Adventures in Mika's Kitchen
Glühwein is a traditional beverage (served hot) during the Christmas holidays in Austria and Germany. It is typically made with red wine, spices, and sugar… and heated gently to avoid cooking out the alcohol. This is my father’s recipe for Glühwein. He’s never written it down, but I’ve been watching him make it every Christmas [...]
There’s a restaurant nearby that we go to sometimes that has a wonderful margarita called the “spicy tangerine”. It has a lovely sweetness, with a mild kick of spice and heat. This is my homemade version of that drink – use fresh limes & tangerines to make the juice for the best flavor! Enjoy! [...]
With Thanksgiving coming up, I thought I’d share one of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes. I know, fried rice seems like a weird thing to serve with Thanksgiving… but it’s a family tradition for us! It all started one year… after my dad spent all day making the Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings, my teenaged brother [...]
So I guess it’s now autumn and we have to say goodbye to summer (although you wouldn’t know it from today’s 91 degree weather)! With autumn comes some really great things… Pumpkin spice lattes, warm apple pies, spiced cider, Halloween candy… but I would say the fall flavors that I most look forward to are [...]
What is “La Paloma“? This is a Mexican cocktail – commonly prepared by mixing tequila with grapefruit flavored soda. In other versions, the grapefruit soda can be replaced with fresh grapefruit juice, fresh lime juice, and topped with sparkling soda water. According to many sources, the first published recipe for La Paloma was in a [...]
Lately, I’ve been making a bunch of chocolate chip cookie variations. The latest, are my triple chocolate chip cookies. It’s “triple chocolate” because it has dark cocoa powder, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and milk chocolate chips. If you don’t have (or want to buy) two different kinds of chocolate chips, you can just use all one [...]
Here’s one of my basic stand-by side dishes: Asian style coleslaw with a sweet sesame dressing (no mayo!). It’s pretty easy to prepare, and works well as a quick salad or side to accompany your meal! For best results, use Savoy cabbage (it’s the round head of cabbage with wrinkly looking leaves). If you can’t [...]
Last month, I read a Chicago Tribune article that potentially revealed the KFC secret recipe of “11 herbs and spices”. A reporter sat down for an interview with the nephew of KFC’s “the Colonel”, and was shown a handwritten paper scrap in a family album that was most likely (by the nephew’s admission) the original [...]
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