skewer recipe. Alineaphile is another good site for guidance.

And if you are ever inspired to go to the actual restaurant in Chicago, just be aware that it is very very good and also extremely pricey. The cookbook, however, will cost you about $40.

I was struck by how the book, The Geometry of Pasta, by Jacob Kenedy reminded me of the kids’ books that feature black on white images. Young children are often mesmerized by contrasting black and white images, and there are several titles for sale on Amazon. I recently purchased Look, Look! for my new baby on the way, and I might try this pasta book out too. Granted, the subtleties of pasta shapes might not be as captivating to a young child as black-and-white flowers, fish, cats and cars, but it is worth a try.

With that said, The Geometry of Pasta cookbook would be a great addition to any cookbook collection. It has an elegant look with great graphic design. Also, the book jacket opens up into a nice poster of various pasta shapes that can be used as a pasta learning tool for the kids. You can see an image of the poster here.

If you are interested, you can check out The Geometry of Pasta website to get a better idea of what’s in the book. They have different pages with pasta shapes, recipes from the book, and the video below. The video is rather interesting, and I love the stark shapes and minimalist instruction — though it does go rather quickly at times.

The creative design of the book was done by co-author Caz Hildebrand of Here Design, and the technical drawings were done by Lisa Vandy, who is the Creative Partner at Now Ware. Lisa Vandy has designed similarly styled products for the Hairy Bikers to include this neat tea towel. There is also apparently a similar tea towel for the Geometry of Pasta that is soon to be sold. I really like the idea of these black-and-white tea towels, but I must say that I prefer the Hairy Biker one. It has more recognizable kitchen objects on it.

Of course, I can’t find the towel available in the US, but maybe I will look into having it shipped from the UK. The book can be purchased from Amazon for $16.50.

In the October Bon Appetit, the BA Foodist talked about making popcorn the old-fashioned way on the stove. That got me to thinking how a generation of kids these days have been raised on microwave popcorn where the magic of popping is contained in some bag tucked away in a microwave. Though microwave popcorn is convenient, the gourmet variety is often more tasty and you can also control the flavor better. If you want to, you can use less salt and butter, add some sugar for kettle-style popcorn, or you can even add other herbs and spices to create your own unique falvors. I have heard of people using sage, rosemary, taco seasoning, mild chili powder, ground pepper, and parmesan cheese.

So how is it done?

Well, it is pretty easy and you don’t really need to buy any special equipment, just the whole corn kernels. You will need about 2-3 tablespoons of cooking oil for 1/2 cup of kernels, a pan or large metal prep bowl, and any flavoring you want. Here is a recipe from Alton Brown on how to use a large bowl covered with aluminum foil. You can also use a large stock pot with cover. Just make sure to crack the cover and let the steam out once the kernels start popping. If you search the internet you will find numerous recipes using slightly different oil and kernel amounts and different types of vegetable oils.

There are also specialty popcorn makers if you want to go that route. One is called the Whirley-Pop Stovetop Popcorn Popper, which can be purchased at Amazon for $24. Another vintage-style popper is called the Atom Pop Corn Popper, but this item is a bit harder to find online. You can check their website to see if a dealer is near you or contact them directly for a way to purchase it. If you don’t want to make you snack on the stovetop, of course you can also buy a hot air popper such as the Presto PopLite Hot Air Corn Popper. This item costs about $20 and gets very high marks on Amazon.

As for kernels, the most important thing to keep in mind is that old, dry kernels don’t taste as good. One way to go is to buy fresh gourmet varieties online and choose the one you like best. The picture above is for the Fireworks Popcorn Variety Pack, but there are other gourmet suppliers too. Boulder Popcorn, Black Jewel, Crown Jewel, Wabash Valley Farms and the already-mentioned Fireworks. If you don’t want to go the online route, you can always look for Orville Redenbacher’s at your local supermarket. Some people also store the kernels with a little moisture in the jar to prevent them from getting dried out. You can use a mister or just pour some water in the jar, immediately pour it out, and then let the residual water add some moisture to the kernels while storing.

As for salt, Morton makes a special popcorn salt that is finer and sticks to the kernels better. You can look in your supermarket for it or buy it directly from Morton (4-pack for $5.56). You can also make your own version of popcorn salt by putting some kosher salt into a coffee bean or spice grinder to make a finer grained salt.

I hope this inspires you to try making your own popcorn. Microwave popcorn is surely convenient, but the old-fashioned popcorn is healthier and you get to control the flavor to create that perfect snack food. Plus, kids can start to see the ‘magic’ again and help out in the kitchen. Happy popping.

I know ice cream season is largely over, but I’ve continued experimenting with ice cream flavors and see no need to stop. I have been trying various savory ingredients to make my ice cream, and they have come out really nice. I first made avocado ice cream and then moved on to sweet corn. Both were very tasty and the savory flavors at first seemed a bit odd, but they quickly grew on me.

Recently, I purchased The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, which is really a wonderful reference. The book covers ice creams and sorbets among other delights, but it really does a good job of inspiring ice cream making. I like to make my own ice cream for my child and even though the avocado flavor wasn’t a hit with her, the peanut butter ice cream is sure to be. I love it, and this is coming from a person who hates peanut butter. Yes, I have hated peanut butter since childhood and have never even had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Lebovitz notes in his book that the peanut butter ice cream is so easy that kids can mostly put it together on their own without the help of parents. The ingredients are simply 3/4 cup of smooth peanut butter, 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 2/3 cups half-and-half, a pinch of salt, and 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract. Just puree everything together, chill for an hour, and then freeze in your favorite ice cream maker.

I can’t imagine that a kid would not like this ice cream (unless they have allergies of course), but there are many other interesting recipes to choose from in the book too. How about pear-pecorino, basil, or even goat cheese ice cream?  And I think I might even try sweet potato ice cream for Thanksgiving. This book makes ice cream fun, and I definitely recommend it. The book will run you about $13 at Amazon.

In central Minnesota it finally got warm enough to grill out, so I decided to make a cedar-plank grilled salmon. It was nothing too adventurous, so I wanted to find a recipe with a twist to it.

Eventually I found this recipe for a pinot noir infused cedar-plank salmon with some fresh herbs on top. The recipe calls for soaking the plank and wood chips in a pinot noir and water mixture before grilling. That sounded pretty good, and it is always a nice idea to start the grilling season with a lot of smoke to let the neighborhood know that winter is over.

I used a baking sheet to soak the plank in the wine-water mixture, and a measuring cup filled with the wine mixture and wood chips to weigh it down. I soaked everything for about 2-3 hours. The wood chips I used were organic golden alder chips that I bought from Maine Grilling Woods. They have a nice selection of wood chips for smoking and were featured in Food & Wine in June of last year. The Food & Wine article also gives 20 grilling tips, which are handy to review before grilling season really starts.

I pretty much followed the recipe to the letter, but I did marinate the salmon longer in the wine-water mixture and sprinkled some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper on the fish before putting it on the grill. Also, because I bought a rather large center-cut piece of salmon, it took around 20-25 minutes to cook instead of 15 minutes as the recipe calls for. The marjoram, thyme and rosemary were also a nice touch on top.

The end result was really amazing. I had never cooked with wood chips before, and I can’t say exactly how much the pinot noir influenced the taste, but it was so good that I don’t think I would change anything the next time. In the end the hardest part of the meal was sacrificing a bottle of red wine to season the wood, but the result was definitely worth it.

After browsing the eGullet forums, I found a post entitled “Cooking with Dog” and that simply demanded checking into. Of course, it doesn’t involve cooking dog meat, but instead features a Japanese woman cooking next to a grey poodle named Francis. The cooking instruction videos are for traditional Japanese dishes and there is narration in English along with subtitles.

The dishes are rather simple and inspiring, especially if you haven’t cooked Japanese food before. The videos can also be pretty funny at points. There is just something about a dog dutifully sitting next to a cook and staring into the camera that builds an expectation of humor. You kind of wait for the dog to be a dog, and every now and then the poodle host will get distracted when a fish or something else that smells good comes along.

Anyhow, it is definitely worth checking out the videos, and with all the celebrity chefs these days, it is a nice change of pace to have a dog ‘cook’ — even if only as a mascot.

You can find these videos on YouTube at the Cooking With Dog channel.

I am finally working on another one of my cooking goals for 2010. I have already made cheese and butter which were on my to-do list, and now I am making the pickled Korean cabbage called kimchi.

So far I have tried a recipe for quick kimchi that was in the late-great Gourmet magazine and featured in March of 2009. I am not trying to take the easy way out with something quick; it just worked out better with my schedule to start off with this recipe.

The kimchi I made was relatively quick at 3.5 hours preparation time, while other recipes call for days of pickling. With that said, I still don’t consider that I have made kimchi until I have tried at least one more recipe to compare it to, but it was a good start and I was very satisfied with the result.

Now for full disclosure: I really love kimchi but I absolutely hate the smell of Asian fish sauce, and I had my concerns about this dish from the second I opened that bottle. The result, however, was extremely good. Once mixed, the aroma of fish sauce blended, faded, and infused the Napa cabbage in a wonderful way — kind of like using anchovies.

After that, I also made kimchi quesadillas which was also a recipe featured in Gourmet last year, and now I am thinking of using it in some fish tacos. It is really amazing how useful it is to have kimchi around to add crunch and spice to dishes.

Anyhow, next week I intend to make my second round of kimchi, and it will be interesting to see how it compares. Regardless, I expect that I will be making more more of this spicy dish in the future. It takes a little bit of time to let the flavors come together, but it is still a really easy dish to make.

I found this recipe for roasted pears on the popular blog La Tartine Gourmande. I fell in love with roasted pears while living in France, but it took this French blogger to give the dessert some flair and really make it amazing. Just look at those pears. The photo is great, and the pears taste even better.

I especially like how the lemon grass, ginger, and vanilla bean seeds give the dish an exotic touch. Then the ground pistachios add a delicate crunchy texture. It was tart, yet smooth, and was almost like a tropical custard.

If I ever wanted to impress anyone with a dessert — and I mean anyone — I would probably make this dish. It is really tasty and I recommend it highly.

Via Lifehacker comes this post about Microsoft’s advanced recipe search on Bing. I’ve never used Bing before and only tried it out yesterday to see how the recipe search function worked, but here are my initial impressions of the recipe feature.

First of all, I must say that it is pretty impressive at first glance with all the features to refine your search. There are categories to sort by ratings (stars), convenience (time), cuisine (French, Italian etc.), main ingredient, course, cooking method, and occasion (season and holidays). They even include health facts for each recipe. The best part, however, is its ease of use. There is no going to a separate advanced search page; instead you just filter the recipes using the sidebar tools. It is very intuitive and easy to use.

With that said, it appears that most of the recipes come from delish.com and myrecipes.com. Delish is associated with Microsoft, so there is no surprise there, but at least myrecipes.com pulls their content from cooking magazines — albeit not from most of the big guns like Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Saveur, and Fine Cooking. Ultimately, I think the success of this recipe search engine will depend upon how they populate it with content. At this point, other recipe sites such as cooks.com, allrecipes, and Epicurious are still better and Epicurious even has a good advanced search function already — though not as slick as the one on Bing.

The Bing recipe search is still a long way from becoming the go-to site for recipes, but the easy-to-use advanced sorting features give it promise. I wish other sites would take a queue from Bing and improve their search functions, and it would also be great if these sites started tapping the world of food blogs.

It has been a holiday tradition in my family for years to serve the Norwegian rice porridge called risengrynsgrøt during the holidays. It is a simple rice dinner pudding that my grandmother made using a double boiler and some long-grain white rice, water, milk, and salt. It is normally served during the winter months and for holidays.

It is one of those dishes that as a kid (and surprisingly long into young adulthood) I thought was something everyone ate during the holidays. Later in life I learned that it was a Norwegian tradition along with lefse, krumkake, rosettes, berlinerkranzer, and julekake.

Because I live in Minnesota, I can still get many of these items in grocery stores and bakeries, but of course they aren’t as good as my Grandmother’s. The rice porridge, however, was my favorite and I have started to make my own version.

I must admit that I do not prepare it exactly as my Grandmother did. The dinner porridge is not served sweet. Usually cinnamon, sugar, and an eye of butter are added by the person eating it after the rice is on the plate, so sweetness varies depending upon the person.

Several years back I was in Istanbul and had some Turkish rice pudding in a restaurant that tasted very close to the Norwegian rice pudding I was used to, and then a couple of years after that I ran into this recipe for Moroccan rice pudding in Food & Wine. I decided it had promise, so I tried it out.

Compared to the Norsk risengrynsgrøt, this one is sweeter. Norwegians also make a sweet rice porridge call riskrem, but I decided that this Moroccan recipe would be my take on rice pudding. The hot version my family prepared was fine, but I wanted a more versatile dessert instead.

Many countries and cultures have a tradition of rice pudding, and the Moroccan recipe with slight changes tasted very similar to the rice pudding of my childhood. I simply cut back the sugar to 1/2 cup or even 3/8 cup. I also liked the use of arborio rice instead of long-grain rice. It made it creamier and the rice grains held together better during the second boiling, so it was less mushy.

I don’t add the almonds or orange-flower water called for in the Food & Wine recipe, but I do sprinkle the dish with cinnamon or some fresh ground nutmeg. During the summer months, I will also add blackberries or raspberries instead of cinnamon.

Regardless, of your holiday traditions, this rice pudding is a great recipe to try out, but I do recommend reducing the sugar and trying it with cinnamon. And now this has become my holiday rice pudding; the same tradition but just a little bit different.

For a traditional risengrynsgrøt, here is a recipe you can try.