What's been cooking?

So it's not like I've been totally lazy these past two months between posts. I had to eat after all. I've just been relying on some old favorites. My comfort foods, if you will. Anyway, here's a little recap of some of the things going down in my kitchen.

Bobby Flay's Chicken Cacciatore: This is fabulous. I love the layers of flavors from the spicy jalapeno to the tangy balsamic. Bobby thought of everything. I still can't believe he lost the throwdown! I bypass the whole chicken and just do mine with chicken thighs.

Emeril's Smoked Salmon Quiche with Potato Crust: A different twist on a classic quiche. Potato crust = Yum. As if potatoes weren't awesome enough, try kicking them up with some Essence of Emeril and Parmesan. Heaven.

My Pasta with Goat Cheese, Chicken and Sun Dried Tomatoes: An easy weeknight meal with lots of bold flavors.

Duff Goldman's Curried Pasta Salad: I whipped this up to go with some jerk burgers at a friend's Memorial Day BBQ. I liked it so much I've already done a sequel to go with the NFNS party leftovers. I probably used twice the curry powder the recipe calls for and spiced mine up with cayenne pepper. Throw in some dried cherries for a sweet balance the spiciness. And impress your friends ... my cubicle food buddy at work thought I julienned the broccoli for the slaw! Thanks Publix!

Emeril's Quiche Lorraine: Who doesn't love cheese and bacon? Simple, easy, freezable. Although, I freeze anything. Perfect to whip out as a snack for a spontaneous Friday evening wine tasting!

Giada's Shrimp and Lemon Linguine: A note to the home cook - don't salt the water too much when using fresh pasta, as I did when I made this recipe. I guess it stands to reason it absorbs more of it than the store bought, dried kind. I've also decided I'm not a huge fan of lemon. Besides those two things, my dinner guest was a big fan of this one.

And we did have a little baby shower action in the midst of all this, during which my friend E and I converted my pad into Kitchen Stadium to whip up six dishes in about three hours. (You have ... 20 minutes). OK, we did get a late start because we had to hit up our fav wine shop for double points Saturday. But we did it! E made a roasted red pepper dip, tuna tartare and bruschetta. My contributions were:

Leek and Mushroom Quiche: The beauty of the quiche ... I used the same quiche lorraine recipe from above and swapped in a pack of portobellos and a leek. Eyeball it.

Rachael Ray's Italian Sausage Sage Meatballs with Apricot Balsamic Glaze: Always a big hit at parties. *Note: This recipe doesn't appear to be on any authorized web sites. It's that good. I'm not about to infringe copyright on Rach's $18 million a year empire. It's in her Get Togethers cookbook.

Rachael Ray's Lemon Pepper Chicken Bites: Why I keep making stuff with lemon is beyond me. But everybody else liked it. I served with some teryiaki.

So that's a lazy two months of cooking for me! Not surprising : )

Lapse into Laziness

Well I guess you could say I fell off the blogging bandwagon there for awhile. It happens. Don't get me wrong. I've still been cooking and eating well these past two months. I suppose I was just too distracted by, well, all of life's little distractions to blog about it. Or perhaps all of the cooking was really more of a distraction from the distractions... There's something to think about!

Either way, I've been meaning to get back on track, and finally this weekend presented the perfect opportunity: My Next Food Network Star premier party. When I was home in Buffalo a few weeks ago and first saw the promo, I couldn't believe that it was time yet again for the show that brought us Guy Fieri, Aaron McCargo Jr and Melissa d'Arabian. So I sent out all my invites and started the menu planning.

I'm big on themes for this sort of occasion. Recall, the Next Iron Chef premier where everyone had a secret ingredient to cook with. I thought better this time of imposing any restrictions on my guests, so figured I'd just come up with my own guidelines. And then the perfect idea hit me. I would make a recipe from some of the former winners.

Anyway, here we go again! Without further ado, here's what I came up with.

Melissa d'Arabian's Salmon Cakes: The recipe does not include a dip, but I whipped up a simple mayo one with the ingredients that go in the salmon cakes (mayo, dijon, onions, bacon grease and lemon).

Aaron McCargo Jr.'s Molasses Marinated Flank Steak with Roasted Red Peppers

Guy Fieri's Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp with Chipotle BBQ Sauce

As it turns out, Guy's got some pretty tempting recipes, so I rounded out the menu with these two little quickies.

Ginger Carrot Soup Shooters: I put my soup in little plastic shot glasses so guests could easily eat them. I have to say I wasn't a huge fan. A little too overpowering in its pine nutiness. I tried to give it another layer of flavor with some roasted red bell and jalapeno peppers. And as a garnish, I did a little swirl of honey on top.

Artichoke Spinach Dip with Roasted Red Bell Peppers

Keeping it Real

She doesn't have her own cookbook yet, and features about her in Food Network Magazine are pretty limited.

Yet Sunny Anderson stuck around more than 30 minutes after her Sarasota appearance happily chatting and signing paper towel ads with her photo for the dozen or so fans who stuck around after her demo.

As far as food celebrities go, she gave keeping it real new meaning.

Sure, Sunny Anderson is one of Food Network's newer stars. Her cooking show Cooking for Real is in its third year. She does not appear on many of the prime time reality shows that command the bulk of Food Network's audience.

I was on the fence for a few weeks about whether to spring the $50 to go see her in person. I enjoy watching her show, and her food always looks good (maybe not stand out and memorable ... but tasty and easy). I mostly liked the idea of a fairly small and intimate session with any Food Network celebrity. After our new friend we met at SoBe told me how nice she was in person, I decided it was probably worth it.

As soon as I got there I was glad I sprung for the ticket.

For some reason I was surprised that she was already there examining the collection of knives at Publix Apron's Cooking School when I arrived 20 minutes early. I think squeal with delight would probably sum up my reaction when I walked through the door and she was standing right in front of me, dressed town in jeans and a purple t-shirt.

She's one of those people who just radiates warmth. She's pretty and personable. She flashed a huge smile and gave me an extremely warm welcome, making me feel like I had just walked in the kitchen of one of my best girlfriends. My first instinct was to hug her, but I stopped myself ... for a second.

"Can I give you a hug?" I asked.

(It's important to note at this point I had already spent my afternoon wine tasting for three hours and made friends with one of the pourers. Enough said.)

"Of course!" she gushed, as if it wasn't totally weird that I accosted her, and she threw her arms around me.

That was the beginning of my BFF-dom with Sunny Anderson.

Turns out I knew some people at the demo and took a seat at a table in the back by them. Sunny spent the next 20 minutes making the rounds, stopping to chat with everyone in the room, taking pictures, answering questions about her show and dishing Food Network gossip.

And she proceeded to do so for the next two hours as she cooked up some orzo, mustard greens, bacon-wrapped flank steak and a pear tart with cheddar. I have to say everything was really delicious. Simply made right before our eyes and packed with flavor. I guess bacon does that.

She talked about growing up in a military family, her time spent in the service and how she got into the business. She told stories about how she tried for years to get into the Food Network, putting herself out there to do any small job they would offer until she finally got her own cooking show.

You definitely got the distinct and genuine impression that she really pushed and worked her way to her spot. She wasn't one of these people who was just magically discovered and walked into the limelight. It seemed that she worked hard to get where she is, and truly appreciates it.

And she did not hold back any behind the scenes details about the other Food Network stars, from how "fabulous" Ina Garten is to Alton Brown's dry sense of humor and Robert Irvine's padded resume.

"I'm a foodie too," she said. "Just like you guys."

When someone asked about the cookbook she was writing, she promptly went to the cabinet pulled out her giant purse and whipped out a marble notebook where she was sketching out her ideas and passed it around to everyone in the audience.

After the demo wrapped up she enthusiastically, yet modestly, offered to stick around to sign autographs and take photos.

I brought her two copies of Food Network magazine, one for me and one for my sister, for her to sign. In mine she wrote "Keep real."

I lingered for a bit just totally enthralled watching her chat with the other women. I thought about inviting her out for a drink, then became mindful I might be coming off a little creepy. In hindsight, I kind of wish I did. She was there all by herself. No entourage of publicists and security.

But instead I just thanked her and got ready to leave.

As I started to walk away, she stopped to look up from her signing and say what I thought was a very genuine and appreciative goodbye to me. The look in her eyes made me think she really meant it.

"No, thank you," she said. "Thank you so much for coming. You have no idea how much it means to me."

I will dream of Miami ...

Words hardly do justice to the incredible, awesome time I had this weekend.

Well, one word does come to mind: Overstimulating.

My first trip to the Food Network's South Beach Food and Wine Festival far exceeded my expectations. Turns out, all of the things I worried would cut into the fun - crowds, lines, getting shut out of demos - were not an issue.

In their place were all these wonderful things I never anticipated. A well-stocked goodie bag. A waterford wine glass. A lanyard with a clip attached so you could wear the wine glass around your neck. A rum tent.

Someone really put a lot of thought into this.

We started as soon as the festival opened at 11 a.m., walking past Peter and Paul to cross under the golden gates into our own personal heaven - at least for the next seven hours.

We passed tent after tent, all with signs beckoning us in with promises of meeting some of the country's greatest food personalities - not just those on the Food Network.

To be honest, a lot of the details of the day are a little bit of a fog. That's where this whole overstimulation comes in. And I was feeling that way well before we hit the rum tent.

What kind of Food Network groupie wouldn't feel that way? We saw Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, Emeril, Michael Symon, Paula Deen, Guy Fieri. There were stars everywhere, many of them happily working the crowd and chatting it up with their friends. We got our picture with Robert Irvine.

All this sandwiched between the beautiful greenish blue waters of the Gulfstream in the Atlantic and Ocean Drive.

I LOVE MIAMI!!!!

Forget the all you could eat food and wine. Just being there was euphoric.

Of course there was a highlight of the day: The Rachael Ray signing.

She was the last in my tri-fecta of first wave Food Network favorites. She was really my first, the one I watched in college who made me really think I could be successful in the kitchen. I packed my little Yum-O shirt just for the fest and started staking out her demo tent for seats practically as soon as we got there. Forget that Bobby Flay was on stage. He was the farthest thing from my mind this time around. I wanted to see Rachael.

The wait wasn't long before she came on stage for her demo, much the same as on t.v. Maybe a little bit more reserved. Maybe a little distracted by the live audience. Maybe a little tired. This was already day four of the festival. But she was every bit as warm and welcoming as you would imagine.

After the demo I bolted over pretty quickly to the tent where she would do the book signing. The book people were pretty strict, saying she might only sign one book and only one bought at the festival.

But I had something else I wanted to try and sneak under the radar. I had the very first copy of her magazine, Everyday with Rachael Ray, and I wanted her to sign it.

As I walked up to the table and put my two items down I heard the woman in front of my gushing.

"Ohhhhhh, you have the first copy of the magazine," she said.

I looked up and realized it was the editor. That might not seem that awesome to anyone else, but I'm a journalist. I can appreciate it.

I asked her if she would sign it too. At first she insisted that I didn't really want her to.

"No I really do," I told her. "I really want you to sign it."

She got a big smile on her face and started flipping through the pages.

"Where should I sign it?" she asked.

"Anywhere you want," I told her.

"I'll sign my column," she said.

She held it up and showed Rachael, who slapped her signature on the cover.

And that was it. It didn't occur to me until I walked away that I could have told her I'm a reporter. Oh well. It was still a great moment.

Then I followed the sound of the steel drum band down the yellow sand road. The rum was waiting ...

A little postscript: The rest of the festival was a blast. After a few trips to the rum tent, Paula Deen even started to grow on me. At the very least she's a great entertainer. Guy Fieri was a great way to end the festivities. And then of course we had the perfect end to a perfect weekend. We capped off the trip with brunch at Emeril's : )

It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN ...

Cue the trumpets from that cheesy Europe song.

Or just forget about the trumpets altogether and start your own countdown.

For me, I'm less than a week away from SoBe.

I was so busy relaxing all weekend and recharging my battery for the big event I forgot to post my weekly installment on the blog countdown.

But yes, there's a decent chance that next time I post it will be photos of the South Beach Food and Wine Festival.

Of course my festival experience would not be complete without the appropriate attire. This time I'm conjuring Rachael Ray. My Yum-O shirt arrived in the mail this week in perfect time for me to have for the food festival.

Everyone sing with me. The final countdown ...

12 Days: 7 Hrs: 40 Min.

It's getting close. So close I can practically taste the bite-size South Beach delectables and smell the salty breeze of the Atlantic.

We're down to two weeks until the big South Beach Food and Wine Festival. At this very moment two weeks from now my friend and I will be perusing the tents of the Grand Tasting, scoping out the best sample-sized Miami cuisine and some nice, tasty vinos.

Yeah! What could be more thrilling?

(The countdown in the title, by the way, is for the start of the festival Thursday. We're making a fashionably late appearance : )

47 days and counting ...

With my ticket in hand and hotel reservation made, needless to say I was thrilled when I checked the South Beach Food and Wine Festival web site and saw they have posted the schedule for the Grand Tasting.

The day my friend and I picked to go (Saturday) is sold out (not surprising...but you can still get tickets for Sunday). The schedule is packed with celebrity cooking demos by some of my current and former favorite Food Network stars - Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, Emeril, The Neelys ...

Of course I'm expecting long lines and waits for the demos, so we will have to be selective with our choices. I'm thinking Rachael Ray and Emeril will be priorities...

The rest of the time we can spend wining and dining our way through the food tent. I can't wait! This trip has been years in the making ...

Rachael Ray's Drunken Tuscan Pasta

OK... Next time it comes down to drinking a bottle of wine or boiling pasta in it I'm going to go with my gut instinct.

Just drink it.

Rachael Ray's recipe for Drunken Tuscan Pasta has always kind of intrigued me. The pasta recipe was in her Express Lane Meals cookbook

Surely, pasta boiled in a bottle of red wine must be packed with plenty of flavor. She actually made a risotto version of this dish on her Iron Chef appearance (she and Mario Batali went up against Bobby Flay and Giada De Laurentiis... Mario and Rachael won).

But is it really worth a bottle of vino?

I caved on this belief over the weekend, and only because I had a nearly full bottle of wine I opened before my Christmas vacation and never finished. After it sat about a week, what else was I going to do with it?

Maybe using wine that's been open that long detracts from the flavor. But aside from turning the pasta a magnificent fuchsia color, the flavor I got wasn't worth a full bottle.

Don't get me wrong. The pasta is tasty, with the peppery flavors of escarole and pancetta. But I don't think it was any better than other pastas I've made with this ingredient combo.

Can't blame me for trying.

Game Highlights

After discussing the big Iron Chef battle with some of my friends today, I realized my post last night was rather cursory. Perhaps it was the shock of my team's loss. Perhaps it was the vino.

Either way, I wanted to come back and share some of my favorite highlights from the event, most of which involve Mario Batali getting snarky with Bobby Flay. The other one involves sweet potatoes.

To be fair, I do like Bobby. I did drive three hours to spend an entire day waiting for an hour-long cooking demo and a signature in my cookbook. But Emeril trumps Bobby Flay any day. If Bobby was on Emeril's team, I would have been cheering for him.

Besides, I'm a sucker for sass.

Without further ado ...

Memorable moment No. 1: Mario Batali practically running into the White House garden proclaiming he was going to take all of the chiles and tomatillos, staples of the Bobby Flay menu.

MM No. 2: Emeril telling Mario Batali about two nice looking cauliflower in the White House garden, and asking whether they should take one of them. Mario's response: Grab them both. Bobby Flay later was caught yelling back "Did you guys take all of the cauliflower?"

MM No. 3: Mario proclaiming his plans to make tacos and burritos while heading back with his garden bounty.

MM No. 4: Sweet potatoes. Apparently an Obama favorite (we learned as Bobby tried to kiss up to the first lady before the battle). Both teams used the sweet potatoes to make what I think were the best looking dishes of the night - a ravioli from Emeril and Mario and a sweet potato tart with marshmallow topping from Bobby and Cristeta Comerford.

So there you have it. It sure does seem like Mario has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the Food Network. This article from the New York times says a lot.

"They don't need me," Batali is quoted as saying. "They have decided they are a mass market and they are going after the Wal-Mart crowd. So they don't need someone who uses polysyllabic words from other languages."

Which raises an interesting question ... Were Emeril and Mario in on the fix? Did they realize the odds were against them? Why bother?

My guess is the publicity from the hugely marketed event was probably enough to entice the two chefs to return to the Food Network. After all, we are in a recession, and both could probably use some advertising for their franchises.

I did make me kind of want to eat at one of Mario Batali's restaurants...

Well ...

... I think it was a fix.

I figured it from the beginning. There was no way Food Network would let the White House chef lose an epic Iron Chef battle. Especially when paired with poster child Bobby Flay, and up against two Food Network castoffs - Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse.

But I had hope when the chefs walked across the White House lawn. I thought maybe, just maybe, this would be a fair fight of some of popular culture's biggest culinary giants.

Hope that was shattered.

To be fair, it's hard to say who should have been the champ when you can't taste the food. And I have to say, I'd probably be hard pressed to top any of the dishes put before the judges.

I'll give Bobby and Comerford that their dessert looked the best, a sweet potato tart with marshmallow on top. And any time I hear Bobby Flay talk about chipotle or chiles I feel a little tingle. I love those flavors.

But Mario and Emeril's American birds two ways also looked good. So did their scallops and radishes.

Either way, I'm a little disappointed.

I guess there's no way to know for sure whether Emeril got a fair fight.

And at the end of the day, it was a good show. Maybe one that will inspire America to get cooking.

An epic culinary battle ...

Brace yourselves. Now, consider the following:

Iron chef ... White House ... EMERIL LAGASSE!!!

That's right, many of you who talk to me on a fairly regular basis or watch the Food Network have probably caught wind of what's being billed as the greatest night in culinary history. An Iron Chef battle at the White House featuring Bobby Flay and White House Chef Cristeta Comerford versus Emeril and Mario Batali. They will be cooking their dishes with ingredients from the White House garden.

It takes my breath away a little just thinking about it.

Anyway, it may not be the greatest night in culinary history, but will sure be a good one. Show starts at 8 p.m. Jan. 3 on the Food Network.

I'll give you one guess who my money is on : )

I've never been that fond of Paula Deen ...

... but this recipe for her hashbrown casserole got the better of me.

I found it earlier this week when I was thinking about having some people over for a holiday brunch. For some reason when I started contemplating hearty egg and sausage dishes, I gravitated to the Paula Deen cookbook.

I consulted with my copy of Paula Deen Celebrates, the first addition to my now growing collection of autographed cookbooks. The holiday brunch didn't pan out, but the hashbrown casserole sounded good, so I figured I'd make it for myself. (And various co-workers who I shared it with at work today. Feeding the bosses can never hurt ...)

But my Paual Deen story actually starts about eight years ago before I moved to Florida. Before Paula made it big.

My father and I were driving to Jacksonville, where I was spending my summer doing an internship at the newspaper. Along the way, we stopped in some southern state where my dad found a copy of her original Lady and Sons cookbook, all authentic and spiral bound like she had it done at Kinkos.

Later that summer my dad and some other family members stopped at the Lady and Sons restaurant on the way down to see me. My dad raved about the food. Pure southern cooking. As the story goes, he asked the waitress to give the chef his compliment.

"Well why don't you tell her yourself," the waitress told him. "She's sitting over there having dinner with her family."

Maybe this is where I got the foodie stalking from. My dad went over, shook Paula Deen's hand, got his picture taken with her and my brother and told her the food was delicious. She was sweet as pecan pie to him, and thus began my dad's Paula Deen fandom.

Not long after my dad's visit, as another story goes, the people from the Food Network stopped at the restaurant and they, too, were wowed by her cooking. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward a few years to when I'm living in Sarasota. I saw ads that Paula Deen was coming to town to do a book signing right around the holidays. I thought that would make a great gift for my father.

The whole operation was quite strict. You needed to call and order your cookbook from the now defunct Sarasota News and Books, pick it up that evening (probably to ensure you bought it from them) and then wait in the line to see her.

There were probably about 400 people waiting in the line when we got there. Another 200 or so waited in a separate line for those who didn't get their cookbook far enough in advance, but could wait and see if she still had time to sign them.

The rules were rigid as we made our way into the store. No one was allowed in who wasn't getting a cookbook signed. Show your receipt. Open you book to the appropriate page. No pictures. No personal message. Don't bother asking. I felt a little bit like cattle being herded.

The line moved swiftly, basically giving you a quick walk past the table where she sat with her husband signing "Paula" assembly line style.

Despite the warning, I couldn't help but ask her to personalize it for my father.

"Hi Paula. My dad loves you. He met you at your restaurant a few years ago. Could you please personalize it for him?"

She didn't even answer. She just signed her name and slid it down the table and grabbed the next one. We snuck a friend of mine in the store to take a picture of me getting the book signed. The picture revealed Paula Deen giving me a nasty look as I plead with her.

I was a little disappointed, but thus began my dislike of Paula Deen. (Even though I do find some of her shows on the Food Network entertaining.)

Some of my friends have since been to her restaurant and say it's morphed into a totally different place then it as when my father met her. Apparently it's a multi-story, multi-hour wait to get in kind of place. And the food wasn't as good as they expected.

As far as the casserole goes, not so awful : )

Off to SoBe the wizards ... the wonderful wizards of food!

I watched the countdown tick off the minutes, right until midnight this morning.

That's when tickets for the 2010 South Beach Food and Wine Festival went on sale. I've been shut out in years past, and this year I wasn't going to miss it.

Bobby Flay wrapped up his Throwdown as midnight struck and the magical virtual box office opened. Within six minutes I had in my possession (electronically at least) a coveted ticket to the Grand Tasting.

I can imagine it now. Me, on the sandy, white beach tasting the finest of South Florida epicurean fare and rubbing elbows with the likes of Rachael, Bobby and Emeril.

OK, I know it won't QUITE be like that. But the beach isn't going anywhere, and the food will likely be more incredible than I could ever imagine. If I happen to catch a glimpse of one of my favorite stars, it will be all the more exciting.

So yeah, maybe I'm being melodramatic, but this is really exciting - a somewhat nervous excitement - for me. I've been wanting to go to the SoBe fest for years, and finally it's going to happen.

Part of the angst comes from the fact that taxes and all this set me back some cash. But talking to one of my friends in the office today - after she invited me to her son's school International Festival/fund raiser - I realized that times like these when I can somewhat guiltlessly drop money on something like that for myself could be limited.

I might as well take advantage of the opportunity.

To SoBe... or not to SoBe ...

... I actually think I already know the answer to that question.

For those not in the know on this one, by SoBe I'm referring to South Beach in Miami. More specifically, to the annual and extravagant food and wine festival.

Each year masses of foodies from all over the country flock to see the rock stars of the culinary world do their thing, while indulging in dishes from some of the best chefs in the nation. Oh, there's also vino.

I've been wanting to go for the past few years, but it's pretty pricey and most years I either had other things I needed to spend my money on or had no one to go with me.

But I've resisted so long, and really haven't treated myself to a vacation (besides visiting family at home) since I entered the workforce. I think this will be the year I succumb to the temptation.

The big event at the festival is the Grand Tasting Village, where one can pay a somewhat hefty sum for unlimited food and wine and a chance to see presentations by the likes of Emeril, Rachael and Bobby.

The chefs also do a number of events besides the tasting. I'm eyeing Rachael's beach burger bash and Emeril's champagne cocktail party.

The festival runs from Feb. 25 to Feb. 28, and tickets go on sale in late October.