Not much in the way of visual artwork for JSVB today, but a food note instead. Perhaps the flag that has now been raised for the end of civilization as we know it would be for the publication of the Coca-Cola Cookbook. Yet when I saw it on the shelf in the store, I knew I had to discover its secrets. (The same reasoning went into my purchase of "The Necronomicon Spellbook", but the Coca-Cola Cookbook is much more practical, with far fewer silly and useless incantations for summoning Candarian demons.)
From the smash-hit Japanese television show "Iron Chef", I learned how to make Coca-Cola pork (and you can see my recipe for it by clicking here.). I've picked up a couple of other tricks using Coke as an ingredient, but not the hundreds of recipe ideas that are in the Coca-Cola Cookbook.
The basics of cooking with Coke amount to using cola to replace wine in recipes that call for alcohol. Some of the recipes, such as Coq Au Coke (Stewed Chicken In Coke Sauce), do exactly that. Other recipes are much more creative, at least in their reading.
My first attempt is the Coca-Cola Stew, pictured above. Instead of a beef stock base fortified with wine, I used a cup of Coke. Cola drinks have much more sugar than wine, so the sweetness has to be offset with heat in this stew: I added chili that gave the broth a mild hot savoury flavour.
This stew was easy to prepare and had a pleasant "American" flavour to it. It's sweeter than I would normally make, but with balanced meat and vegetable flavours as well. I am looking forward to trying out other recipes from the Coca-Cola Cookbook, but I figure that not very many of them will be featured in a health-foods gazette any time soon. These are good recipes for a treat or to impress guests, but I doubt I could last on a steady diet of the stuff.
The basics of cooking with Coke amount to using cola to replace wine in recipes that call for alcohol. Some of the recipes, such as Coq Au Coke (Stewed Chicken In Coke Sauce), do exactly that. Other recipes are much more creative, at least in their reading.
My first attempt is the Coca-Cola Stew, pictured above. Instead of a beef stock base fortified with wine, I used a cup of Coke. Cola drinks have much more sugar than wine, so the sweetness has to be offset with heat in this stew: I added chili that gave the broth a mild hot savoury flavour.
This stew was easy to prepare and had a pleasant "American" flavour to it. It's sweeter than I would normally make, but with balanced meat and vegetable flavours as well. I am looking forward to trying out other recipes from the Coca-Cola Cookbook, but I figure that not very many of them will be featured in a health-foods gazette any time soon. These are good recipes for a treat or to impress guests, but I doubt I could last on a steady diet of the stuff.
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