James Starmer – Food

Whenever I make mashed potatoes I usually try to make a little more than I need just so that I can have enough left overs to make these pancakes the next morning. Adding flour or something to thicken up the batter can be a necessary evil because it’s impossible to say how dry or wet the mashed potatoes are. I made two batches of pancakes from two different sets of mashed potatoes. The first set were perfect, cup of mash and two eggs, no flour needed. The second set used some overly wet mashed potatoes. I decided to try thickening it up with corn meal. Lesson learned, they didn’t taste like corn bread they tasted like crap.

When I was growing up my family almost moved to New Mexico. We took a lot of trips there to look at houses and see the sights. Of all the food we had, the one thing that I remember was sopaipillas and what really sticks out is that they were usually served with honey butter. Most of the recipes that I’ve seen floating around for sopaipillas either dust them with sugar and serve them with honey, but they never mention honey butter! They’re missing the best part!

Sopaipillas are good, but honey butter is great! For one thing, it solves the age old problem of honey on toast. Make a piece of toast, butter it up, drizzle some honey on it, take a bite and all of the honey runs off the toast. Now with honey butter, problem solved. Thank you honey butter!

One last thought, the honey to butter ratio is really flexible, I haven’t made this stuff since I was a kid and I just guessed at a ratio and it tasted great. I think next time I’d probably try a 1-1 ratio.

If you don’t get the title then please go and watch this.

I have two huge basil plants in my back yard. As the first frost creeps closer, the time line for using it all up gets shorter, so I needed a recipe that uses basil by the fist full. This is another one of those recipes that you really just eyeball. If you want it more garlicy add more, if you want it more basily add more of that.

You could throw all of this into a food processor, but you’ll come out with a really gross looking paste so I really recommend chopping this by hand. I use a mezzaluna, it keeps all of the bits in the central bowl area, the blade is sharp enough that the weight of the knife can do most of the cutting and the end result has individual bits of the primary ingredients instead of a singular green goop. If you have a ton of basil you can make up a huge batch of this stuff. I’ve heard of people putting it into ice cube trays to keep it over the winter. Personally I don’t know about the ice cube tray thing, with this much garlic I can’t imagine that you’ll be able to get the taste out of the tray afterward. It should last for a few weeks or months in your fridge if it’s thoroughly mixed/covered with olive oil.

I had the best intentions to make butternut squash ravioli today, but as dinner crept closer I just wasn’t going to get it done. I had a pot of stock that I started earlier in the day so I figured I could turn the squash puree into soup. The soup was good even if it wasn’t as sweet as my wife likes it. Her favorite butternut squash soup recipe is really heavy on the apples. While this might not take the title of “favorite” soup recipe it was pretty easy and didn’t require a blender.

Last couple of thoughts: I split this recipe in two because I still think that the puree could make a really good filling for ravioli on it’s own. The measurements are kind of vague for these recipes because I really just eyeballed most of it. I bought a squash and cut it up. That yielded about a pound when peeled and chopped. When I got to the soup stage I would have liked double the amount of puree, that’s why I said 2 lbs. in the recipe. So, I think this is a good recipe for people who like a flexibility in what they’re cooking.

Pawpaws are native to the eastern US and in my opinion almost completely unknown. I guess this is due the fact that the pawpaw “does not store or ship well” ^[1]. I have lived in Maryland all my life and I am fortunate enough to have great memories of picking and eating pawpaws along the C&O canal.

Their texture is close to a banana or maybe a papaya. Their taste is unique and for me I can only say they taste like a pawpaw. They look like a mango and usually have black spots that make them look like they’re covered in mold.

Searching for recipes on the internet is a disappointment due to their relative obscurity. But wikipedia says, “In many recipes calling for bananas, pawpaw can be used with volumetric equivalency”. It’s a fairly labor intensive process to get the maximum amount of pulp from a pawpaw. The biggest issue with getting the pulp is the seeds.

The seeds have a thick membrane around them that clings to the pulp so if you want to get the most out of your pawpaw you are going to have to get that membrane off of the seeds. I peeled mine by hand the skin is really thin and if the pawpaw is ripe it comes off easily. I guess most of my pawpaws were technically unripe because they were fairly green but they tasted ripe so I just used them anyway.

Normally you can walk around a grove of pawpaw trees and find ripe ones hanging from a tree. We cheated a little bit. When my mother would spot a tree with some in it I would give it a shake and wait for a hail of pawpaws to fall to the ground. Hind sight being what it is I probably should have had some head gear because these things are heavy and some of the really unripe ones are hard as a rock. But I was lucky and didn’t get a pawpaw to the skull.

*Disclaimer: I made this recipe up. I can’t attest to the “safety” of this recipe because canning with untested recipes could possibly lead to spoilage. So if you are a little freaked out, you can always freeze or store in the fridge for a couple of months with relative safety.

Thoughts on the jam: It really didn’t hold that unique pawpaw flavor well. It tasted good, but it really just tasted like “jam”. I have a few pawpaws left over that still need to ripen a bit so I’m hoping that I can get enough out of them to mix some jam and fresh pawpaws to whip up some pawpaw ice cream.

I’ve only been to Germany a since I was a kid but one of my fondest food memories is of baum kuchen. It translates to “tree cake” in english. It’s cooked in a special machine with a spit where layer upon layer of batter is cooked into a cake with concentric circles like a tree. It’s covered in a hard chocolate shell. It’s the best cake I’ve ever had.

My sister Anika has tried to replicate baum kuchen with her baum kuchen spitzen. Honestly she has had much better results than I have, I should have asked her for her recipe before setting out on my own. But I did get a layered effect and I think my mini cakes look pretty cool, even if they don’t really taste like true baum kuchen. But honestly I don’t think you are going to get true baum kuchen at home unless you can get that crazy spit cooker thing. Here is the base recipe that I used.

This is the icing that I used but I don’t think I’d use it again, it was just too rich and it didn’t set as hard as I would have liked but I’ll post it for reference.

They’re really just doughnut holes covered in tang icing and dipped in astronaut ice cream, but I think that warrants a weird name. I used this doughnut recipe. I probably got 50+ holes out of it. And all of the pictures were taken by my wife Rachel.

The initial steps with the yeast is a little weird, I’ve never really seen it done that way, but the doughnuts puffed up like they were supposed to, so I can’t really complain.

Toasted sandwiches are awesome. Also known as toasties or jaffles depending on where you are from. They’re like a hot pocket that doesn’t taste like total crap. I’ve wanted to make a waffle sandwich for a while now. I finally bit the bullet and borrowed my mom’s sandwich toaster. It’s an early 90’s contraption that we used now and again growing up but since then has been collecting dust in a corner of the pantry. The concept is pretty simple, make a toasted sandwich with waffles instead of bread.

Waffles. A few years ago my brother and sister in law bought me a waffle iron and I went through a half a dozen recipes before finding what I consider the best all around recipe. I know, I know, it’s Emeril. I don’t hate him, I just think his catch phrase is weak. I have dozens that I use when I’m cooking that are much better like the classic “fuck” or “shit” or “eh”. I don’t think those would fly on TV though. I can totally imagine Emeril brushing his teeth with some crest or what ever he is hocking at the time and yelling, “Fucking Shit! that’s some good toothpaste”. Ok, I’m rambling. One thing about these waffles, if you want them to look pretty, eat them fast because as they degas their steaminess they tend to get a little floppy. But we’re going to cook them again so who gives a shit. Bam.

*My, brother asked for a review of the taste. They tasted great. I think I would probably pour a little syrup into the bacon egg and cheese one next time before cooking it. I would also try under cooking the waffles a little bit because they didn’t fuse as well as I would have hoped.

The Brewers Art in Baltimore has some great beer. They also have some moderately priced french fries that are covered in garlic salt. It’s really hard to beat garlic salt covered fries and great beer. I wanted to cook up some sweet potato fries for a party and I remembered how great the brewers fries were. So one thing led to another and I created this salt.

Last year I did a bike tour with some friends through State College, Pennsylvania. Shaun Deller was along for the ride taking time off from his recycled bike hat business in Portland, Oregon. Shaun is a “wilderness living” expert and a wealth of information.

On a previous ride he taught me and another friend about edible plants. We picked some stinging nettles and steamed them over a camp fire. The cooking neutralizes the stinging part of the plant and they have a really nice mild flavor.

My fingers were tingling for hours after picking these

On this trip Shuan found a squirrel that had just been run over by a car. He knew it was fresh because it was still warm and we were riding in fairly cold weather (about 50F). So he grabbed it, threw it in a bag and when we got back he gave us all a lesson on cleaning and cooking a squirrel.

I don’t remember how long it took, maybe 20 – 30 minutes depending on the heat of the oil. Everyone present had at least a taste. I think the general consensus was that it tasted like chicken.

*Disclaimer: Obviously this is a wild animal precautions should be taken. I don’t advocate eating squirrels, I just thought it was worth a try once and I had a professional along who knew what he was doing. He actually said that if you gut the squirrel wrong, the contents of the digestive system could contaminate the meat and make you very sick. So be smart, hire Shuan to butcher your squirrels for you.

Oh and if you really get into eating squirrels you can always try squirrel melts: