Monthly Archives October 2021

Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond joins TODAY to share some of her favorite easy and delicious recipes from her new cookbook “Pioneer Woman Cooking – Super Easy!” : 120 shortened recipes for dinners, desserts and more ”. She shows us how to make Buffalo Chicken Totchos, Secret Ingredient Chocolate Cake, Plate-Roasted Vegetable Salad, and Pesto Gnocchi.

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In case you haven’t heard it, totchos are one thing. Basically you cook frozen toddlers and then use them to make any variety of “nachos” you fancy. This version of Buffalo Chicken is spicy, messy, and wonderful! I recommend having a large stack of towels nearby. (And maybe don’t eat them on a first date?)

Ed Anderson

As a middle aged woman of the world, it’s no secret that you can make boxed cake mix to create dessert heaven. This trend took hold in the 90s and allowed many people to forgo the measure and mess of a cake from scratch. But just in case your generation has kept this eternal truth about cake mix from you all your life, I’m here to lift the veil. This is an incredibly easy way to step into the cake-mixing era in your life – a rich, super-chocolatey cake that’s so easy to bake, it could become your go-to birthday cake request. .

Ed Anderson

Wrapped gnocchi are one of my favorite ingredients during this season when things are easier to live with. Does it make me look old? Good, because I wanted to! All references to the old lady’s self-mockery aside, this meatless wonder is both a snap and a revelation: chewy and tender gnocchi cushions roasted on a baking sheet with the best variety of vegetables and garnished with parmesan and basil. Give me that, a clear to-do list, a glass of wine… and I’m fine.

Ed Anderson

This salad on a plate is hard to describe, but I’ll give it a try: I roast squash and cauliflower (which is my favorite veg combo) with shallots and chickpeas, then use the roasted veggies as base to create a viewer of a salad. It’s a spectacle, in fact. The creamy tahini dressing makes it truly unique, but this salad is so pretty and delicious you could top it ranch and it would still be a star!

If you like these homemade recipes, you should also try these:

Ree drummond

Ree drummond

As with any traditional business, it’s a challenge to keep things as they are, while driving innovation forward. In the case of Lana Cakes, the problem lies in maintaining the same flavor profile – the taste that customers have grown up with – despite changes in technology and the supply chain.

For Kwan, having a taste heritage is important, but he believes things shouldn’t stay the status quo. For example, while the classic chocolate fudge cake has remained largely unchanged, customer demands for an even more chocolatey version have persuaded it to come up with a Fudge Lovers Only (FLO) variety, two-thirds of the weight of the cake consist of pure fudge. He affectionately calls it “a chocolate cake on steroids”.

Lana Cakes is charming and anachronistic: the business still operates from the same single location, and it had no internet footprint until the end of 2018. Compare that with the eruption of home bakery businesses that have sprung up since the start of the pandemic, many of them instantly taking to Instagram to attract customers.

“We look at Instagram, and some of these [social media] tools, like ways to promote what we have rather than sell. We are still a very traditional pastry shop. And we think word of mouth still works, ”Kwan said.

What about franchise plans, then?

“I think given the challenges of the pandemic, this is not an area I am focusing on. I think in the longer term I would like to consider taking Lana Cakes internationally. But for now, I’m trying to make sure that our business in Singapore is strong and as good as it is.

“We have built the business on quality and consistency. It is never about mass production; it’s never about winning as much as you can. I see it more as a marathon, where we want to maintain that legacy, we want to go the distance. It’s not a sprint, where you just grow. If we are only focused on expansion, can we really maintain the quality and consistency that customers expect from us? He asked rhetorically.

There is no doubt that running a business that has been around for 57 years comes with its fair share of responsibility. “At any time, a customer can walk into the store and say they’ve been eating this cake for 30 or 40 years. I feel like I almost have to try harder. When I returned, I knew that it was not easy to take over this business.

I have spent summers in South Carolina since I was a child. It was there, in a sandwich shop by the beach, that I first heard the story of the birth of Duke’s Mayo. It was an invention of war, in fact, created by a woman named Eugenia Duke and her daughter, Martha. In 1917, the pair began selling sandwiches coated with homemade mayonnaise in the military canteens run by the YMCA in Greenville and nearby Camp Sevier.

The sandwiches, which included high-mayo varieties like chicken salad, egg salad, and chili cheese, sold for 10 cents apiece. They quickly developed a cult among the infantry who were about to be sent to fight in WWI.

Soon Duke’s market area began to expand, and with most of the local men serving overseas, his sales force was mostly female. Over time, Duke went from a self-proclaimed housewife who married at age 17 to the founder of a burgeoning sandwich business that reached local factories and drugstores. According to a story by Duke, “In the spring of 1919, she [sold] over 10,000 sandwiches in one day. ”

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A decade later, Duke “sold his mayonnaise recipe to CF Sauer, who established a Duke mayonnaise factory in the upstate. Eugenia also sells the recipes for her spreads to her accountant, Alan Hart, who establishes a wholesale market for the sandwiches.

The rest, as they say, is history.

For a very long time, Duke’s has remained a popular and recognized condiment in the region. I couldn’t reliably get it in Chicago, where I lived for over a decade, although once I moved to Kentucky it was everywhere. Once, while working for a local magazine, I started a story in which I was writing content for a dozen chef’s refrigerators. At least 10 of them had a pot of Duke’s tucked away among the ingredients, its distinctive yellow cap almost signaling a halo of culinary approval.

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In 2013, Emily Wallace wrote an article for the Washington Post detailing the fanaticism with which some people view the spread. Some wrote fan letters and feverish requests to the factory, which is now located in Richmond, Virginia.

“There was the man on his deathbed in the hospital who asked for a tomato sandwich made with Duke’s,” Wallace wrote. “There was the mother of the bride who, after the business switched from glass to plastic containers around 2005, demanded four glass jars with labels intact to use as centerpieces at her daughter’s wedding. . “

And there was the elderly woman from North Carolina.

“She wrote in hopes of only getting three glass jars, saying she would like to be cremated and have her ashes placed in the containers for her three daughters,” Wallace added.

The company kindly obliged.

But beyond regional pride, what drew such fandom to Duke’s? The answer is simple: the flavor.

Unlike many commercial mayos, Duke’s does not contain sugar, although it does contain both apple cider vinegar and apple cider vinegar. This translates into a distinct flavor, or “twang,” as the company’s promotional materials tout.

“’Twang’ is our way of expressing that hard-to-describe, Southern-inspired ‘something special’ that sums up what Duke’s Mayonnaise brings to the table,” said Stan Richards, Creative Director / Principal of The Richards Group. , which led to a new corporate branding in 2020.

He continued, “It’s a southern thing, an essence and a feeling – all wrapped up and captured in one powerful word.”

The mayonnaise also has a smoky touch, which comes from adding a simple touch of paprika. Much like Japanese mayonnaise brands, including chef’s favorite Kewpie, Duke’s also has a higher percentage of egg yolk over white than most American mayonnaise brands, giving it a richer texture. and richer.

All of this combined makes it the perfect base for a mayonnaise-laden potato salad. In my mind, it’s also the only spread suitable for that tomato sandwich in midsummer. For what it’s worth, the company leans heavily on the tomato season; this year she launched both a seasonally inspired beer with Champion Brewing Company and hosted a weeklong event in Richmond called ‘Hot Tomato Summer’.

Duke’s is also my secret ingredient in what may be a totally unexpected dish: chocolate cake.

I’m not sure which of my grandmothers advised me to use mayonnaise for a softer chocolate cake, but I swear I can tell the difference (but don’t worry, you can’t taste the “mayonnaise”). Come to think of it, that’s not a weird suggestion – most boxed cake mixes require oil and eggs, which are the main ingredients in any mayonnaise worth its salt.

It doesn’t take much. For a typical canned chocolate cake mix, add 1/2 cup Duke’s with the recommended number of eggs and oil. The result is decadent, spongy with just a hint of added flavor. As Duke aficionados would say, there is accent.

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