maybe to her own detriment
I’ve been watching Daisy Martinez’s show on the Food Network, Viva Daisy!, produced by Rachael Ray and it’s pretty good.
On her own show this morning, Rachael showcased Daisy beautifully. Daisy did a (wonderfully pronounced) Choripan, which is uncooked sausage without fennel, split down the middle and grilled until crispy. (In South America, she’d use the hard-to-find-here uncooked chorizo.) It's served on good, also crispy, bread and topped with an avocado salsa.
Now if only Rachael could give her own recipes a makeover! RR wanted to do a "sammie" as well, but her recipe was unattractive and unappealing. NO ONE likes sautéed green peppers, even if they are cubanelles. With these steamed anemic looking peppers, she cooked a bunch of brown ground meat and called it a Sloppy Joe. Really, how many sloppy joe recipes do we need?
If this had been a cook off, Daisy would have run away with the grand prize, leaving Rachael in the dust. Hers was much more appetizing, interesting and worth making. I guess it's good that Rachael is comfortable enough to have a clearly superior cook on with her. I think she should stick to videos of cleaning out viewers' closets.
Showing posts with label Daisy Martinez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daisy Martinez. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Daisy, Daisy
Give me your answer do. I'm half crazy...to know where your necklaces come from.
Viva Daisy with Daisy Martinez
Sunday Dinner
Chicken with Rice (Arroz con Pollo)
Valencian Salad (Ensalada Valenciana)
Sweet Tomato "Conserva"
Today Daisy is making a traditional Sunday Dominican dinner. I love her green stone necklace.
She starts with dessert (wearing another lovely necklace). May I suggest that she put the sources for those in the credits?
Oh my, she’s scooping out sugar with a scoop that looks identical to the one I use for my powdered Tide. She adds 2 cups of sugar to a pot of water with 2 cinnamon sticks and a few allspice berries. Daisy loves the word for allspice in Spanish, Malagueta. She stirs the mixture.
She cores some plum tomatoes. Should we be surprised that tomatoes are for dessert? They are a fruit, after all. I’ve had tomato sorbet, not for dessert though, and I admit I am not predisposed to like this. But it does sound interesting. I must be psychic. Listen to what Daisy just said, “Tomatoes are a fruit, so it’s not that far-fetched.” Great minds...I guess.
Daisy drops the tomatoes into simmering water until the skin just starts to curl under. She scoops them out into an ice bath. She gets a whiff of syrup saying it smells so good she could dab it behind her ears.
One second here…I know some folks do…but I don’t CORE my tomatoes before dropping them in boiling water. I don’t want the gaping hole (however small) to allow the boiling water to cook the delicate insides of the tomatoes. However, I do make a VERY shallow x in the bottom, which allows the skin to slip off very VERY easily. So no coring for me, but a slight X.
She peels them easily and squeezes them to get rid of the seeds and pulp. She wants a clean tomato shell. She puts them into the syrup to cook for 20 minutes.
She moves on to teach us “the secret to a happier kitchen” – Sofrito. It’s “the cornerstone of Latin American cooking”. It has onions, garlic, cilantro and hot or sweet peppers. It’s used to flavor soups, stews, beans and, today, Spanish rice.
Daisy chops one onion, 7 or 8 cloves of garlic and a cubanelle pepper, which she prefers to the sourer green pepper. I’m with her.
She processes everything to a fine purée. She adds a red pepper for color and a tomato. Daisy also adds cilantro WITH the stems. She tells us that in cooking school they told them to remove the stems and her mother was appalled, because of all their flavor.
After everything is puréed, Daisy takes a big whiff. She LOVES it. She likes to make enough sofrito for the week and use a cup each night.
The tomatoes are simmering away.
Daisy is making a colored oil with achiote or annatto seeds, which are a lot cheaper than saffron, she says. She adds 2 tablespoons of the seeds to one cup of olive oil on medium high heat. She makes careful no to burn it, because the seeds turn black and the oil turns green. She likes the nutty flavor. She lowers the heat so the color “bleeds out” into the oil. She drains it. It’s a pretty red.
She pours A LOT of oil into a paella pan. She seasons a chicken that she’s cut into 10 pieces with sea salt and pepper. She add it to the hot pan skin side down and the achiote oil gives the chicken its beautiful color. It’s not on super high.
Back to the tomatoes, she pours them with their syrup into a bowl and sets them aside.
Next she chops capers and pimento stuffed olives roughly. After the chicken has been lightly browned on both sides, she removes it and sets it aside. Daisy adds the sofrito and the chopped olives and capers to the oil and cooks it until all the water cooks out..”so the rice doesn’t start to absorb the water”. (I don’t exactly get that, but I guess you just have to make sure you cook the sofrito for a bit before you add the rice.) She adds 1 teaspoon of cumin, salt and pepper and cooks the mixture a bit longer.
After all the water is cooked out, she adds long grain rice. Daisy is using this kind of rice, because “she doesn’t want a large amount of starch”. Ah, herein lies the difference between THIS Arroz con Pollo and a SPANISH one made with short grain rice. The short grain rice gets fatter and starchier as it cooks.
Daisy stirs the rice into the oil and sofrito. She wants loose fluffy rice. Once the rice gets a little “chalky”, it’s ready for the liquid. She adds hot stock, so she doesn’t have to wait a long time for the broth to come up to the boil. She determines the amount of liquid by measuring 2 fingers, or one inch, of liquid above the rice. (The only other person I knew who did this was a Chinese friend's mother. Her mom was an unbelievably good and authentic Chinese cook.) Daisy says to cook until the level of the fluid meets the level of the rice.
Meanwhile, Daisy cuts romaine into ribbons and puts them in a big bowl. She shakes her paella pan. She adds the chicken back in and lowers the heat and covers the pan. (Good luck finding a lid for a paella pan.) In Spain, they never cover a rice dish while it cooks. It may get a loose cover of foil afterwards to stay warm.
Daisy washes the lettuce and drains it well. She peels and segments 4 or 5 oranges and puts them into a bowl, squeezing out every bit of juice. She stirs honey and fresh thyme into the fresh orange juice with salt, apple cider vinegar and pepper. (Her favorite kitchen investment is a pepper mill.) She stirs in a bit of olive oil. She slices a red onion and adds that to her salad with black oil-cured olives.
With 5 minutes left for the rice, Daisy sprinkles in some defrosted peas.
It’s the great unveiling and she lifts the lid. Wow! She tastes it. Daisy says she’s already Miggy’s best friend and now she’s OUR best friend. I don’t know who Miggy is. She dresses the salad. It’s the perfect balance of sweet and sour, she says.
Oh, Miggy is her best friend. Daisy serves the family. I like her daughter. It all does look good, but I think the arroz con pollo is crying out for some freshly chopped parsley. It looks a little anemic, but it does look tasty.
Daisy scoops the tomatoes into pretty glasses with a bit of the syrup. She likes to surprise people with this dessert. She cuts ricotta salata and salty feta to serve with it. Any salty, semi-hard cheese works well.
Daisy’s daughter says, “This is a dessert, Mom?” Let’s see what she thinks…kids don’t lie. Oh my goodness, she says. I guess that’s good.
Thie episode had good recipes; a nice, pleasant host and GREAT jewelry. I'm not sure I buy the idea of tomatoes in a sugar syrup for dessert, but the recipe would be good with plums or pears.
Viva Daisy with Daisy Martinez
Sunday Dinner
Chicken with Rice (Arroz con Pollo)
Valencian Salad (Ensalada Valenciana)
Sweet Tomato "Conserva"
Today Daisy is making a traditional Sunday Dominican dinner. I love her green stone necklace.
She starts with dessert (wearing another lovely necklace). May I suggest that she put the sources for those in the credits?
Oh my, she’s scooping out sugar with a scoop that looks identical to the one I use for my powdered Tide. She adds 2 cups of sugar to a pot of water with 2 cinnamon sticks and a few allspice berries. Daisy loves the word for allspice in Spanish, Malagueta. She stirs the mixture.
She cores some plum tomatoes. Should we be surprised that tomatoes are for dessert? They are a fruit, after all. I’ve had tomato sorbet, not for dessert though, and I admit I am not predisposed to like this. But it does sound interesting. I must be psychic. Listen to what Daisy just said, “Tomatoes are a fruit, so it’s not that far-fetched.” Great minds...I guess.
Daisy drops the tomatoes into simmering water until the skin just starts to curl under. She scoops them out into an ice bath. She gets a whiff of syrup saying it smells so good she could dab it behind her ears.
One second here…I know some folks do…but I don’t CORE my tomatoes before dropping them in boiling water. I don’t want the gaping hole (however small) to allow the boiling water to cook the delicate insides of the tomatoes. However, I do make a VERY shallow x in the bottom, which allows the skin to slip off very VERY easily. So no coring for me, but a slight X.
She peels them easily and squeezes them to get rid of the seeds and pulp. She wants a clean tomato shell. She puts them into the syrup to cook for 20 minutes.
She moves on to teach us “the secret to a happier kitchen” – Sofrito. It’s “the cornerstone of Latin American cooking”. It has onions, garlic, cilantro and hot or sweet peppers. It’s used to flavor soups, stews, beans and, today, Spanish rice.
Daisy chops one onion, 7 or 8 cloves of garlic and a cubanelle pepper, which she prefers to the sourer green pepper. I’m with her.
She processes everything to a fine purée. She adds a red pepper for color and a tomato. Daisy also adds cilantro WITH the stems. She tells us that in cooking school they told them to remove the stems and her mother was appalled, because of all their flavor.
After everything is puréed, Daisy takes a big whiff. She LOVES it. She likes to make enough sofrito for the week and use a cup each night.
The tomatoes are simmering away.
Daisy is making a colored oil with achiote or annatto seeds, which are a lot cheaper than saffron, she says. She adds 2 tablespoons of the seeds to one cup of olive oil on medium high heat. She makes careful no to burn it, because the seeds turn black and the oil turns green. She likes the nutty flavor. She lowers the heat so the color “bleeds out” into the oil. She drains it. It’s a pretty red.
She pours A LOT of oil into a paella pan. She seasons a chicken that she’s cut into 10 pieces with sea salt and pepper. She add it to the hot pan skin side down and the achiote oil gives the chicken its beautiful color. It’s not on super high.
Back to the tomatoes, she pours them with their syrup into a bowl and sets them aside.
Next she chops capers and pimento stuffed olives roughly. After the chicken has been lightly browned on both sides, she removes it and sets it aside. Daisy adds the sofrito and the chopped olives and capers to the oil and cooks it until all the water cooks out..”so the rice doesn’t start to absorb the water”. (I don’t exactly get that, but I guess you just have to make sure you cook the sofrito for a bit before you add the rice.) She adds 1 teaspoon of cumin, salt and pepper and cooks the mixture a bit longer.
After all the water is cooked out, she adds long grain rice. Daisy is using this kind of rice, because “she doesn’t want a large amount of starch”. Ah, herein lies the difference between THIS Arroz con Pollo and a SPANISH one made with short grain rice. The short grain rice gets fatter and starchier as it cooks.
Daisy stirs the rice into the oil and sofrito. She wants loose fluffy rice. Once the rice gets a little “chalky”, it’s ready for the liquid. She adds hot stock, so she doesn’t have to wait a long time for the broth to come up to the boil. She determines the amount of liquid by measuring 2 fingers, or one inch, of liquid above the rice. (The only other person I knew who did this was a Chinese friend's mother. Her mom was an unbelievably good and authentic Chinese cook.) Daisy says to cook until the level of the fluid meets the level of the rice.
Meanwhile, Daisy cuts romaine into ribbons and puts them in a big bowl. She shakes her paella pan. She adds the chicken back in and lowers the heat and covers the pan. (Good luck finding a lid for a paella pan.) In Spain, they never cover a rice dish while it cooks. It may get a loose cover of foil afterwards to stay warm.
Daisy washes the lettuce and drains it well. She peels and segments 4 or 5 oranges and puts them into a bowl, squeezing out every bit of juice. She stirs honey and fresh thyme into the fresh orange juice with salt, apple cider vinegar and pepper. (Her favorite kitchen investment is a pepper mill.) She stirs in a bit of olive oil. She slices a red onion and adds that to her salad with black oil-cured olives.
With 5 minutes left for the rice, Daisy sprinkles in some defrosted peas.
It’s the great unveiling and she lifts the lid. Wow! She tastes it. Daisy says she’s already Miggy’s best friend and now she’s OUR best friend. I don’t know who Miggy is. She dresses the salad. It’s the perfect balance of sweet and sour, she says.
Oh, Miggy is her best friend. Daisy serves the family. I like her daughter. It all does look good, but I think the arroz con pollo is crying out for some freshly chopped parsley. It looks a little anemic, but it does look tasty.
Daisy scoops the tomatoes into pretty glasses with a bit of the syrup. She likes to surprise people with this dessert. She cuts ricotta salata and salty feta to serve with it. Any salty, semi-hard cheese works well.
Daisy’s daughter says, “This is a dessert, Mom?” Let’s see what she thinks…kids don’t lie. Oh my goodness, she says. I guess that’s good.
Thie episode had good recipes; a nice, pleasant host and GREAT jewelry. I'm not sure I buy the idea of tomatoes in a sugar syrup for dessert, but the recipe would be good with plums or pears.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A New Latin Show Brought To You By Rachael Ray And The Continuing Horror Of The Food Network Website
Viva Daisy! with Daisy Martinez
Popi's Steak and Potatoes
Grilled Skirt Steak (Churrasco)
Coconut Panna Cotta With Tropical Fruit
Potato-Egg Salad
Rachael Ray is producing a new Latin cooking show for the Food Network. Could this be because she realizes that the current one is so poor? It’s the first non-Rach show from her production company. This could be a really good thing if it gets her out of the kitchen. Let’s just hope the talent, in this case Daisy Martinez, knows more about cooking than her producing partner.
Daisy starts off sitting on the front of a huge fire engine in the same firehouse where her father worked when she was a little girl. Today, she’s cooking for him. Nice food shots in the beginning segment. And I LOVE her necklace. It’s a more elaborate version of Giada’s circles.
She’s doing “Argentina” food today. She kind of has a Bronx accent (remember that’s my homeland), and her Spanish seems impeccable.
She starts by measuring a tablespoon of gelatin for a Coconut Panna Cotta. Wait a sec, why is she doing that? A packet of gelatin IS 1 tablespoon. Actually, it’s a fraction less, but it’s fine to consider it a tablespoon.
I also don’t like how she’s dealing with the gelatin. She’s STIRRING it into 3 tablespoons of water, getting a lot of it on the sides of the little bowl. I like to sprinkle the gelatin over the top of the water slowly and carefully, trying not to get any on the sides. You shouldn’t even need to stir it for it to dissolve. Every bit you lose on the spoon or on the sides of the bowl is a bit you DON’T have to thicken your mixture.
Daisy tells us that the food of Argentina has a lot of European influences. She was surprised by how much Italian and German food there was there. She opens a can of cream of coconut and a can of coconut milk and adds them to a saucepan. (As far as I know, neither of those items is Italian or German.) She heats them up gently, whisking, until they just begin to simmer. Daisy whisks in the gelatin until it’s completely dissolved and pours it into a bowl. I would absolutely have strained it into the bowl, just to make sure there are no stringy bits of gelatin. She stirs in a pint of heavy cream.
I just checked the recipe and it does say to strain the mixture. Score one for me! AND it has a ¼ cup of powdered sugar added at the same time as the cream. I don’t know which recipe is more reliable - the written one or the one she did on the air. I guess just taste the mixture after you add the cream and if you feel it needs sugar, go for it.
It’s kind of annoying to have to second guess it and not a great way to start a relationship with viewers. But I’m guessing that has nothing to do with Daisy herself, so I’ll try not to hold a grudge.
Just an aside about the FN website. It continues to annoy me. I know various folks have commented, telling me ways to get to specific recipes on that only take 15 clicks instead of 25, but really!!! The people that developed the Food Network website are idiots. Well, maybe they aren’t personally, but their work is idiotic. It is NOT easy to get around on; to get to one thing from another thing; or to get ANYWHERE easily. It is an abomination. I’m not a COMPLETE beginner on navigating websites. (Kids, keep your stories to yourselves!) I’ve said before that I pride myself on finding anything, anywhere, but this is so frustrating that many times I just google the host’s name and the recipe and get there THAT way. (A tip from a reader.) See? I’m all huffy puffy from just wanting to take a quick glance at Daisy’s recipe, as I watch her show. It should be easy. It should be encouraged and not be an exercise in futility with pop-ups and annoying videos every 2 seconds. Why can’t they be like Microsoft and just admit that it doesn’t work? I sure hope for their sake the check wasn’t already cashed by the brilliant consultants that came up with this website redesign.
Sorry Daisy, they’re not doing you any favors over there at the FN, by making it impossible to find your recipes. BTW, I managed to find her bio (finally) and she’s from Brooklyn. Same difference.
Daisy stirs the panna cotta mixture over a ice bath until it starts to thicken up and then ladles it into Fiesta ramekins. She chills them for 4 hours but she doesn’t want them to get SO chilled that they start to clump. Huh? Maybe she means to take the mixture off the ice before it starts to clump. I’m confused.
For her potatoes and egg salad, she places her eggs into a pan of water, and after the water comes to the boil, she cooks the eggs for exactly 10 minutes.
Sorry, but I have my own egg boiling method, and good reasons for it. The time it takes water to get to the boil varies by stove, by amount of water, by pot material, by number of eggs in the pot and by the temperature of the eggs. In other words, there are too many variations which make that a very inexact way to boil eggs.
By starting them in boiling water, you’re cutting down on a lot of those variations and it’s easier to replicate the results each time you make them.
It’s easy – Boil a pot of water. Add the eggs with a slotted spoon. Add a splash of white vinegar (which will set any whites instantly, if the shell has cracked) and bring back to the boil. Boil for exactly 11 minutes. Plunge the eggs into a bowl of ice and water and, voila, you have beautifully boiled eggs with nary a hint of nasty grey or green.
Daisy IS bringing up a lot of issues and she’s only been on for 7 minutes. She peels and dices the potatoes. Sorry, there is just one other little thing here. I hate to be annoying, but…I like to cut the ENDS of the potatoes, or really ANY vegetable or fruit before peeling. It makes it much easier to peel right up to the end of the vegetable, instead of having to go around the South Pole and dig out the peeler and start again at the North Pole.
Daisy likes to use a waxy potato, which she also describes as Eastern. I have no idea what that means, unless she’s discriminating against Idaho potatoes. But then she said she likes baking potatoes (but not floury ones) for this. This is rather confusing…just use whatever you usually do for potato salad, Yukon gold or whatever.
An old fashioned timer goes off. Daisy fills a pot with cold water. She takes out the eggs and loosens the shells by rolling them on the counter. Daisy says it’s much easier to do this right after cooking and then the shells will come right off when you need to peel them. THAT is an excellent idea. She adds them to the cold water.
Daisy’s been boiling the potato pieces for 10 minutes. She checks them by inserting the point of a paring knife. I like Ina’s trick of taking them off the heat JUST before they’re done. Then the Barefoot Contessa drains them in a colander and covers them with a dish towel to finish cooking gently by steaming.
Daisy’s potatoes do look nice. She scoops them into a bowl and sprinkles them with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. (We learn the pepper grinder is her favorite kitchen gadget.) A little vinegar and olive oil goes over while they’re hot. Daisy adds some freshly chopped chives to add “a nice onion note”.
She takes out skirt steak and tells us to trim off the silver skin. Daisy says it doesn’t make sense to spend all that money on the steak and then leave all that tough stuff on.
She makes a big deal of washing her cutting board. How about having separate ones for meat and vegetables? She sprinkles salt over the meat, then pepper and a little onion powder. D repeats the seasoning for the other side, adding a little vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil. She sets them aside for 30 minutes.
I like to marinate steak in vinegar too. I like the flavor and the acid breaks down the fibers and tenderizes it.
Okay, this is confusing. There was just a commercial that said the Barefoot Contessa was coming back next Saturday. What have we been watching? I guess The Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics is different. I dunno…and I'm certainly not venturing onto the website to check it out.
Daisy gets ready to cook the steak. The grill is HOT!!!, she says. She puts the steaks on the grill and loves the smell. “Daisy’s happy”. She peels the eggs.
She cooks the steak for 4 minutes on the first side 3 minutes on the other. She reminds us to have really good ventilation and she says whenever you cook for a fireman (her dad), there’s bound to be smoke.
She pats the eggs dry and quarters them. They do look perfectly cooked. She sprinkles over something olive green and old looking. The chives, maybe?
She turns over the steaks. Daisy drains jarred red peppers on paper towels and cuts them in largish pieces. It looks pretty, but I hate commercial roasted peppers in that nasty briny stuff. Homemade ones are the way to go.
Daisy tells us the trick of testing the meat by comparing it to how the skin between your thumb and forefinger feels. That’s a trick I know and use.
To finish off the dessert, Daisy takes half a papaya from the fridge and grabs several kiwis. She cuts the ends off the kiwis first (yay, just like I do) and then cuts off the skin.
She removes the steaks and lets them rest on her board. She mentions when she and Jerry go on vacation he always has papaya, which is served with a squeeze of lime. Who’s Jerry and what wonderful place are they going that has papayas?
Daisy dices the papaya and starts a chimichurri sauce. (Interestingly, the February cover recipe of Bon Appétit is Grass-Fed Steaks with Kalamata-Olive Chimichurri. I LOVE the idea of adding olives. It makes it tapenade-y, which could never be bad, unless, of course, you have the misfortune to be an olive hater.)
For her Chimichurri Sauce, Daisy pulses 2 cups of chopped parsley and 2 garlic cloves in the food processor. She leaves the texture pretty coarse. She puts it in a bowl and whisks in red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and some olive oil. She adds red pepper “seed’. I don’t know what that it. The recipe says flakes.
Daisy slices the skirt steak into nice and pink slices. She puts it on a red platter and then drizzles on some of the chimichurri.
She brings the platter to the table with lots of family waiting. Dad, the firefighter and her cute preteen daughter are there. I’m guessing Jerry is her husband. They like the steak. I wonder how much she had to bribe her daughter to eat red meat. Teen girls, in my experience, seem to eschew it.
Daisy comes back to the kitchen and unmolds the panna cotta onto Fiesta plates. She garnishes the fruit. Oh, there’s mom too.
The credits include the producers – Rachael, her hubby and Daisy herself. This was an okay show. Obviously, Daisy knows what she’s doing. I like her manner. She’s good in front of the camera. And she’s got great hair and her makeup is good too, but I’d like the food to be a bit more exciting and more about HER. Tyler did a Puerto Rican menu just before Daisy’s show and he was so thrilled with his pork that I thought he was going to take a bath in it.
I LIKE her, but I’d like to REALLY like her. I’m sorry I never saw her shows on PBS. How about a segment with the daughter and have her complaining that her mom bosses her around too much? Oh wait, could I be talking about MY daughter and how everyone runs out of the kitchen when I come into it.
Perhaps Daisy is just a lovely, calm, nice person, who cooks well and has a wonderful family who actually appreciates her. Let’s have a bit more exuberance and Daisy will do just fine.
Popi's Steak and Potatoes
Grilled Skirt Steak (Churrasco)
Coconut Panna Cotta With Tropical Fruit
Potato-Egg Salad
Rachael Ray is producing a new Latin cooking show for the Food Network. Could this be because she realizes that the current one is so poor? It’s the first non-Rach show from her production company. This could be a really good thing if it gets her out of the kitchen. Let’s just hope the talent, in this case Daisy Martinez, knows more about cooking than her producing partner.
Daisy starts off sitting on the front of a huge fire engine in the same firehouse where her father worked when she was a little girl. Today, she’s cooking for him. Nice food shots in the beginning segment. And I LOVE her necklace. It’s a more elaborate version of Giada’s circles.
She’s doing “Argentina” food today. She kind of has a Bronx accent (remember that’s my homeland), and her Spanish seems impeccable.
She starts by measuring a tablespoon of gelatin for a Coconut Panna Cotta. Wait a sec, why is she doing that? A packet of gelatin IS 1 tablespoon. Actually, it’s a fraction less, but it’s fine to consider it a tablespoon.
I also don’t like how she’s dealing with the gelatin. She’s STIRRING it into 3 tablespoons of water, getting a lot of it on the sides of the little bowl. I like to sprinkle the gelatin over the top of the water slowly and carefully, trying not to get any on the sides. You shouldn’t even need to stir it for it to dissolve. Every bit you lose on the spoon or on the sides of the bowl is a bit you DON’T have to thicken your mixture.
Daisy tells us that the food of Argentina has a lot of European influences. She was surprised by how much Italian and German food there was there. She opens a can of cream of coconut and a can of coconut milk and adds them to a saucepan. (As far as I know, neither of those items is Italian or German.) She heats them up gently, whisking, until they just begin to simmer. Daisy whisks in the gelatin until it’s completely dissolved and pours it into a bowl. I would absolutely have strained it into the bowl, just to make sure there are no stringy bits of gelatin. She stirs in a pint of heavy cream.
I just checked the recipe and it does say to strain the mixture. Score one for me! AND it has a ¼ cup of powdered sugar added at the same time as the cream. I don’t know which recipe is more reliable - the written one or the one she did on the air. I guess just taste the mixture after you add the cream and if you feel it needs sugar, go for it.
It’s kind of annoying to have to second guess it and not a great way to start a relationship with viewers. But I’m guessing that has nothing to do with Daisy herself, so I’ll try not to hold a grudge.
Just an aside about the FN website. It continues to annoy me. I know various folks have commented, telling me ways to get to specific recipes on that only take 15 clicks instead of 25, but really!!! The people that developed the Food Network website are idiots. Well, maybe they aren’t personally, but their work is idiotic. It is NOT easy to get around on; to get to one thing from another thing; or to get ANYWHERE easily. It is an abomination. I’m not a COMPLETE beginner on navigating websites. (Kids, keep your stories to yourselves!) I’ve said before that I pride myself on finding anything, anywhere, but this is so frustrating that many times I just google the host’s name and the recipe and get there THAT way. (A tip from a reader.) See? I’m all huffy puffy from just wanting to take a quick glance at Daisy’s recipe, as I watch her show. It should be easy. It should be encouraged and not be an exercise in futility with pop-ups and annoying videos every 2 seconds. Why can’t they be like Microsoft and just admit that it doesn’t work? I sure hope for their sake the check wasn’t already cashed by the brilliant consultants that came up with this website redesign.
Sorry Daisy, they’re not doing you any favors over there at the FN, by making it impossible to find your recipes. BTW, I managed to find her bio (finally) and she’s from Brooklyn. Same difference.
Daisy stirs the panna cotta mixture over a ice bath until it starts to thicken up and then ladles it into Fiesta ramekins. She chills them for 4 hours but she doesn’t want them to get SO chilled that they start to clump. Huh? Maybe she means to take the mixture off the ice before it starts to clump. I’m confused.
For her potatoes and egg salad, she places her eggs into a pan of water, and after the water comes to the boil, she cooks the eggs for exactly 10 minutes.
Sorry, but I have my own egg boiling method, and good reasons for it. The time it takes water to get to the boil varies by stove, by amount of water, by pot material, by number of eggs in the pot and by the temperature of the eggs. In other words, there are too many variations which make that a very inexact way to boil eggs.
By starting them in boiling water, you’re cutting down on a lot of those variations and it’s easier to replicate the results each time you make them.
It’s easy – Boil a pot of water. Add the eggs with a slotted spoon. Add a splash of white vinegar (which will set any whites instantly, if the shell has cracked) and bring back to the boil. Boil for exactly 11 minutes. Plunge the eggs into a bowl of ice and water and, voila, you have beautifully boiled eggs with nary a hint of nasty grey or green.
Daisy IS bringing up a lot of issues and she’s only been on for 7 minutes. She peels and dices the potatoes. Sorry, there is just one other little thing here. I hate to be annoying, but…I like to cut the ENDS of the potatoes, or really ANY vegetable or fruit before peeling. It makes it much easier to peel right up to the end of the vegetable, instead of having to go around the South Pole and dig out the peeler and start again at the North Pole.
Daisy likes to use a waxy potato, which she also describes as Eastern. I have no idea what that means, unless she’s discriminating against Idaho potatoes. But then she said she likes baking potatoes (but not floury ones) for this. This is rather confusing…just use whatever you usually do for potato salad, Yukon gold or whatever.
An old fashioned timer goes off. Daisy fills a pot with cold water. She takes out the eggs and loosens the shells by rolling them on the counter. Daisy says it’s much easier to do this right after cooking and then the shells will come right off when you need to peel them. THAT is an excellent idea. She adds them to the cold water.
Daisy’s been boiling the potato pieces for 10 minutes. She checks them by inserting the point of a paring knife. I like Ina’s trick of taking them off the heat JUST before they’re done. Then the Barefoot Contessa drains them in a colander and covers them with a dish towel to finish cooking gently by steaming.
Daisy’s potatoes do look nice. She scoops them into a bowl and sprinkles them with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. (We learn the pepper grinder is her favorite kitchen gadget.) A little vinegar and olive oil goes over while they’re hot. Daisy adds some freshly chopped chives to add “a nice onion note”.
She takes out skirt steak and tells us to trim off the silver skin. Daisy says it doesn’t make sense to spend all that money on the steak and then leave all that tough stuff on.
She makes a big deal of washing her cutting board. How about having separate ones for meat and vegetables? She sprinkles salt over the meat, then pepper and a little onion powder. D repeats the seasoning for the other side, adding a little vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil. She sets them aside for 30 minutes.
I like to marinate steak in vinegar too. I like the flavor and the acid breaks down the fibers and tenderizes it.
Okay, this is confusing. There was just a commercial that said the Barefoot Contessa was coming back next Saturday. What have we been watching? I guess The Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics is different. I dunno…and I'm certainly not venturing onto the website to check it out.
Daisy gets ready to cook the steak. The grill is HOT!!!, she says. She puts the steaks on the grill and loves the smell. “Daisy’s happy”. She peels the eggs.
She cooks the steak for 4 minutes on the first side 3 minutes on the other. She reminds us to have really good ventilation and she says whenever you cook for a fireman (her dad), there’s bound to be smoke.
She pats the eggs dry and quarters them. They do look perfectly cooked. She sprinkles over something olive green and old looking. The chives, maybe?
She turns over the steaks. Daisy drains jarred red peppers on paper towels and cuts them in largish pieces. It looks pretty, but I hate commercial roasted peppers in that nasty briny stuff. Homemade ones are the way to go.
Daisy tells us the trick of testing the meat by comparing it to how the skin between your thumb and forefinger feels. That’s a trick I know and use.
To finish off the dessert, Daisy takes half a papaya from the fridge and grabs several kiwis. She cuts the ends off the kiwis first (yay, just like I do) and then cuts off the skin.
She removes the steaks and lets them rest on her board. She mentions when she and Jerry go on vacation he always has papaya, which is served with a squeeze of lime. Who’s Jerry and what wonderful place are they going that has papayas?
Daisy dices the papaya and starts a chimichurri sauce. (Interestingly, the February cover recipe of Bon Appétit is Grass-Fed Steaks with Kalamata-Olive Chimichurri. I LOVE the idea of adding olives. It makes it tapenade-y, which could never be bad, unless, of course, you have the misfortune to be an olive hater.)
For her Chimichurri Sauce, Daisy pulses 2 cups of chopped parsley and 2 garlic cloves in the food processor. She leaves the texture pretty coarse. She puts it in a bowl and whisks in red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and some olive oil. She adds red pepper “seed’. I don’t know what that it. The recipe says flakes.
Daisy slices the skirt steak into nice and pink slices. She puts it on a red platter and then drizzles on some of the chimichurri.
She brings the platter to the table with lots of family waiting. Dad, the firefighter and her cute preteen daughter are there. I’m guessing Jerry is her husband. They like the steak. I wonder how much she had to bribe her daughter to eat red meat. Teen girls, in my experience, seem to eschew it.
Daisy comes back to the kitchen and unmolds the panna cotta onto Fiesta plates. She garnishes the fruit. Oh, there’s mom too.
The credits include the producers – Rachael, her hubby and Daisy herself. This was an okay show. Obviously, Daisy knows what she’s doing. I like her manner. She’s good in front of the camera. And she’s got great hair and her makeup is good too, but I’d like the food to be a bit more exciting and more about HER. Tyler did a Puerto Rican menu just before Daisy’s show and he was so thrilled with his pork that I thought he was going to take a bath in it.
I LIKE her, but I’d like to REALLY like her. I’m sorry I never saw her shows on PBS. How about a segment with the daughter and have her complaining that her mom bosses her around too much? Oh wait, could I be talking about MY daughter and how everyone runs out of the kitchen when I come into it.
Perhaps Daisy is just a lovely, calm, nice person, who cooks well and has a wonderful family who actually appreciates her. Let’s have a bit more exuberance and Daisy will do just fine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)