Category: Recipes
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Crispy Eggplant in Pumpkin Coconut Curry
Indian food runs a close second to Thai food for me, in terms of complexity and deliciousness! Curries, which are remarkably simple between Thailand and India, are savory sauces with a complex blend of sweet, sour, spicy, and savory notes. My favorite curries are the ones with a coconut milk base, rather than a broth…
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Hoppin’ John (Black Eyed Peas for New Year’s)
Hoppin’ John (or Hoppy John) is a centuries-old tradition in the American South. On New Year’s Day…sometimes even at the stroke of midnight…families and friends grab steaming bowls of this hearty stew of black eyed peas, rice, and pork, which is supposed to give us good luck throughout the new year. The theory is that…
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Butter Chicken
***NOTE*** This recipe has been updated as of September 2019 to improve efficiency and flavor. After tweeting to Chef Suzy Singh, a fellow MasterChef contestant, that I was making Butter Chicken (a dish she made on the show) I received numerous tweets asking for my Butter Chicken recipe. While I’m entirely certain it’s not as…
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Transforming Thanksgiving Leftovers
So it’s the day after Thanksgiving and your fridge is exploding with a mangled turkey carcass, half a pan of stuffing, gobs of gelatinous cranberry sauce…and you’ve got no idea what to do, right? Don’t microwave another paper plate filled with stale leftovers. Transform the leftovers into something different and better! TURKEY MEAT Tamales Coming…
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Ben’s Legendary Green Chile Stew
A video tutorial is located at the end of this video! This is the most delicious of all stews. A regional specialty of New Mexico, the favored chiles for this stew come from farms near the town of Hatch. If they are not available in your area, you can buy them online fresh in season,…
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MasterChef Pork Butt Chili
This recipe is meant to be made in a pressure cooker, which reduces the cooking time to 1 hour (or so). True chili purists will want to make this in an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and home chefs without either one can feel free to make it in the biggest pot you have. Follow…
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Ben’s Life-Altering Cajun Turkey
The Cajun-spiced deep-fried turkey has become very popular since Emeril introduced it on Food Network several years ago. Most of us don’t have a fryer large enough for a turkey, nor do we want to spend $50 on a fryer and another $50 on peanut oil, so an alternative is to “brine” the turkey from…
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Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey (brined)
For this recipe, you will need three 10-pound bags of ice, 1 gallon of apple cider vinegar, 1-2 boxes of Morton’s Course Kosher Salt (see the recipe below for different types of salt), white sugar, canola oil, aluminum foil, a cooler, a roasting pan, a meat thermometer, and, of course, a turkey. Do not brine…
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Spicy Goat Cheese Crab Cakes
So I love crab cakes. They were just about the only seafood I could stomach, growing up in West Texas so far from the sea. Needless to say, the seafood we got out there wasn’t very fresh. Exceptional crab cakes can be made with canned crab meat, and now they have the new vacuum-sealed packages…
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Ben’s Recipe for a Happy Life
1 generous handful of laughter. Laugh every day. If you find yourself not laughing frequently, something is wrong. Offer to walk your neighbor’s puppy dog, and let him lick you all over your face and stick his cold nose in your ear. That’ll get you giggling! 1 reserved teaspoon of religion. Spirituality is important for…