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Tag: Dr. Kitchenstein

Dr. Kitchenstein Presents: All-Hallow’s Giving 2012 – “Oy Vey, Thanksgiving as Jewish Food”

As explained in a previous post, in 2002 I created a holiday, All-Hallows’ Giving. You can read all about it here, and a recap of the 2010 iteration here (2011 marked the 10th Anniversary of AHG and was marked by a “blind pot luck”, so it was less a “Dr. Kitchenstein” type event, though I suppose it might be worth posting something about the “Oreo Soup” I prepared for that one.

But this year’s evening was framed on the premise of: how might one interpret a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner through traditional Jewish foods. And, well, here are the results:

Dr. Kitchenstein Presents: AHG 2010 Wrap-Up

This past weekend was All-Hallows’ Giving, my made up holiday commemorated by a gathering of friends and a feast of “frightening” foods. For a longer explanation of the history and origins, click here to read all about it.

This year at AHG Central the menu featured a monstrous mash-up of traditional Thanksgiving dinner and Chinese food, which included:

Dr. Kitchenstein Presents: Cookie Salad

Some of you have read or heard me talk about All-Hallow’s Giving (and if you haven’t, you can here). But what you might not know is that’s not my only made-up holiday/event/excuse to get creative in the kitchen. For a while I’d host thematic New Years Eve gatherings, for example. And for the past four years now, I’ve had folks over to play a home version of The Match Game. In that instance I once again take to the kitchen wherein I put together variations on Macaroni & Cheese and present a bevvy of cookies.

Which brings us to this: Cookie Salad:

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(extreme close-up, detail view)

What is it? How’s it made? And most important, how’s it taste?

Dr. Kitchenstein Presents: Brownie-Cookie Pie & Ring Ding Bread Pudding

Sometimes all it takes is a simple question –  “you wanna bring one of your famous desserts?” – to get the brain parts firing (when it comes to food, it doesn’t take much).

I have been known, among those who know, to get experimental in the kitchen…often taking existing foods and re-presenting them in new forms (i.e. Spinach Pie as a Mac ‘n Cheese) or combining two foods that might not otherwise be combined (i.e. Bacon, Lettuce & Mango Sandwich). Some of these experiments are wonderful successes or surprises and others glorious failures (for the record, both of the above: successes). So recently, when asked to bring desserts to a cookout, I got creative.

A handful of ideas popped into my noggin and I settled on two, determining to save the rest for another day. So now I present “the making of” Brownie-Cookie Pie and Ring Ding Bread Pudding.

Brownie-Cookie Pie came first. The concept of baking a brownie in a pie crust isn’t the most novel idea, as a matter of fact, as much as the idea occurred to me one day, I’ve seen it out in the world, so I wasn’t the only one. As a result, I tried to think of a way to re-think it. I was considering a graham cracker or Oreo cookie crust (and with the graham cracker, maybe a marshmallow icing/frosting, essentially making a s’mores pie), but worried the baking time for the brownie filling could lead to a dry or even burnt crust. Talking it out with someone, they misunderstood, thinking I meant a pie crust made out of cookie dough…an actual cookie crust…an idea I’d (surprisingly) not even considered! And with that I was off to the races.

The prep was pretty simple, really. It started with the forming of the crust:

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