The Hungry Engineer

This past weekend at the farmers market, I had the good fortune to come across a man selling purple hull peas. Their hulls ranged from a deep dark purple to a sort of striated green and purple combination. Fascinating as they were, I purchased some. When I asked him how he prepared them, he began explaining to me how to shell them. A fellow shopper calmly interrupted him and explained that no, in fact you cooked them hulls and all. They were still arguing when I walked away, bounty in hand.

I really don’t much care to write negative reviews. Generally speaking, if I like something, I write about it, and if I don’t, I won’t bother. But in the interest of honesty and fairness with my cookbook trials, I have to report on the recipes I try, even if they didn’t turn out so well. With that glowing introduction, I bring you Fall Potato Soup with Cauliflower, the most recent recipe test from The Figs Table, by Todd English.

I generally am not a huge fan of posts full of links, however, this is too good not to share with all of you. Google hosts a series of informal talks called Authors@Google. A wide-ranging variety of authors discuss their recently published works to some very lucky Google employees. Sean (my husband) showed me recently that Anthony Bourdain had spoken there about a year ago, and after watching it this weekend, I dug around on Youtube to see who else had come to speak. The range was incredible - Salman Rushdie, Cory Doctorow, both presidential candidates … and several chefs and other food-centric authors. While my geek-meter was pegging at some of the incredible authors presenting (did I mention Cory Doctorow??), you’ll be happy to know that the following list is (fairly) strictly food-focused.

Last week was kind of crazy. Over the space of four days, The Hungry Engineer site has been given awards three times by fellow bloggers. I’ve been since trying to come up to speed on blog reward etiquette, and I’m guessing part of that is not sitting on those awards for as long as I have. (Humble apologies, Internet!) The first one, The Excellent Blog award, was turned around pretty quickly. At long last, here are the other two.

I have a confession to make – and I’m worried that I will offend the entire food blogging community by doing so. I’ve never really paid much attention to Julia Child. The few times I had seen her on television, she struck me as overly fussy and maybe even an tiny bit overbearing. On a whim (and possibly because I read the story about the 6'2" warbling chef being a spy), as an effort to balance out all the Bourdain I like to fill my head with, I decided to read her latest book, My Life in France.

The movie choice for the October edition of the movie food project was actually sort of an accident. My husband and I just happened to be flipping stations and caught it on cable a few weeks ago. October’s movie is Waitress, and from a culinary point of view, Waitress is all about pies.

I know it’s wrong of me, but I have to admit that sometimes I envy those fortunate folks who grew up in the kitchen–whose mothers or fathers or grandparents taught them to cook or whose great-aunt from the old country couldn’t speak a word of English but showed them immeasurable joys with their traditional cooking. I didn’t even really start to learn to cook till I was midway through college, and even then I learned most everything from cookbooks. There was one thing that Grandma showed me though.

Jo over at the Adventures of Kitchen Girl gave me an award yesterday - The Excellent Blog Award. I’m generally pretty tickled that anyone even reads my blog - the fact that someone likes it enough to give me an award has me beside myself. To do it justice and continue the chain of good karma, here are the etiquette / protocol rules I’m guessing at and the fine bloggers to whom I’m forwarding the award.

A lot of us think of pumpkins as what you purchase once a year to carve up for Jack-o-lantern making. Some of us also consider the cans of puree for pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. But with a bit of forethought and effort, that Jack-o-lantern could be repurposed into nutritious and delicious foodstuffs.

In my world, gnocchi are luscious little dumplings of potato, egg, and flour that get boiled and mixed with any number of sauces and accompaniments. I have been re-educated. Apparently, gnocchi pop up in a variety of incarnations dependent on the region of Italy you happen to be in. Last night for dinner we had Gnocchi a la Romana, the second recipe tested from the Todd English cookbook, The Figs Table: More Than 100 Recipes for Pizzas, Pastas, Salads, and Desserts .