Recipe, Pitch

Stroud's shares recipe for 'perfect fried chicken' with Joplin Globe

Jonathan Bender — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:30:28 -0500

The recipe for Stroud's fried chicken has never been a big secret. The restaurant has long claimed that fried chicken is simply chicken dredged in flour, salt and pepper.…

Tavern in the Village picked to be part of 'Tree to Table' cherry campaign

Jonathan Bender — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:05:46 -0500

Tavern in the Village (3901 Prairie Lane) was recently picked to be the Kansas representative for a fifty-state 'Tree to Table' campaign sponsored by the Washington State Fruit Commission to highlight the short, but sweet, Northwest cherry season (June to late August).

The cherry on the award?…

Give me a Cheese Frenchee, si vous plaît

Charles Ferruzza — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:30:36 -0500

Yesterday, I remembered another era in American history when modern technology was going to replace every waiter and waitress in America. This was before computers, so the state-of-the-art technology of the time was a telephone.

If I hadn't spent most of the late 1970s nursing hangovers, I might have remembered that there were other restaurants in that decade that tried the novelty of having telephones on every table in order to call the kitchen -- eliminating servers, with typically disastrous results, especially if alcohol was a component of the meal -- or to chat up other customers.…

Blizzard-bound? Make an edible igloo and other sensational Super Bowl snacks

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 11:33:01 -0600

Go wild with cream cheese, black olives and Bac-os!

If the weather has you officially homebound today, why not let your culinary creativity soar? With the countdown to Super Bowl Sunday ticking away, it's a great time to plan a buffet of visually stimulating snack creations that trump the traditional (like Jonathan Bender's chili-cheese dip) or the too exotic (Spicy White Castle Dip).…

Spicy White Castle Dip: a make-it-yourself Super Bowl snack we're admittedly scared to make

Charles Ferruzza — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:04:51 -0600

It takes 10 of these to make Spicy White Castle Dip.

Chips and salsa? Out! Potato chips with ranch dip? Totally passe.…

How to make a chocolate salami for Festivus

Jonathan Bender — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:45:06 -0600

You might have forgot that Festivus was on Thursday. But you still have time to make the holiday's signature dish -- Festivus Chocolate Salami.…

Thanksgiving Turkey Cake could change the face of Thanksgiving

Jonathan Bender — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:15:09 -0600

The challenge with Thanksgiving is that you have to eat dessert even if you don't have room. And when you add a piece of cake and a few cookies into your stomach, the whole Thanksgiving meal can go south in a hurry.

The Thanksgiving Turkey Cake, featured on Chow, is a sweet and savory layer cake that takes carving out of the equation and moves you straight past the Thanksgiving meal into dessert.…

Reason #84 I wouldn't make it as a vegetarian: Sausage Roasted Squash

Jonathan Bender — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:00:41 -0500

A month of eating barbecue for the blog and endless series of food recalls had me loosely wondering if I might make a run at vegetarianism. But in the middle of deciding whether I could really live without another beef sandwich of Arthur Bryant's, I was presented with a recipe that ended any idle thoughts of retiring from my career as a carnivore.…

Singing the blues

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:17:33 -0500

July is perfect for red, white and blueberries

There were several vendors at the City Market selling blueberries last Saturday -- beautiful blueberries just begging to be folded into muffin batter, cooked into sauce for pancakes, sprinkled on top of a meringue Pavlova or added to homemade ice cream.

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Relic Tray: What Cooks in Suburbia

Charles Ferruzza — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:30:06 -0500

When E.P Dutton & Company published Lila Perl's What Cooks in Suburbia, in 1961, suburbia was part of the American dream: a brand-new house with all-modern appliances that was close enough to the hustle-and-bustle of big city life to enjoy the culture of the metropolis without actually having to put up with the noise, the crime, the pollution and less-desirable qualities of city living. Perl dedicated her book to "The Modern Suburban Homemaker."…

Ardie Davis' recipe for smoked deviled eggs

Jonathan Bender — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:00:28 -0500

Deviled eggs do make trouble for my idle hands. If there's a plate of deviled eggs nearby and both of my hands are not filled with drinks, they'll shortly be filled with deviled eggs.…

Crab meat: Today's the day, folks

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:30:30 -0600

Go ahead and be crabby today

Go ahead and take your lumps -- as long as its lump crab. March 9 is official National Crab Meat Day, which is reason enough to go out and order something with crab meat as an ingredient.…

Cooking classes at Function Junction

Charles Ferruzza — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:01:41 -0600

Now that Function Junction owners Mary Merola and Rebecca Wilkie have expanded the Crown Center store and installed a state-of-the-art Viking exhibition kitchen, they've made sure that beautiful kitchen is getting a lot of use. The February-March class schedule includes this week's "Passion for Pizza!" class taught by chef Paul Freimuth, on Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m.…

Holiday recipe: Cognac baked sweet potatoes

Charles Ferruzza — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:00:08 -0600

Sally Calvin, the doyenne of Widgeonwood Farm in Columbia, Missouri (which she operates with her manly hunter husband David) is best known in Kansas City for her Saturday-only outdoor market, Widgeonwood in the Village, held in the courtyard of Prairie Village Shopping Center from early spring to mid-October. Last Saturday Sally hosted her annual holiday market, selling her jams, jellies, baking mixes, syrups, salsas and gift items -- and copies of 2004's Widgeonwood: Finally the Cookbook, which includes a recipe for sweet potatoes baked in cognac.…

The best mac-and-cheese recipe ever!

Charles Ferruzza — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:00:14 -0600

One of this city's most iconic restaurants of the 1980s was a vibrant bistro on 39th Street called Cafe Lulu, owned and operated by flame-haired chef Lou Jane Temple. After the restaurant closed in 1992, it remained the inspiration for Temple's series of culinary mysteries featuring a stripper-turned cook-turned-mystery solver named Heaven Lee.

Temple is still a chef, but now for a private client on the East Coast; she's living in Georgia and writing a new novel.…

Ragu: The chili of the sauce world

Jonathan Bender — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:15:04 -0500

Some of the best items to come out of your kitchen can reward your innate sloth. It's time you discovered one of the finest dishes that has an inverse ratio of taste to effort: a plate of pasta with homemade ragu -- meat-based sauce that is essentially chili (with apologies to the proponents of Cincinnati Chili) -- for your noodles.

As for what constitutes a ragu, that depends on who you ask.…

Start eating pumpkin seeds

Jonathan Bender — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:25:45 -0500

If you're going to be scooping out pumpkins in the next few weeks, it's time you were rewarded for using a safety knife when you accidentally give your jack-o'-lantern a unibrow.

And while it's fine to roast pumpkin seeds with a bit of salt, you don't just have to stop there. Chow has a list of 10 ways to spice them up.…

A bowl of homemade oatmeal that doesn't take an hour

Jonathan Bender — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:30:06 -0500

Oatmeal is a breakfast that seems to require more than humankind is able to give right now. There's a reason that most of the oatmeal people eat is instant -- breakfast is often a choice of convenience.…

Kyle Baker's recipe for shrimp n' grits

Jonathan Bender — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:14:01 -0500

The best seafood dishes make it seem like someone went to a lot of trouble to get big flavor. If you want to impress guests, chef Kyle Baker is letting Fat City in on his recipe for Shrimp N' Grits off the new menu at The Oak Room in the InterContinental.…

Rachel Fracassa's recipe for summer gazpacho

Jonathan Bender — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:35:01 -0500

As tomato season winds down, soft and pulpy tomatoes lend themselves to soup. Raw food chef Rachel Fracassa has a straightforward recipe for turning your leftover heirloom tomatoes into a summer gazpacho.…