Do you know this beloved Chinese chicken dish?
After seeing this recipe pop up in the New York Times Sunday magazine recently, as well as a few new Chinese cookbooks, I admit I was intrigued.
What was this “Three-Cup Chicken” everyone was suddenly talking about?
Then, I made it, tasted it, and had a good chuckle.
The predominant ingredient in these bars? Spent grain from brewing beer.
It’s a good bet that when you’re downing that frosty mug of beer, you’re not thinking about the spent grain that went into brewing it.
But there’s a lot of it. A whole lot.
Indeed, when beer is made, about 85 percent of its ingredients ends up as waste that is usually composted or sold off to feed livestock.
Now, Dan Kurzrock and Jordan Schwartz have come up with a novel — and delicious — way to reuse that discarded grain.
The hobbyist brewers created ReGrained, granola-like bars made from spent grain donated by three Bay Area craft breweries: Magnolia Brewing, 21st Amendment Brewery, and Triple Voodoo.
The Sunnyvale Public Library invites foodie writers to take part in its “Cooking Up Stories,” an ebook about food and cooking.
The library is seeking your best short story or non-fiction piece to publish in this electronic compilation. If your submission is chosen for inclusion, it will be added to the library’s online collection, making it available to a wide audience. You still retain the copyright to your story, so you can reuse your submission elsewhere in the future, too.
Submissions will be taken starting April 1. For more information about the project, click here.
The upside to all that construction going on lately at the Park Valencia area of San Jose’s Santana Row?
A new and improved plaza that will include Smitten Ice Cream.
Mint chocolate ice cream being made at Smitten Ice Cream in Los Altos. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)
The 600-square-foot shop will open in July, serving Smitten’s patented made-to-order ice cream. You can watch for yourself as liquid nitrogen freezes the mixture in a flash at a super low temperature, resulting in smaller ice crystals and a supremely smooth ice cream.
That’s a wrap.
As a kid, I remember sitting hunched on the floor, playing pick-up sticks with my brothers.
I’d hold my breath as I gingerly tried to pull a stick out of the pile without toppling the whole shebang. All the while, my brothers would joke around, trying to make me laugh, so that my already trembling fingers would fumble the task at hand.
I’m not sure who won most of those matches. But I do know it definitely made me learn the art of focus and blocking out distractions.
In this day and age of all electronics all the time, does anyone even possess that old-school game any more?
Maybe not. I know I haven’t played it in eons. Still, this fun dish brought back those childhood memories.
“Asparagus Pastry Straws” is made for picking up with your fingers.
Long spears of spring asparagus lend themselves to that anyway. But add a twisty rope of puff pastry all around each spear and you know resistance is futile.
Black Hawaiian Sea Salt from the San Francisco Salt Company.
Boxers or briefs?
Pie or cake?
Salty or sweet?
In answer to the last question, I decidedly favor sweet.
But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate salty, and in particular, how a pinch of salt evens out sweetness or rounds out the flavor of most anything.
The San Francisco Salt Company understands that. Its British founder Lee Williamson originally started the company to sell bath salts, because he was hooked on its therapeutic and relaxing effects from soaking in the tub after a long day of work.
It wasn’t long, though, before he turned his attention to culinary salts, too.