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 : )

Easter Eats

If there's one thing I love more than a good dinner party, it would be dining as the guest of an equally as (or more) skilled culinary mastermind.

For Easter this year, I got to be an esteemed guest in my SoBe partner in crime's beautiful new home and enjoy a wonderful spread of traditional lamb and mint jelly, with all sorts of fixings.

Of course I'm not one to show up as a guest empty handed. For the cocktail hour (or hours as is the case with my friends) I whipped up these Rachael Ray Sage Sausage Bites with Balsamic Apricot Dip. These little Italian sausage meatballs are always a big hit with a sauce that offers the right mix of sweet and savory.

For dessert, I whipped up one of my all time favorite desserts - one I also consider an Easter staple. Carrot cake. I could not resist trying the Cake Boss Buddy Valastro's recipe, and turned to Ina Garten for the cream cheese frosting. The cake was perfectly moist and flavorful, and the cream cheese frosting rich, but not too sugary.

My efforts, however, were quite humbled by the spectacular spread. I'd never had lamb with mint jelly before, and was pleasantly surprised by the flavor combination (courtesy of Tyler Florence's take on years of tradition). It was lucky too that I saved room after the cocktail hour, since I could not get enough of another one of my friend's veggie pizza, a cream cheese, ranch dressing spread covering croissants and topped with carrots and broccoli. This recipe looks pretty similar to the one she told me.

Of course one of my favorite stars of the show were the lamb cupcakes another friend showed up with. The loving detail with which she placed little white chocolate chips to look like fur, and marshmallows for ears was just priceless!

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 ...

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.