Fire in the Kitchen: The forgotten nuts
Columnist Maryia Krivoruchko invited fourth-year international development studies student Anna Schoenbrunner into the kitchen to assist with making this week’s recipe: crab cakes.
By Maryia Krivoruchko
Jan. 20, 2011 1:02 p.m.
This week was a lucky one. I wasn’t alone, trying to turn recipes into food ““ I had a sous-chef.
Fourth-year international development studies student Anna Schoenbrunner heard my call for good cooks, and together, we made some delightful crab cakes. Read about how they turned out here.
Here is the backstory that didn’t make it to print: A few hours before my cooking date, I ran to Trader Joe’s to buy the ingredients. I am notorious for forgetting to buy a single, important ingredient, but all appeared to go smoothly. I decided to use the remainder of a huge canister of almonds in my pantry to substitute for the macadamia nuts (the recipe said that this was OK). I got back to my apartment and saw that all of the almonds were gone. I had been out for a while, actually.
Fifteen minutes before Schoenbrunner’s arrival, I frantically rushed back to Trader Joe’s, bought some ground almond meal and made it back just in time. My sous-chef, however, brought a bag of macadamias after getting word of my last-minute trip for the forgotten nuts. You see, almonds aren’t even ideal breading the cakes, even if the recipe claimed that it was OK to substitute.
I made the trip for nothing.
We did use the almond meal instead of the white bread crumbs for the inside, though, so it all worked out. There’s never a dull moment in my kitchen, so if you’re a foodie, e-mail me, come over and cook with me for a future column.
E-mail me at [email protected].
