Hot, Cheap & Easy

Big Bang Burgers: Four Ingredients, Deliciously Juicy

Do you buy frozen beef patties for summer grilling? Really? Please tell me you don’t. Or at least, please tell me that you have done it for the last time! When you see how easy it is to make tasty, juicy burgers that are infinitely superior to those tasteless wooden slabs, and only use four ingredients, I know you will make your own next time. And your family and guests will be glad you did.

Destined for the freezer

We certainly were. Several days before our recent beach camping trip to Hither Hills State Park here on the East End of Long Island, I made about a dozen burgers (which took all of five minutes, even with Leandro doing the burger formation), cooked a couple for dinner, then wrapped and froze the rest. Ours are a variety of sizes, as a certain almost-six-year-old was in charge of forming the patties. I like having many sizes actually, because it suits different appetities. Adjust cooking times accordingly.

Here’s one we ate at home

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Tags: burgers, camping food, cooking, food, grilling, hamburgers, kid-friendly foods, recipes

Comments 11 Comments
Categories BBQ, Camping, Entertaining, Food, Grilling, meat, Recipes

Guest Post from a Ghost Writer: Crostini with Fig Spread, Caramelized Onions and Gorgonzola

5 Jun

Kerriann Flanagan Brosky puts the normal in paranormal. Seriously…when I say she’s a ghost writer, I’m not kidding!

Kerriann is today’s guest blogger sharing a great recipe for crostini, but I simply must give you the back story before we get to that.

Many of us who love food lead double lives. I grow, cook and write about food, but in my other life I am a full-time college professor. Look around the food blogging world and you’ll find fulltime parents, home renovators, artists, poets, and more. But my fellow contributor at Edible Long Island, Kerriann Flanagan Brosky, a cookbook author, writer and photographer, sent my eyebrows to the ceiling and my jaw to the floor with her other profession: she is a serious ghost investigator!

Kerriann and Sal, co-writers of Delectable Italian Dishes

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Tags: cooking, crostini, figs, food, ghosts, Kerriann Flanagan Brosky, recipes

Comments 9 Comments
Categories Edible Long Island, Entertaining, Italian, Party Snacks, Recipes, Tapas, Vegetarian

Spider Dogs, Octo-Dogs:The Hottest Dogs for Kids!

31 May

We’ll be camping and grilling again this summer, so here is a reminder for you (and me) on the coolest way to grill hot dogs for kids!

Click here for original post, or follow the directions below!

Quick grill idea for kids!

Grilled Spider-Dogs

Packaged hot dogs

1 skewer for each hotdog

You’ll want a hot grill going for this.

Stick a skewer halfway through each hot dog lengthwise.

Carefully cut the free half into quarters, lengthwise.

Lay the sliced ends of the hot dogs on the grill. The slices will curl back away from each other as they cook. When the sliced end is cooked and curled, carefully remove the dogs from their skewers, skewer through the cooked end and slice uncooked half into quarters lengthwise. Lay the uncooked ends of the dogs on the grill and cook until they are also curled back and you have a spider (or octo-) dog!

Hurray!!

Tags: camping, cooking with kids, food, grilling, hot dog ideas, recipes, spider dogs

Comments 7 Comments
Categories BBQ, Camping, Entertaining, Food, Grilling, Recipes

The True Tasting Room Experience – A Summer of Wine and Work at Paumanok Vineyards

30 May

The other day I posted a remembrance of my experiences behind the bar. I had meant to talk about a day in the tasting room at Paumanok Vineyards, as I came back to lend a hand over Memorial Day weekend. But somehow the post morphed into a mini-memoir about my time pouring drinks in a biker bar and I didn’t really do enough justice to the original intention.

So….for your reading pleasure, a true taste of The Tasting Room Experience. This is an article that was published in 2007, in Spanish, in Puerto Rico’s Le Connoisseur magazine for which I was a contributor for much of the magazine’s ten-year or so life. It recounts my experience s in the tasting room — what I learned and the fun we had. And explains why I am in that picture with Hillary Clinton. This article has never been published in English before! Please remember…it is an article published in 2007 recounting the summer of 2005. Some of the information may have changed slightly in the ensuing years!

Salim Massoud serving up on a busy day in 2007

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Tags: Long Island, North Fork, Paumanok, Paumanok Vineyards, wine, working in a tasting room

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Edible Long Island, farming

Behind the Bar: A Day in the Tasting Room at Paumanok Vineyards

28 May

My friends and acquaintances know that I do love a seat at the bar (skiing Mahogany Ridge, I like to call it). They all know that I don’t do a whole lot of sitting at the bar anymore, but not all of them know about my behind-the-bar history.

My first bartending job was at a bar here on Long Island known as Diamond Lil’s. To say it was a dive would be generous understatement.

Morning meeting: winemaker Kareem Massoud briefs the tasting room staff on all things wine

It was the last resort of the biker crowd, which had been banned from every other bar in town (and there were at least a dozen in town back then). When it was packed on a Friday night with a cover band playing — the bands as a rule really rocked –, it was fun alright, so you didn’t notice, but if you also worked on quiet Sunday afternoons, as I did, it smelled bad. Stale beer and stale cigarette and cheap tequila and piss. Bad. It was dirty. It was dark. The ceilings were so low, they squashed expectations. The jukebox played “Plastic Jesus” and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” at random — and often alarming –intervals. The pool table was off-kilter. So were the toilets, probably from so many large bikers sitting on them in reverse, in order to use the tank to cut cocaine. If I came in hungover, the hangdog divorced lonely Sunday afternoon guys — who were often hanging about by the door waiting for me to open at noon — took great delight in ordering shots of tequila all afternoon, to see if they could make me puke. I will not tell you whether they were successful.

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Tags: Paumaonok Vineyards, tasting room associate, working at a winery

Comments 10 Comments
Categories Edible Long Island

Image

View From My Porch, May 24, 2013

24 May

This is what it looked like on the South Shore of Long Island today! Note flourishing raised beds….A special image for Cecilia of The Kitchen Garden’s Project. Click to connect to her!

Comments 18 Comments
Categories Uncategorized

Make Your Party Puerto Rican: Ten Recipes for Great Island Food

24 May

Whether it’s Memorial Day, Fourth of July, or Christmas, the following dishes – most of them quite easy to prepare and using ingredients available in regular supermarkets (especially those that carry Goya products) — are a medley of the best of Puerto Rican food. This is not a complete list, of course, but mix and match them up and you will have a big table of big, bold food that will introduce everyone to new flavor combinations without scaring them off!

Have a terrific weekend everyone! Buen provecho…..

1. Tostones – Our version of french fries…made with plantains. This is the authentic method with some secret steps!

Serve these as an appetizer, topped with sour cream and caviar (Thanks Patricia Wilson!), a garlic mojo, or in mayo-ketchup, as follows

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Tags: buffet food, comida criolla, cooking, food, holiday dishes, How to make Puerto Rican food, party recipes, pernil, Puerto Rican recipes, recipes

Comments 14 Comments
Categories Comida Criolla, Entertaining, Food, Party Snacks, Puerto Rican, Recipes, Side Dishes, Spanish, Vegan, Vegetarian

Quick Cook Clams on the Half Shell – Lighter and Healthier Mediterranean Style

23 May

Summers on Long Island have traditionally been lined with clams. From the big surf clam shells you collect at the beach and take home as keepsakes, ashtrays, tealight holders and that are the most likely clams in your fried clam strips, to the cherrystones you burn your back and cut up your feet feeling around for somewhere in the marshy areas between Massapequa and Jones Beach, to the baked clams that are a feature of virtually every family restaurant on the South Shore, the steamers (which we call piss clams) that you eat by the bucket dipping the clams in brine and butter (after removing that weird skin – best not to discuss it), washed down with golden beers on the fishing docks of Freeport’s Nautical Mile...yeah, clams are a part of life here, especially in the summer.

This is what they look like after steaming and before broiling.

So never mind that the clams we used in this recipe were actually from Maryland (once again, thanks Ashley!), it still felt like a proper kick-off to the outdoor eating season to us.

This was a super easy recipe (especially because my dad was actually the one who did most of the work, while I fussed about with other things, like chilling the wine and getting my own Mussels Vinaigrette plated) and the results were phenomenal. Pedro being Pedro, he didn’t use butter, which would be traditional. Instead he used garlic-infused olive oil and I think the dish was much, much better for it. Very fresh, briny, and bracing, the way I like my seafood! Continue reading →

Tags: broiling clams, clams, cooking, food, Long Island, New York, seafood; shellfish, summer recipes

Comments 7 Comments
Categories Entertaining, Food, Party Snacks, Recipes, Seafood, Tapas

Light Yet Hearty Springtime Spanish Tortilla

19 May

The pressure was on! We had an invite to a brunch that would bring together some of the contributors to the new Edible Long Island magazine (launching first edition digitally in July, and then print editions starting in September). And everyone was to bring something.

A brunch full of food writers focused on local, hand-crafted food is a brunch full of people who know their way around a kitchen and know good stuff when they taste it. So this called for a dish that features seasonal ingredients, preferably locally-sourced, and perhaps expressing something about who I am and where I come from.

Portable and tasty, tortillas are a terrific potluck solution

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Tags: asparagus, cooking, food, frittata, recipes, seasonal spring, Spanish egg cake, tortilla

Comments 28 Comments
Categories Edible Long Island, eggs, Entertaining, farming, Food, Party Snacks, Recipes, Side Dishes, Spanish

10 Healthy Travel Snacks

17 May

Note to readers: AS the summer travel season begins, here is some excellent snacking advice for road warriors from Jayne McAllister!

Probably more than anything, I’m asked what travelers should take as snacks on their trips. It’s a good question because there are so many fat- and sugar-laden options at airports (and in supermarkets for that matter…). Here are my go-to favorites:

Almonds. I always have a bag of almonds with me in case disaster (i.e. hunger) strikes. Fat, fiber and flavor. Quick and easy. Around 21 almonds equals an ounce and that should more than suffice. I generally limit myself to ten.

Goji Berries. What? The most nutritionally rice berry-fruit on the planet. They are a complete protein source as well as being full of vitamins and minerals. Gojis contribute to longevity and healthy hormones; improve vision; boost the immune system; and they contain a huge amount of hydrogen so are excellent for countering inflight dehydration. You’ll find them at your local health food store. And, you can get…

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¡Comida Hispana! Recipes to unleash your inner Latino

Mango Mojitos With Ancho Chili Salt

It was another summer Friday in the neighborhood and that called for another festive cocktail. Riding high on the success of last session’s passionfruit mojitos, I decided to make mango mojitos. The drink itself followed much the same construction, but the mango was decidedly sweeter than the passionfruit, so I decided that it needed a […]
Passionfruit Mojitos by the Pitcher or Glass

Summer evenings in the neighborhood can be wonderful. Occasionally on a Friday some of us neighbors bring out folding chairs and sit together in one front yard for a bit of happy hour while the kids go mental on someone else’s lawn. It’s pretty much BYO, but we do mix up a pitcher of experimental […]
KID IN THE KITCHEN: Tembleque (Tropical Coconut Pudding)

We spent the better part of last summer in Puerto Rico, and among the tasty things that my little guy fell in love with was tembleque, a jiggly (temblar means to tremble) dessert that falls somewhere between pudding and flan. I promised him we’d make it back in New York, and this weekend, for a […]
Sangría Tropical (and rainforest paradise pictures)

When the heat gets tropical, so should the drinks. On a recent trip to the mountains of Puerto Rico, I was inspired by a wonderfully cooling and exotic sangría I had up around and about El Yumque (Caribbean National Forest, the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service system) at Noelia’s, recommended to us […]
Salmorejo de jueyes (Land Crab Stew)

There are a number of land crab species skittering about Caribbean coastlines. Some are edible and the one we eat most here in Puerto Rico (although I am told they mostly are imported from Venezuela these days) is Cardisoma guanhumi which we call juey and — if you are English-speaking — you might call the […]