The Diva That Ate New York // Jackie cooks

The Diva That Co-Hosted NYC Cookie Swap 2011

Have you stood face-to-face with over a thousand cookies that you could eat and take home to feast on? If you haven’t, you totally should!

I had the absolute DELIGHT! of hosting NYC COOKIE Swap yesterday with Maggy Keets, Gail Dosik and Ken Leung. What a fun event! The local and not so local food community came out in droves with their A-GAME cookies and it was STUPENDOUS!

I made: Cranberry Pepita Rugelach with Apple Honey Jelly | Stained Glass Ginger Cookies | Peppermint Chocolate Bark Stars

Let my video tell the tale of tasty treats…

The Diva That Made Coconut Whipped Sweet Potatoes

On Twitter the other day, Mdvani (@LadiesWhoLunch1), who I believe is vegan, asked me how to make sweet potatoes on behalf of a friend. I tweeted three ways:

Then I said, “Use coconut milk if you want them to be vegan.” That, was a moment of GENIUS! And that’s how I made them for Thanksgiving and they were FANTABULOUS!

The Diva That Made Roasted Garlic & Feta Dip

I found this recipe, many years ago, for the Chinese Laundry Cafe’s “Feta And Garlic Pate” online and it had this explanation: “This funky little cafe is a regular hangout for Queen’s university students. Lucky students. This recipe comes from the owner, Ann Marie Rousseau.”

I lightened the original recipe which had six tablespoons of butter in it, by leaving that out and added a lot more feta and a little more sour cream. I decided to roast the garlic so I added a lot more of it since the flavor of roasted garlic is softer. Oh, and I increased the scallions, too. You can substitute chives. Maybe with all that butter you could mold it and serve it like a terrine. I thought it was unnecessary. Now it’s got balls—Just the way I like it!

I used this as one of the layers in the Roasted Garlic & Feta, Butternut Squash, Beet & Cranberry Parfait on my Thanksgiving 2011 Menu

The Diva That Made Home Fries

I’m a potato freak! I often ask people this hypothetical question: “If you had to give up two out of the four major carbs for life: Pasta, Rice, Potatoes or Bread?  Which two would it be?”

Unless they already don’t eat gluten, they usually get really antsy and whiny and say, “Please don’t make me choose!.”

Me, I’d kick pasta and bread to the curb and live on rice and potatoes! Although my least favorite way of eating potatoes is mashed—people find this CRAZY—but I love them every other way: baked; steamed; scalloped; fried; roesti; boiled; roasted; pancakes; stewed; curried, etc… And of course, home fries! If I was told I could not make this recipe any more, I would get antsy and whiny and my world would shrink measurably.

The Diva That Hosted Pie Party Potluck LIVE!

Wow! Wow!! Wow!!! The spread of over 70 pies at Pie Party Potluck LIVE! was breathtaking, jaw dropping and mouth watering. I’d never seen anything like it. Well maybe in a bakery, but even they lacked the variety and the made with loved-ness of the Pie Party Potluck pies…

When Ken and I decided to host Pie Party Potluck LIVE!! I kept imagining what it would be like? How many people/pies would actually show up? How many people can we fit at Rodeo Bar? Have we invited too many people? Too few? Can we fit more? Weeks and weeks of questions that would only be answered when the day actually came.

The Diva That Made Lard Pie Crust

I bought this hilarious “Praise The Lard” t-shirt from Prather Meats at the Ferry Building in San Francisco (you can’t buy them online, but if you go there grab one—it’s a conversation piece), but I’ve never used it much for cooking. Strange for a gal who worships at the Church Of Pork Fat...

The Diva That Made Jarlsberg Crunch Tomato & Onion Pie

I love cooking with Jarlsberg. I think it’s because the holes in the cheese always freaked me out as a kid. I’m not gluten intolerant, but I love making food for my friends who have food allergies. My aim was to make a gluten free pie for PIe Party Potluck LIVE! so the people who were coming and couldn’t eat gluten would have another option. As it turned out, no one at the party was gluten free, but the gluten eaters happily scarfed down this pie too.

I felt a little like I cheated because I wanted to make a gluten free flour based crust using chick pea flour, but my test crust went from OK to awful. I decided to stick to making something that was delicious and gluten free without having to reinvent the wheel.

The Diva That Made Cupboard Harvest Pie

For some reason I wind up with lots of dried fruit scraps. Where do they all come from? Sahadi’s mostly and they are the result of buying them by the pound and 1/2 pound and using them in recipes calling for a cup here and 1/2 cup there. 

One year, I wound up with a several pounds of dried apricots after the Chocolate Show. They sat for months and got drier and drier. I kept moving the bag around thinking, “I have to do something with these!.” But they continued to sit around and mock me.

The Diva That Made Samosas Or Any Kind Of Savory Hand Pie

My favorite kind of recipe? One that’s dead easy and makes me look like a genius! Claudia Roden’s Basic Pie Dough 1 from The Book Of Jewish Food, is one such recipe. I used it to make samosas for my niece’s birthday party five months ago—I made heaps so I could freeze ‘em. Isn’t the freezer magical—it may be my favorite major appliance. I finished the last two samosas this morning when I cleaned out the freezer. I threw them in the toaster oven frozen and they were still delish and the pastry crisped up beautifully. You can also use this dough to make empanadas, pasties or any kind of savory hand held pie.

This dough is easy to make and requires no resting so it’s FAST—another thing I love in a recipe! I love working with this dough because it’s oily and doesn’t stick to your hands and is well behaved when you roll it. When baked, the texture is a little flaky, yet it’s strong enough to hold a heavy filling.