Important News from Special Fork

By Sandy Hu
The latest from Inside Special Fork

For most of us, the single biggest decision we make every night is what to eat for dinner. Should we get takeout? Should we cook? And if we cook, what to cook!

That decision is usually made after 4 p.m.

When we founded Special Fork four years ago, we wanted to provide you with solutions: a database of curated recipes that would take no more than 30 minutes of time to prep (cooking may be extra). We created that database with recipes reviewed by Special Fork Food Editors, all experienced food professionals – chefs, magazine editors and recipe developers – who read through each recipe before approving it for our database.

We wanted you to have the recipes in your hand, when you needed it: whether at the supermarket, at work, or on your way home on the train or bus. So we built our recipe platform as a mobile website for iPhones, and Android, Windows and Blackberry phones. We added a conventional site so you could access the recipes from a computer.

So from the very start, Special Fork was all about the database of recipes – your mobile cookbook, with answers for what to cook now.

We added daily blogs to Special Fork, written by food experts. And while we love the different voices of our bloggers, starting this year, we are discontinuing the daily blogs because we can no longer devote our financial resources to blogging so frequently. Beginning today, Special Fork will post once a week, every Monday. We want to thank our bloggers, Lori Powell, Andrew and Marilyn Hunter, Ben Mims and Katie Barreira (who blogged for us for the first three years), for all the great food stories, excellent food insights and delicious recipes they contributed to our database. We hope to bring them on board again, soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you some of the tried-and-true Special Fork recipes from our database that I made during our winter hiatus.

• Lori Powell’s Rosemary Lemon Roast Chicken Thighs takes 10 minutes to prep. This dish can be made, start to finish, in under an hour. Aside from the chicken thighs, the recipe requires just a few ingredients you may already have on hand: lemon, fresh rosemary (I’m growing some in my yard) and green olives (I used kalamatas that were in my fridge). I also doubled the ingredients since I cooked five chicken thighs instead of three. (The maximum number of thighs you can cook depends on the size of your pan.) I’m showing you how my dish turned out by posting this photo – it was shot exactly as it came out of the oven.
• Herb Garlic Cheese Spread is a recipe from my friend, Holly Chute, Executive Chef of the Georgia Governor’s Mansion. This recipe is made in 5 minutes by mixing up softened butter and cream cheese, garlic and some dried herbs. I didn’t want to dirty an electric mixer so I just mixed by hand. This spread is a real crowd-pleaser; it tastes like Boursin. I made it for an impromptu neighborhood gathering during the holidays.
• The Sausage and Grapes recipe from Ben Mims is one of those dishes where the sum is even more yummy than the parts. This recipe calls for garlic, Italian sausages, grapes and chile flakes and takes 5 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to cook. The sweet and sour flavor from the grapes, melding with the spicy sausage, is an unbelievably scrumptious combination. It’s a good dish to make when you’re too busy to cook, as I was, over Christmas.

Throughout the weeks, I’ll continue to point out some of the most stellar dishes in our database that I think you’ll enjoy making.

Hope you had wonderful holidays. Dave and I wish you a happy, healthy and delicious New Year!

Special Fork is a recipe website for your smartphone and PC that solves the daily dinnertime dilemma: what to cook now! Our bloggers blog Monday through Friday to give you cooking inspiration. Check out our recipe database for quick ideas that take no more than 30 minutes of prep time. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Related posts:

1. Some Quick Meals to Survive the Holiday Frenzy
2. If it’s Friday, it’s Video Blog Day on Special Fork
3. A Toast to the Special Fork Baby
4. Dinner from Leftover Pasta and Two Chicken Breasts
5. Roasted Grapes – Appetizer or Dessert

Comments

[Janet]

Thank you for the update, Sandy.