I know it sounds too good to be true, especially because everyone seems so bummed about the economy, housing market, gas prices, and the problem of “big corn.” However, tomorrow rejoice! Stop by your local Baskin-Robbins between 5pm and 10pm and you can get a single-scoop cone for only .31¢ Awesome!
The ice cream event is to honor America’s firefighters. How that corresponds with cheap ice cream, I’m not entirely sure. But I’m not asking any questions.
You can read more about it (and verify it’s true) here.
Hi there. So let’s get a show of hands. Who is browsing the internet right now using Internet Explorer 6? Anyone? Well if you aren’t sure, I’ve devised a little test. This website is supposed to look like the picture above. I know crazy. It looks good right? If The Little Dish doesn’t look this way in your browser it means that you are using Internet Explorer 6. If the picture matches what you are seeing on your monitor then you can disregard the rest of this. IE6 is evil and from a web designer’s standpoint, it’s the bane of their existence. I don’t really want to get into the why, but basically it is a broken and an outdated program. It makes beautiful websites that are supposed to look like the picture above, look like what you are seeing now. Basically it’s the only browser out there that fails to render websites correctly and Microsoft actually has a newer version for you anyway.
So, I’m offering you some solutions so you can read The Little Dish in the manner that we intended. If you want to stick with IE then go and get IE7. Follow that link and choose your operating system and install. Everything will be the same. It’s just like IE6 but prettier and better suited for the internet. Some other alternatives are Firefox or Safari. Both are beautiful programs and superior browsers so your internet experience will be greatly improved. So please, heed my advice and update to IE7 or move to Safari or Firefox. I thank you ahead of time and will check back next week to see who’s been listening. Now go get Frisky.
Leave me a comment if you have any questions, I’d be happy to help. We just want your experience here to be enjoyable.
So I’ve been waiting with anticipation for this day since we decided to participate in April’s Sugar High Friday hosted by Le Petite Boulangette. On Monday, we posted our contribution to the “Asian Sweet Invasion” themed event: Japanese Matcha Green Tea Crème Brulée. Today, in the Sugar High Friday Roundup, we got take a look at the rest of the entries.
I am so impressed with the creativity and talent displayed in the other blogs’ recipes! One of my favorites is Not Quite Nigella’s adorable Panda Sesame, Vanilla & Green Tea Cupcakes. So cute. I also really liked the killer looking tapioca milkshakes from Addicted Sweet Tooth. I am a big fan of boba tea and the thought of making a tapioca drink myself never occurred to me. It’s ridiculous to choose favorites though because there were so many fun ideas. I enjoyed the process of pondering which dish to create and then seeing what other people came up with. Matcha ended up being really popular ingredient and appears in a lot of the other recipes. There was even another crème brulée contribution from Asparagus Thin! Guess we were thinking along the same lines. Their entry though, with kabocha winter squash and Chinese five spice, was definitely a walk on the more adventurous side.
Was a fun little project; bravo to everyone who participated. We’ll definitely be back in May! 
So two weeks ago, the little dish “staff” attended a cooking class at the Central Market off Lovers Lane in Dallas. It was the first cooking class that either of us had been to and the experience turned out to be an awesome one. Basically, now we want to go every weekend.
If you are unfamiliar with their classes, they usually range from $50-$70 dollars per person and are all themed to a specific culinary adventure. Our evening was a celebration of fresh herbs. We cooked a herb-encrusted beef tenderloin, herb and parmesan risotto, a vegetable casserole (ratatouille!!), a spring salad with a delicious vinaigrette, and for desert a rosemary bundt cake. Everything was delicious, but by far our favorite was the ratatouille. It was simple to make, and never has the combination of tomatoes, zucchini and fennel ever tasted so good. Overall it was a fabulous time and I couldn’t recommend it more. We met some super nice people and our instructor for the evening was a delight as well.
So, as a service to our readers we would like to inform you of an upcoming cooking class that you shouldn’t miss. Lidia Bastianich and Joe Bastianich, mother and son super Italian cooking combo, will be offering a class at Central Market, along with a book signing on May 2 at the Dallas location. I’ve watched Lidia’s various cooking shows on PBS (the original ‘Food Network’) for some time now and she always makes the most authentic and delicious Italian dishes around. Don’t miss this event, it should be a treat and you might even catch the little dish in attendance.
My cute friend Anna showed me this site today which I immediately fell in love with because it a.) helps feed the poor and b.) increases your vocabulary skills.
The idea behind Free Rice is so simple. All you have to do is play the site’s vocabulary game. For every word you get right, they will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. It’s a little rice, but it all adds up. According to their site, Free Rice has already donated enough food to feed over 20,000 Myanmar refugees.
So how long would you have to play to earn one cup of rice? Well, according to the all-knowing WikiAnswers, there’s about 7,200 grains of rice in one cup. My average of questions answered per minute (at a rushed pace) was about 15. So at that rate, in about 24 minutes of killing time at work, you’ve donated one cup 
This month we’re really proud to participate in Sugar High Friday for the first time! If you’re unfamiliar with the idea, here’s a summary in the words of its founder, Domestic Goddess:
It’s your best excuse to make something sweet and different, at least once a month. And to do it with tons of other people from around the world. It occurs during the last week of every month, entries due on the Monday and the round-up posted on the Friday (the Sugar High Friday that is!). The rules and regulations – really, anything goes! Just make your favourite dessert that revolves around or highlights the specified ingredient, which is always something different every month.
This month’s Sugar High Friday theme was selected by La Petite Boulangette. Her delicious category of choice? Asian Sweet Invasion! Feeling a little bit like I was on Iron Chef, I decided to do a very classic dessert with an asian inspiration. My start? A simple, creamy crème brulée. To that, I added Japanese matcha green tea powder. You can find it easily in asian markets and I believe I’ve even seen it in the grocery store. I made this recipe twice to get the amount of green tea flavor just right. The finished dessert had a very mild, yet still detectable green tea flavor, and luckily the same creamy consistency as the classic dessert.
It’s a sophisticated-sounding dessert that’s very easy to make. The best plan of action is to make it the day before. That way, the custard has ample time to chill all the way through and your caramelized top will be crisp. Also, in this recipe the crunchy sugar topping is caramelized in the broiler. If you have a mini-torch, that’ll work better. However, mine was having some problems (I think it was low on gas), so I used the broiler and it worked fine.
Japanese Matcha Green Tea Crème Brulée
(as adapted from the Bon Appétit June 2002 recipe)
Yield: Serves 8
6 large egg yolks
7 tbs. sugar
2 tbs. matcha green tea powder
2 1/4 cups whipping cream
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3 tbs. sugar for topping
Preheat oven to 325°F. Whisk yolks and 7 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl until thick and pale yellow, about 2 minutes. Add green tea powder and whisk until incorporated. Bring cream to simmer in heavy small saucepan. Gradually whisk hot cream into yolk mixture. Whisk in vanilla; divide custard among eight 3/4-cup custard cups. Arrange cups in 13×9x2-inch metal pan. Pour enough hot water into pan to come halfway up sides of cups. Bake custards until gently set in center, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove cups from water and refrigerate uncovered until cold, at least 3 hours. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and keep chilled.)
Preheat broiler. Place custards on baking sheet. Sprinkle 1/2 tablespoon brown sugar onto each. Broil until sugar starts to bubble and color, turning sheet often to prevent burning, about 2 minutes. Chill until topping is hard and brittle, at least 1 hour and up to 6 hours.
Calling this dish a “salad” seems a little like cheating. Yes, the cornucopia of ingredients is laid upon a bed of spring mixed greens. And yes, there are three types of salads involved: tuna, chicken, and pasta. However, this is hardly the kind of salad I think my trainer was talking about. No matter. The calorie splurge is definitely worth it. The three salads are seriously delicious. The chicken salad was creamy and very flavorful without being mayonnaisey.
The pasta salad consisted of shells tossed in an olive oil and pesto dressing. It was was perfectly al dente and very tasty. As far as the tuna is concerned, I was surprised. I’m not usually interested in tuna that is a.) no longer pink and b.) pulverized. However, wonder of wonders, I really liked this! It was fresh, not overly salty, and avoided the same pitfall as the chicken by not tasting like it was drenched in mayonnaise. Between the three, I couldn’t pick a favorite but I really enjoyed going back and forth between them trying to decide.
The salad is dressed with a creamy parmesan dressing, sprinkled with pinenuts, glazed pecans, and finished off with a couple of Kalamata olives and grape tomatoes. It’s a lot of flavors going on, but they all really work together well. No flavor overwhelms the other. Health food salad? Not quite. Perfect for a sunny afternoon lunch on their patio? Definitely. And if you’re an iced tea fan, you must get their black currant iced tea. It is light years beyond the usual restaurant tea. (I’ve stopped in just to get a tea to-go.)
Price: $8.79
Cafe Express
5307 E. Mockingbird Ln. | Dallas, TX 75206
Other locations in Dallas, Plano, and Southlake
So, this isn’t a dish or recipe review, but we recently had a food adventure so lovely it would be a shame not to share it…
I love Unwrapped. Watching one (or two) episodes before bedtime has become nearly a ritual. There are some wonderful subtleties of the show that are quite amusing, but the very best part for me is the factory footage. I hate the episodes when they feature a candy collector or some burger festival in Ohio. Those segments are usually tangental and unnecessary. What I want to see is conveyor belts of food, 30 foot long ovens, and gallon-sized batches of boiling high fructose corn syrup. Sublime. Following this love of the food factories, I decided that we really needed to visit one. Luckily, history is on my side. In 1908, Mrs. Baird’s Bread was founded in Ft. Worth by Ninnie Baird.
Their Ft. Worth factory (now one of several) offers complimentary tours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It’s open to the public (not just organizations and schools as I might have guessed). You just have to plan ahead (two-week notice required) and fill out a little paperwork.
The greatness that’s inside is totally worth the effort. The little video they show in the beginning of the tour is (obviously) juvenile, but I know twenty-somethings aren’t really the bread tour’s target market. After the video, you receive your hard hat with built-in headset and enter the factory. You really get to see everything and get a close view of dough being kneaded in large troughs, rolling through a gigantic oven, cooling on rolling racks, and being sliced. The day we visited they were baking whole wheat bread and hamburger buns for Wendy’s. (This development was a big surprise—the factory makes baked goods for lots of other companies too. Chili’s, Oroweat, and even some store brands were among the companies our guide listed.)
The tour concluded with some good old fashioned carbo-loading and we got to eat the just baked bread and hamburger buns. Great experience and I think it’d be especially fun for kids. It’s like Unwrapped, but for real!
These are all the great things we got in our gift bag. Everyone loves stickers!
Mrs. Baird’s Bread
7301 South Freeway | Ft. Worth, TX 76134
Back to back pancake posts…I know, it’s like pancake week or something. Our last post was about great pancakes, the kind you try and replicate at home. These pancakes, not so much.
I really wanted to love these pancakes at Cliff Cafe in Oak Cliff. So much of them was so right. The warm blueberry and basil compote on top was marvelous. The unusual addition of fresh basil complemented the sweet berries and was a delicious surprise.
Unfortunately, so much of this dish was so very wrong. The vanilla bean pancakes were oddly rubbery and chewy. Cutting them with my fork was difficult, especially as the toughness increased when they started to cool. In a perfect world, I would have had the lovely fruit compote atop fluffy, light, and wonderful pancakes. If only. Instead, the dish was a bit of a disappointment. However, I wouldn’t entirely be against trying it again and giving the dough-frisbee pancakes an opportunity to redeem themselves. Everyone deserves a second chance…right?
901 Fort Worth Ave. | Dallas, TX 75208
214.393.4141
So I’m more of a French Toast kind of guy. In the coming months I’m going to go on a ‘Best French Toast’ in Dallas tirade, so keep your eye out. My affinity towards the Toast stems from my earlier years. When I was a kid, my family and I would always go out to eat every Sunday after church and I would always get french toast for my meal. I loved it. So growing up, pancakes were never really on my radar, or my plate. I mean, my mother would make them every so often, but If I could do anything about it, it was gonna be french toast.
Anyway, to my surprise, Dream Cafe has some damn fine pancakes. They would like you to call them Cloud Cakes, and befittingly so because they are the lightest and fluffiest cakes I have ever had in my mouth. The secret ingredient that makes them so light and delicious you may ask….Ricotta cheese. These pancakes are perfect. Not quite French Toast conquering perfect, but despite their 10$ price tag, they are quite a delightful breakfast. That’s right, 10 dollars. 5 dollars a cake. Someone is ripping off someone here, and I’d like to say it wasn’t me. I’m not sure where they get off charging 10$ for two pancakes at a normal looking cafe-type location in Dallas, but I guess if people are willing pay it, they will keep charging it. So if it wasn’t for the high price tag, I might be heading back to the Dream Cafe more often to fill up on come Cloud Cakes. Although as it stands, my Sunday mid-afternoon hunger will still be quenched with some moderately priced but delicious french toast….or maybe even some migas.
2800 Routh St. | Dallas, TX 75208
