Wow — I Got My Own Cooking Show!

Food has always been my passion.  I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to go to restaurants and I love to travel to new places and explore their cuisine.

 A few years ago, at a bit of a professional crossroads in my life, I decided to start my own cooking show on a local cable access station.  Although I do have a background in writing, news reporting and media, I was very much a novice when it came to lights, sound, camera work and editing.  After several months of television production education, we were ready to start “shooting”.  We have now shot over 50 episodes, won a couple of cable TV Awards and are now seen in more than a dozen different communities in the Greater Boston area.  Even though we have had many highs and lows with the technical side to producing the show, our original concept about what we wanted to do on television, regarding our content, has remained the same.

 “Neighborhood Cooking with Candy Gold” was born out of the idea that everyone is the star of their own kitchen and everyone has a food story to tell.  God knows, I love all the famous television and restaurant chefs, but I have many friends, family and neighbors who also have fabulous recipes and fabulous food stories to tell.  These are the people I profile and interview on my show.

 As a reporter, I have always loved to ask questions of other people.  That is what I focus on, when I tape my show.  I always have a guest on the show and we always cook their recipes.  The guests will create their favorite recipes or the recipes that are most meaningful to them.  Guests talk about how they learned to cook or why a certain dish is important to them or their family.

 The show has garnered a nice following, and it’s wonderful that so many local folks actually seek me out and want to come on the show.  BUT—I do get one main questioned asked of me, all the time.  Why don’t I cook my own recipes on the show?  Well, every now and again, I have done a recipe of my own on the show, but for the most part, I try to stay true to my concept that Neighborhood Cooking should indeed be a forum for my neighbors.  I have always thought that it would be nice to have a different forum, other than my TV show, to share my recipes.  Thanks to BA50, I now have that platform!

As far as I’m concerned, Summer time is Salad time.  Not that you can’t eat salads all year, but let’s face it, on a balmy summer night, boiling hot soup really doesn’t do the trick.  Although salads can certainly be a side dish, I really enjoy eating a hearty salad, as a meal. Two  recipes that I have been making for decades are my homemade Caesar Salad and my Tuna Pasta Salad.  These are the recipes that my friends still call and ask for the recipe every summer or invite me to parties and ask me to make these and bring them along.  I have tweaked both recipes over the years, trying to make them less caloric or adding other ingredients to the original recipe.  Please feel free to tweak away, but here are the original recipes, as I created them, some 30 years ago.

CAESAR SALAD (prepare salad in wooden bowl, if you have one)

4 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

1 tube of anchovy paste

½ cup of mayonnaise

1 teaspoon of dry mustard

2 dashes of Worcestershire sauce

1/3 cup – red wine vinegar

1/3 cup – vegetable or canola oil

1/3 cup – olive oil

½ lemon – squeezed

2 heads of romaine lettuce – washed and chopped

1 cup – freshly grated Parmesan  (fresh grated makes all the difference)

When I make this salad, I use a whisk. I add the first 2 ingredients to the bowl, and mix them.  Then I add the next ingredient and whisk that in.  Go thru the list, whisking in each ingredient before moving on to the next one. There is something about the way the flavors incorporate when you add them one at a time.

Feel free to top this salad with croutons, chicken, shrimp etc.

TUNA PASTA SALAD

½ pound of pasta – cooked  (use a fun shaped pasta, if you can)

2 cans of white tuna, packed in water

I cup of fresh peas – cook until they are just soft…don’t over cook

(or you can use canned small peas, like Le Sueur Peas-drained)

1 cup of celery – chopped

½ cup sweet, white onion – finely chopped

2 tablespoons for fresh chopped dill

1 cup of mayonnaise

1/3 cup of white vinegar

Mix pasta, tuna, peas, celery and onion

Mix mayo and vinegar together.  Then add dill to this mixture.

Pour mayo mixture over pasta and mix well.

ENJOY!!!!