April 1, 2012
Side Noms, Small Noms bread, bread recipe, easy bread, easy to bake focaccia, focaccia, focaccia recipe, fresh baked bread, recipe 1 Comment
While wasting time on Facebook I came upon an amazing image of freshly baked focaccia from my friend Tru. She was generous enough to share her recipe with us and we replicated with some minor changes. Best if eaten the same day with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Tastes amazing with Global Garden’s Meyer Lemon Olive Oil and Peach Cinnamon Balsamic Vinegar that we picked up during our olive oil tasting.
Fresh Baked Focaccia - 1.5 hour prep, 40 min bake.
December 2, 2011
Side Noms com do, com do ca chua, french, maggi, recipe, rice, side dish, vietnamese, vietnamese red rice, vietnamese tomato rice 6 Comments
One of our favorite sides in French-Vietnamese cuisine is com do — a beautifully bright red stir-fried tomato rice often served with rotisserie or roasted meats. It’s quick and easy to make, and it’s a great way to use up leftover white rice!
NomCat tip for the ingredients:
1) The Rice: You definitely need the long grain Vietnamese jasmine rice to get the proper texture. The Japanese botan rice (and its equivalents) will be too sticky and sweet. Whichever rice you would use to make fried rice will be perfect. Either cook it in a rice cooker with a bit less water than you would normally use, or use leftover rice from a day or two before so that it will be dry enough to not clump when sitrfrying.
2) The Seasoning: Maggi is maggi-cal! It’s darker in color than soy sauce and has a deeper flavor than just plain saltiness. It’s a critical flavoring agent for making and eating com do. You should be able to find it in any Asian grocery store and even in the “Asian” goods section of chain grocery stores as well. If given the option, spring for the higher priced (and higher quality) variety imported from Germany. It’s worth the extra few dollars. 
For additional info, hop over to our follow-up post!
We mentioned com do in our post about herb roasted rack of lamb.
Maybe they should rename it to com cam (orange rice). By any name, it's a delicious side dish!
November 11, 2011
Main Noms, Side Noms b-nut, butternut squash, chicken, greatist, hearty, homemade, recipe, roasted seeds, soup, winter squash Leave a comment
What’s up, buttercups? Hope you had a happy 11-11-11 and made an epic wish at 11:11!
Thanks to dear friend (and very loyal NomNomCat reader!) Calvin, I’ve been spending much of my online time browsing Greatist, a health and fitness blog. My favorites are the recipes and the articles that feature news and facts about food and our relationship with food. They also have awesome infographics. I’m a sucker for pretty and informative infographics.
In the spirit of autumn, they recently posted a recipe for a roasted chicken and butternut squash soup that looked so good I just had to pick up a b-nut myself and whip some up. The recipe also gave me a reason to pick up some cumin and coriander to add to our growing spice rack!
We made a few small changes to the Greatist recipe. Here’s our variation!
LOVE the bright orange color of a peeled butternut squash!
Alice
Martin
