This Mama Cooks! On a Diet

At BlogHer08 all I did was eat

Not only was BlogHer 08 about great sessions, amazing speakers, and awesome swag, it was also about food. The food at the conference was so-so (Pastries and fruit just don't cut it for breakfast. We need eggs, cereal, and yogurt in the morning, too, please!). But the food activities around the blogging conference were impressive. Sponsors included Boca Burgers and the Milk Board and of course there was all the incredible food and drink at the parties.

View a Slide show of the food I ate at the Blogher08 Conference.

Thursday

The first day I got to San Francisco, I checked myself into the Westin St. Francis’s workout facility and spa. After I did my 45 minutes on the stationary bike and had my massage, I checked in, unpacked and tried to take a nap. I had been up since 2 a.m. San Francisco time, and was exhausted. Yet, I couldn’t sleep because I was starving. Realizing I hadn’t eaten anything since 10 p.m. the evening before, I got dressed and looked for a place to eat.

I found hana Zen and had a satisfying lunch of hot green tea, cold soba noodles, and some vegetarian tempura. Then the real eating and drinking began – the BlogHer speaker/presenter party with chicken satay on bamboo skewers and lots of other teeny delectables passed around on trays by waiters in white coats. Then I headed downstairs to hang out with the Mom Central team and the real eating began.

Stacy DeBroff of Mom Central took out her staff, which includes me since I now heading up their social media project. I forget where we went the first night, but we had a lot of Asian fusion type of appetizers and hot tea. And I had a plate of steamed rice, which I got teased a bit about. (I was overwhelmed by food and booze and needed something plain and grounding.)

I'll be having lunch with Chef Rocco at BlogHer

A bunch of food bloggers and I are having lunch today with Chef Rocco DiSpirito at the BlogHer conference in San Francisco. He’ll be demonstrating how to use the new Bertolli Premium Pasta Sauce in a pouch to put a little sizzle back into date night at home. The new sauce from Bertolli makes it easier for the home chef to reconnect with loved ones, because the sauces offer convenience without sacrificing quality.

Date night at home? With two obnoxious kids who are wrecking my home when they’re not sleeping (yes, I’m having One of those Summers) that’s impossible. Still, I wonder how Bertolli’s sauce compares to a similar product Ragu recently released. I reviewed Ragu’s pouch sauce at My Readable Feast – see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (and a little Ragu) and thought it was mighty tasty. I also liked that it was sweetened with carrot juice instead of sugar or corn syrup.

Rocco will also share one of his recipes and demonstrate how 90 seconds is all it takes to get a restaurant quality pasta sauce. (Can you say, “Microwave?”) After the short demo, Rocco hang out for questions, pictures, and conversation. Yay, picture taking ops! I’m so there with my Sony Cybershot DSCW170.

In the meantime, I leave you with some food, er, posts for thought:

• Life Lessons from the Weight Room - If you can relate to lifting weights or any other form of exercise/athleticism and know you've learned a thing or two about life from it, Melanie would love for you to weigh in on this.
• Blogging the Hard Truth: Stephanie Quilao Interview by Cranky Fitness. Stephanie of Back in Skinny Jeans discusses her bulimia and the pros and cons of blogging your weight loss.
• 5 Ways to Keep Fit on the Road – Oh fuggettaboutit, I’m on vacation. But I will be visiting the hotel’s gym to work out before my massage, la de da.
• Reading burns calories - Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp - An interview of author Stephanie Klein by Jeanette Fulda of Half of Me. Jeanette is also the author of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir and my roommate at BlogHer. Stephanie blogs at Greek Tragedy and will be one of the keynote speakers at BlogHer.

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Smash the fat with Ratatouille

I wanted to post a still from Ratatouille of Thomas Keller's gorgeous Confit Byaldi that Rémy makes in the movie. But alas I couldn't find one. However, I did find a photo at the Huffington Post of Keller and Ratatouille Producer Brad Lewis making one. If you look hard - and have a big magnifying glass - you can see it.

Luckily, it's easier to find the recipe. Jeanne Brophy of Food on a Plate posts Keller's ratatouille/confit byaldi recipe along with her review of the movie.

But for all this fuss over Rémy's..I mean Keller's confit, remember it's restaurant critic Anton Ego's memory of his mother's traditional ratatouille that changes his mind about Gusteau's restaurant. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go see the movie!)

There are many recipes for ratatouille, but basically it's onions, garlic, zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant sautéed in olive oil and seasoned with herbes de Provence.

Here's a simple ratatoille that kids can make. And here's the Extreme Fat Smash version. Since I ate all the yellow summer squash and didn't have a zucchini, I doubled up on the eggplant and added a little more onion and tomato.

Ratatouille
Preparation time: 40 mins
Makes 1 serving

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Fresh Eggplant-Cubes
• 1 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 Tbsp. Chopped Yellow Onion
• 1/2 cup Chopped Yellow Bell Peppers
• 1 Garlic Clove
• 1 cup Fresh Chopped Zucchini Squash with Skin
• 3 Fresh Italian/Plum Tomatoes
• 1 dash Ground Basil
• 1 dash Ground Black Pepper
• 1 dash Ground Parsley
• 1 dash Ground Oregano
• 1 dash Salt

Directions:

1. Gently saute the onions and peppers in olive oil in a large pan for 5 mins, or so.
2. Add the other vegetables except the tomatoes.
3. Stir, cover, and cook on a low heat for about ½ an hour until the vegetables are tender.
4. Add the tomatoes, herbs, and black pepper, and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Forgetting to turn the burner down resulted in roasted, carmelized eggplant, peppers and onions. I love roasted veggies, so no biggie.

Gourmet's Sara Moulton teams up with Best Buy for the Super Bowl

UPDATE:

AskABlueShirt experienced network-wide technical difficulties at the time of the January 29 chat. Best Buy extends its apologies for this and wants to invite everyone to a reschedule of the chat for Friday, February 2 between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. EST at AskABlueShirt. ___________________________________________________

Gourmet Magazine’s Executive Chef, Sara Moulton, is working with Best Buy to host a Q&A chat on throwing a winning party for the Big Game on February 4th. The live chat is on Monday, January 29, from 2-3:00 pm EST at AskABlueShirt.com, a Best Buy website.

Sara will be joined by a Best Buy Blue Shirt expert who can answer consumers’ questions about upgrading their home theater just in time for Super Sunday. Not only will you know how to plan a great menu for the Big Game, but you'll know what it takes to have a great home theater.

Or you can be like me and buy a home with a media center already installed. It's over six years old, so we don't have HDTV or a gigantic flat screen TV. Still, it works for us.

So what are you planning to cook up for the Super Bowl? I may be making some Chicago style food like deep dish pizza. Or maybe some ethnic Polish/Eastern European dishes. Perogis anyone?

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Charlie Palmer's Herb-Broiled Cod

Back in October I wrote about eating at Charlie Palmer's Aureole Las Vegas restaurant in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a Charlie Palmer recipe in last week's Denver Post food section.

Then I realized how easily this recipe for Herb-Broiled Cod fits into the Weight Watchers Flex Plan. Even with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter, one serving (6 ounces of fish) plus embellishments is about 10.5 points. That's the wonderful thing about fish - it's very low in points! If you could halve the butter and oil, you could reduce it to 8 points. Perfect!

Herb-Broiled Cod
From The Practical Guide to the New American Kitchen: Splatterproof, Waterproof, Sauceproof Durabook by Charlie Palmer

One Serving
Ingredients:

For the seasoned butter:

• 1 stick butter at room temperature
• 1 Tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 Tbsp chopped chives
• 1 Tbsp mined shallot (about one clove)
• juice of 1 lemon
• freshly ground black pepper

For the cod:

• 1 ruby grapefruit
• 1 orange
• 1 6-oz cod fillet, a thick one
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1 Tbsp seasoned butter (see above)
• 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp coriander seed, lighted toasted in a dry saute pan, then cooked and ground between your fingers
• 1 romaine heart, spearated into leaves and chopped
• a few thin slices of red onion

Directions:

1. For the seasoned butter: mix togther all ingredients. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate. Butter will be good for a wekk or so. Try some of the leftover butter on a baked potato.
2. For the cod: preheat broiler to high. Position over rack about 6 inches from the heat.
3. With a sharp paring knife, peel the grapefruit and the organge, removing all the zest and the white pith.
4. Working over a small bowl to catch the juice, cut the segments of fruit away from the connective membranes. Place the segments in a salad bowl. After all the segments have been cut, squeeze any remaining juice fom the membranes into the small bowl.
5. Season the cod with half of the salt and white pepper. Place the fish on a small, lighted oiled cast iron skillet. Spoon 1 Tbsp. of the seasoned butter on top of the fish.
6. Broil the cod until a skewer pushed straight down through the middle of the fish offers no resistance and the flesh flakes easily - about 7 minutes.
7. While the fish is under the broiler, mix the vinaigrette: whisk the oil into the bowl of citrus juice and add the coriander. Season with the reamining salt and pepper and set aside. Place the romaine and red onion into the salad bowl, add a little vinaigrette and toss to coat.
8. Mound the salad onto a plate and place the hot fish on top. Drizzle the remining vinaigrette over the cod.

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On becoming a gourmet nation...in Vegas

It must have been serendipity that I had brought David Kamp's The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation to read on our flight to Vegas. Kemp writes about the cultural history of the gourmet food movement and the celebrity chef phenomenon from James Beard to Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck to Emeril. The book also documents the introduction of fine French cooking to U.S. shores as well as the rise of California Cuisine and the current organic and slow food movements. It also mentions the rise of fine dining in Las Vegas. It's a fascinating read and gives real insight to the various food movements and the people behind them.

So with fantastic restaurants and celebrity chefs on the brain, Big Bad Dad and I checked out Charlie Palmer's Aureole Las Vegas restaurant in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

Dining at Aureole's was one of the most memorable food experiences of my life. We had the seven course tasting menu along with the wine accompaniment. It was worth the indulgence of time (almost three hours) and money (over $400) to have such excellent service and fantastic food.

I was a bit hesitant about trying the wines. While I love reds, my body doesn't react well with white wines. Usually I wake up at 3 a.m. sweating with a vicious hangover and hot, itchy feet. After consulting with our sommelier (who checked on us frequently to make sure I wasn't going into anaphylactic shock or breaking out in hives) I went ahead and ordered the wines. I'm glad I did because it really added to the ambiance of the meal.

Yet my favorites were the reds. The Mas Doix, Salanques, Priorat (2003) from Spain (a Grenache/Syrah blend) that went with the Squab "Rossini" was wonderful as was the Les Pagodes de Cos, Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux (1996), a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet France grapes that came with the Seared Filet Mignon and Savory Shepard's Pie.

But the most splendid wine was the Brachetto d'Acqui, Braida, Peimonte (2005). This is a sparkling red wine with strong hints of strawberry. It would be perfect for a Sunday brunch or Thanksgiving or Christmas morning. Maybe it shows that I've been drinking too much of the kids' juice boxes, but I loved it. And the pairing with the American Cheeses - a white cheddar, a Brie and a blue cheese - was inspired. Honestly, if I could I stop by Aureole's bar just for a glass of the Brachetto and a cheese sampler plate, I would.

Paul and I also loved the Squab "Rossini" and the Duo of Ahi Tuna. The squab was served with a perfect little piece of fois gras that really made the dish. And, the tuna dish was very inspirational - we'll be trying to create a tuna tartare at home.

Finally, the service was splendid. Besides the attentions of our overly concerned sommelier, we had two waiters and a server (or was it two servers and a waiter?). Plus the General Manager (a Denver native) stopped by frequently to check on us.

The only negative was too much dessert! (Did I actually say that? I guess I left my brain in Vegas, too.) The cheese plate was so delicious that I could have done without anything else. But having two desserts - the pear tart followed by the little cookies - was way over the top. By that time, I needed a nap and a foot rub.

Still, the cookies were very cute and charming. Maybe they should have been wrapped up in a little gift bag to be given along with the bill. They would have been a yummy reminder of the fantastic meal we enjoyed the night before and would have gone well with our mid-morning coffee.

On the way home, I bought a copy the October issue of Gourmet magazine at the Vegas airport. It featured Gourmet's list of America's top 50 restaurants and article on the ultra-exclusive and insanely expensive Vegas restaurants. While Aureole wasn't in either article, I highly recommend it for a wonderful culinary adventure and experience. Forget the gambling and shows. When in Vegas - EAT!

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Denver Post wins award for "Rembering Julia"

Congratulations to the Denver Post. Their food section's tribute to Julia Child, which unfortunately has been removed from the Denver Post's website, won first place for special section in the large newspaper category of the Colorado Associated Press Editors and Reporters Association awards last week.

As reported in Thursday's Denver Post, "Remembering Julia," published on August 18, 2004 featured remembrances of encounters with Julia by staff writer Ellen Sweets, dining critic Kyle Wagner and food editor Kristen Browning-Blas.

Guest essays from former food editors Bill St. John and John Kessler, Cook's Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball and wine columnist Tara Q. Thomas accompanied the staff's favorite recipes from Child's cookbooks.

This Mama Cooks! felt that expanding the special section and adding more of Julia's recipes, like the one for chocolate mousse, would make a terrific book. At least the Denver Post should make the section available online. I didn't keep it which is a shame because it was a wonderful momento and a fantastic tribute to a great lady.

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Valentine's Day - Julia Child's chocolate mousse

Chocolate mousse should be considered the dessert for Valentine's Day. It's decadent and fairly easy to make. And thanks to the St. Julia, we have the perfect chocolate mousse recipe in her book, The Way to Cook.

My mom often made this (a slightly different version was in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One ) and it's just heavenly - rich, creamy, light and gooey. A memorable after school snack.

It's cookie time! - Update

I just finished making the Pinwheel Cookies from Kraft's recipe for 4-in-1 cookie dough. The dough was easy to make and absolutely delicious.

Another benefit of this recipe (versus a traditional sugar cookie recipe) is that it's egg-free for those allergic to eggs, or people like me who like to nibble on raw cookie dough.

However, rolling out the dough was much harder than I thought, because it was too fragile to pick up once you rolled it out. The dough stretched out and ripped numerous times, and the rolls I made look pretty funky.

Then I remembered that Alton Brown's did a Good Eats show on making sugar cookies. Even though I only caught the last five minutes of the The Cookie Clause last night, I remembered there were some good tips so I looked 'em up.

Pumpkin French toast with fig-maple syrup and alspice butter

It looks like close friend Michelle D. is going to be a regular contributor. She made the following recipe this morning for her husband, Sean and herself. It's for the pumpkin french toast dish that Bobby Flay prepared on The Early Show on October 21, 2004.

Michelle writes:

"I can't even begin to tell you how good this is. Safeway didn't have figs so I left those out. Next time, I would also use less syrup for the toast and top with some whipped cream and fresh nutmeg. Mmmmmmm....oh and the butter...mmmmm."

Pumpkin French Toast with Fig-Maple Syrup and Alspice Butter
Prepared by Bobby Flay on CBS's The Early Show - October 21, 2004

Serves: 4

Allspice Butter
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon ground allspice
2 tablespoon pure maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt

Place ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Scrape into a bowl, cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Fig Maple Syrup
6 fresh figs, quartered
1 1/4 cups pure maple syrup

Place figs and syrup in a small saucepan and simmer over low heat until the figs are soft, about 10 minutes.

Pumpkin French Toast
1/ 2 cup canned solid packed pumpkin
6 large eggs
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of cloves
1/4 freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 1-inch thick slices day-old brioche
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
1/4 cup vegetable oil

1. Whisk together the pumpkin, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, milk, cream and salt in a large bowl. Place the bread in baking dish and pour the pumpkin mixture over and turn the bread to coat evenly. Let sit for 5 minutes.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter and 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large, nonstick sauté pan over medium-high heat. Place 4 slices of the bread in the pan and cook until golden brown on 1 side, about 2-3 minutes. Turn the slices over and cook until golden brown, 2-3 minutes longer. Wipe the pan out with paper towels and repeat with the remaining butter, oil and bread. Serve 2 slices per serving with a few tablespoons of the butter and some of the fig-maple syrup.

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved

(Photos: CBS/The Early Show)

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