One of the few “personalities” still worth watching on Food Network is, in my opinion, Tyler Florence. His recipes tend to be good and are something one realistically can put together in less than 30 minutes on a weekday. It is also entertaining to watch his weigh fluctuate with each series, but that’s neither here nor there.
A few weeks ago we saw him put together a tomatillo salsa that looked very refreshing and summer-y. And seeing that we’re tired of the cold, it made sense to put something like it together as a reminder of warmer weather. I say “something like it” as I pretty much just put it together by memory after watching the show. It goes a little something like this:
Tyler Florence Tomatillo Salsa Remixed
5 tomatillos
1 small onion
1 jalapeno (more if you want, but this isn’t really meant to be spicy)
10 cloves of garlic (originally a lot less, but who doesn’t like garlic?!)
A couple of handfuls of cilantro
Salt
Boil water.
Chop the onion into large chunks and remove seeds and stems from jalapeno. Drop them with the tomatillo into the boiling water.
When the tomatillos are getting soft, pull all the vegetables out and run them under cold water. Remove the pot from the burner.
Drop the vegetables alongside the cilantro and garlic into a blender. Ladle in a bit of water from the pot, and salt to taste.
Blend to desired consistency.
Like I mentioned, this is a mild salsa, yet very refreshing and versatile.
Luna really doesn’t quite get the respect it used to, does it? Ten years ago it was the place to dine in Spokane, but with places like Mizuna and Moxie gathering popularity, and new players like Latah Bistro and Sante hitting the market, Luna kinda just has gotten forgotten about. These days it almost has the word of being a bit of a blue hair-spot.
This is too bad, because Luna still delivers good food.
Having had a couple of brunches there semi-recently, there is no reason to consider this a “has been.” Sure, there are more creative and daring (and cheap) choices out there, but the quality is consistently high. Their eggs benedict? Excellent. Huevos rancheros? Perfect. Sure, these have probably been on the menu for the last ten years, but you know what… You need spots that can dish the classics up well. Not to deter anybody from taking any chances out there, of course, but I will say there are room for everybody in this town.
A quick sampling of their dinner menu recently—OK so it was boxed leftovers, but whatever, I’m not too proud for the doggy bag—was also a pleasant experience. In fact, the dug leg confit was great in all its succulent glory. Mixed with a juicy bit of lamb the overall quality was high enough that I will gladly eat other people’s leftovers from Luna.
I’m just saying. I think Luna still deserves some love, even though it’s aging a bit. But then again, who isn’t?
(Start playing this video while reading for full effect of the post.)
Oh yes, it is still going down: three teams—Team SFB, Team Blue Spark and Team DTE (we don’t really count them, even though they now also have a fourth player)—are battling it out through five rounds of heavy spicy food challenges. Here is the original post, and keep in mind everything is still in the planning phases.
Some more background
The heart of our competition was best summed up by Team Blue Spark Bradley: This is a contest where we’ll eat “notorious dishes served in Spokane resaurants that are actually on the menu.” Sure, there will probably be some customization in the spirit of the contest, but anything we’ll be eating will in some shape or form exist in local restaurants. Hence why we call this Spiceavore—we nabbed the name from “locavore.”
And of course you—yes you—know something spicier than what we’ve picked. Thing is we have to pick something, and reactions to spiciness are incredibly subjective, Scoville scale aside. Our aim is to grab high quality food from local eateries.
Not that we aren’t open to suggestions, which brings us to…
The elusive Round 5
This will be a relay round, though we haven’t quite decided how it will go down. Slick Rock has, however, kindly offered up some of their ghost pepper salsa (if they can stock it—I’m guessing ghost peppers aren’t readily available from our local grocery stores) and we look forward to trying that.
The ref
We have learned that Chris Dreyer is interested in judging the contest. That’s great, although I’m a bit suspect the suggestion came from James Paul who is well known for bribery in contests.
For some reason I can’t make no bake cookies with organic ingredients. Does anyone know why? We made the same recipe for these cookies twice. Once with the organic ingredients I had on hand and the second time with the non-organic ingredients my friend had. Both batches of cookies were made in the same kitchen, with the same humidity level, same pots and pans; only a few of the ingredients were different. The organic cookies did not set up and were really gooey. The non-organic cookies were perfect.
