Rye Cooks

Impressed? why yes!

We are so on-target now!  The fourth show is about to air this Friday, the one about fresh spring foods and getting into shape.  And it is still spring!!  

It features lots of local talent so if you live in Rye and want to see it on the big screen, tune in to channel 76 (or 33) on Fridays and Saturdays at 9am, 12am, 3pm and 6pm.  

On top of that, we are already two segments into our next show.  The theme here is "thrifty"; we visited the Rye Presbyterian Church Thrift shop today, which donates thousands of dollars to charities in lower Westchester.   

We are featuring a local favorite, homemade doughnuts from Jerry's Post Road Market, baked into individual ramekins of Banana Foster.  These goodies were topped with a mixture of Goya mango nectar and dulce de leche in an unbelievable flavor combination, all orchestrated by Stephanie Hammer, caterer and personal chef of Rye.  It was a really fun shoot and we are so excited to be stepping up to this faster pace.  

There is serious thought to a fishing segment.  What could be thriftier than catching your own dinner?  Stay tuned, friends!

 

Lemon Meringue Pie

 

My oven was billowing smoke and everything went wrong with my pie this morning. Well, actually only my pie crust, but I spent much of yesterday afternoon on it.  

I have made pie crust before, but the problem is that I don't have one go-to recipe.  I search my cookbooks and the internet to find "the one I've used before" and hours go by.

I relied on my favorite blog and then I somehow did it all wrong.  The advice was to keep some of the butter in visible pieces, that butter was going to be my flaky friend.   Additionally, the dough should chill for at least an hour. That  made it a two day process because I'm just no good after Modern Family anyway. 

So, today, my friend, Clumpy Butter, made herself comfortable and relaxed all over the sides of the pie plate and dripped onto the oven floor.  See billowing smoke above.

I spent a ton of time reading all the comments on Epicurious as to the actual filling and meringue topping.  148 opinions, to which, which after the crust fiasco, I felt I should pay some mind.  Thankfully, the filling and the meringue went just fine, as written.  

Of course, the problem with pie is that it can't be tasted in advance.  It does look pretty good, though.  Just hoping for the best.  And, oh yeah, thank you Pillsbury, thank you for your pie crust.

Crunch Time

Yeesss!  We finally finished the third show and we are on air on the public access channel in Rye.  But you can only see us on the big screen if you live in town, so use the link below if you want to take a peek.

 http://ryeny.swagit.com/play/03162011-157/0/  

The theme was around getting ready for a big night out, the Rye TV awards ceremony was held that night.  We had a bit of primping to do, and of course, dinner still had to get on the table.   

I promised to post the recipes we used on the episode so here they are:

Quick and Easy Waffles...........by Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything

Canola oil for brushing on waffle iron (I use Pam)

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 cup milk

2 eggs

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted and cooled

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional, but I put it in)

Brush the waffle iron with oil, or use Pam and preheat it. Combine the dry ingredients.  Mix together the milk and eggs. Stir in the butter and the vanilla.  Stir the wet ingredients into the dry.

Spread a ladleful or so of batter onto the waffle iron and bake until the waffle is done, usually 3-5 minutes.  Serve immediately or keep warm for a few minutes in a low oven.

 

Then we made pot pie, as it was easy to make early in the day, for re-heating later. This recipe came from the back of the box of Pillsbury pie crust.  I will post that next time, because even I can see this is long enough for now.  More importantly, click on the link and tell us what you think!

 

 

Waffling

With renewed energy, we have been working hard to bring you the third episode of Rye Cooks, on Rye's public access channel (that's either 76 on cable or 33 if you have Verizon). You'll also be able to watch on your computer, I'll provide the link and hopefully you will be able to just click on that tv icon on the right hand corner.

When we first realized that we have been at this for a year, we were a bit disconcerted.  Did we think we would have had 12 shows in 12 months? We had so very many ideas and tons of forward momentum.  It would seem that (almost) 3 shows does not really meet our goals.  But there was so much more to this than we could have imagined.

Our skill set has grown exponentially in the past year.  Suzy learned all kinds of technical applications, and I have learned that being engaging is more important than getting all your ingredients right the first time.

Luckily, being human and imperfect is what is I am good at. There are so many other blogs and tv shows that will tell you how to get everything just right. On professional television, they do lots of takes, they have staff to clean up spills, and they have big teleprompters that the hosts read from.  I know, because I went to see both Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart during the past year.  

They also have people who run out with little brushes to fix skin imperfections that have cropped up during the breaks(Martha), and when something doesn't work, they do it again, keeping the studio audience clapping just like we never saw the bit just a minute ago (that's more Rachael). Being part of those studio audiences would have been fun for me anyway, but checking out how they get it done it made it much more interesting.

We have interviewed lots of people around Rye, even if we haven't used any of that information on the show, it has been valuable.  We've talked with the man in charge of the food service in all the Rye City Schools. We spent time with the woman in charge of education at the Rye Historical society and had a fascinating conversation about cooking over an open hearth. For a crowd. We've met fabulous people at RyeTV and the Rye Middle school, took part in an awards ceremony and earned our very own Margie, and yes, there were other entries.

The title of this post does not refer to any lack of dedication to giving you an entertaining look at food and people of Rye, it refers to the fact that we made waffles a while back for a cooking segment to be used in our upcoming show, the audio was poor, so we did it all over again. This time it worked out really well and hopefully you will see it soon on Episode 3!

 

 

Just So Thrilled to Be Here!

Last night was the highlight of our adventure into broadcasting: Suzy and I won a Margie Award at the RyeTV's annual awards ceremony!   Our category was "Best New Show".

It was a terrific night, the ceremony was held in the Rye Free Reading Room (never free to me, as I always owe gigantic fees). A red carpet was rented, gold stars lined the floor, food was donated as well as made by participants, gold and black balloons decorated the tables.

Suzy and I went black tie and extra heavy on the hair and make up, just to glam it up. I had my make up done professionally at Benefit, a make up emporium in town.  Free, that one was free for the asking!  Since it was for a community event, and I promised to scatter their business cards around. Unfortunately I later found the cards still in my handbag...but thank you, thank you!! 

We had our new favorite intern shooting the event for us. Of course RyeTV was also filming, but we wanted material for our show.  

See the link below for an article about the awards. 

http://rye.patch.com/articles/margie-awards-honor-best-in-local-television

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Tomorrow we have a big shoot.  I am going to do a "healthy kids" cooking demo for Lee Sandford's Boot Camp by the Beach. She runs a "fun but hard" workout outdoors down at Rye Town Park.  A devoted following attends all through the year, in the dead of winter and the heat of summer.  

I am betting these women already know a thing or two about healthy eating, as I just can't see doing all that working out and following up with a nice big bowl of Ben & Jerry's. Sometimes even the kids of food conscious parents won't eat anything but chicken nuggets and french fries, so I am doing homemade chicken strips using a mix of panko and Italian breadcrumbs. Panko is awesome for its crunch, but it needs a bit of seasoning from 4C or Progresso.

Then, oven baked sweet potato fries.  I learned a little trick with potato starch that will keep the sweet potato fries crisp, like regular french fries.  

I have two soups that are emergency meals for moms.  When the day is going to be filled with obligations, meetings, pick ups and drop offs, it is nice to know that there is something delicious and healthy at the ready. Otherwise, at least for me, that pint of ice cream is starting to look like lunch.

One soup is a black bean and choirzo, the other white bean and artichoke. Both are really easy, but neither looks pretty on film so we may have to shoot them from a respectable distance.

I wanted a little something for dessert and decided to make this candy that mimics Reese's Pieces.  All you have to do is melt some chocolate, pour into cupcake holders, freeze for 10 minutes, make a little mix of peanut butter, butter and honey, fill a plastic bag, snip the end to pipe this concoction into the chocolate cups, freeze for 10 minutes, follow up with more melted chocolate to cover the now-frozen peanut buttery mixture.  

I totally could have banged out a dozen of Rachel Ray's caramel apple muffins, and handed out some of the actual Reese's Pieces clogging up my basement refrigerator, waiting for Halloween.  

You know how sometimes you realize, way too late, that you are putting too much effort into the WRONG thing?