Content about Appetizer
May 11, 2011
Or, how to smoke indoors with a wok
I love what smoke does to foods—preserving, often cooking them, and adding layers of flavor. Next to cooking over wood fire, there's nothing more basic and caveman. There's just one major problem with this particular hobby (true of many caveman-esque cooking experiments): it's impossible to pull off without outdoor space and a backyard. This isn't always a luxury we're afforded living in a city.
I have tried...
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A fool-proof method discovered.
If you don’t want to go to all the bother of soaking and cooking them, canned chickpeas work extraordinarily well
- James Beard, Beard on Food
I wanted to go to all the bother of cooking dried chickpeas from scratch. Why? Well, because I never had cooked dried chickpeas before, and I really wanted to see whether taking the time to cook them from scratch would make for a more delicious and cheaper hummus. I had already toyed...
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September 16, 2010
Plus a recipe for Oaxacan-Style Peanuts with Chile and Garlic
Forget the chips.
You know the drill. You walk into a Mexican restaurant anywhere in the country. You sit down. Within moments -often before drink orders are taken- a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa are rushed out to the table. You immediately dig in. Time disappears. Before you order, before you even think about ordering, salsa stains the tablecloth and all the chips are mysteriously gone. That’s just how it goes. Right?
So...
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June 30, 2010
Hummus' neglected cousin
When it comes to Middle Eastern dips, hummus hogs most of the love and attention. (The New York Times recently reported that hummus is "catching on" in America, where it dominates the $325 million-a-year refrigerated flavored spreads category). You see tubs of it everywhere, and for good reason: it's a great snack to have around.
But there's another beige spread (now doesn't that sound appetizing?) that gets short...
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October 14, 2009
Nick gives kimchi his best shot.
Though Blake was thrilled to jump right into this Kimchi-making process, I dragged my feet the whole way. It's not that I don't love kimchi. That's far from the case. It's just that I've been really happy with the jars of kimchi I've been buying from the Korean market. Uncovering the ways of kimchi, however enlightening the process may be, would sort of remove the magic from the whole experience and turn what...
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October 13, 2009
Blake tries to make kimchi.
Nick and I are currently in the middle of a fierce kimchi-making contest, in which we've both set off to do our own research and exploration, make a batch of the best kimchi we know how to, and submit it for a taste test. Neither of us have made kimchi before, but we both love the taste of it dearly. Tired of paying for it at the store and intoxicated by the possibility that homemade kimchi could taste even better than the commercial...
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September 29, 2009
What is your kimchi secret?
Vinegary, spicy, crunchy, and addictive. These are just some of the words we use to describe Korean dish kimchi. We could go on, but the idea is this: Kimchi fascinates us. We put it into stews, mix it with noodles and sesame oil, chop it up with fried rice, and side it up with Korean barbecue. We've been known to eat it straight out of the jar when we need a fix.
There are all kinds of kimchi out there --...
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September 18, 2009
Try this awesome Korean appetizer.
I began to wonder whether the banchan were going to overwhelm the table. We had placed the little Korean side dishes on the smallest plates I owned, but the shear number of them added up. It was our own fault. When Blake and I decided to do a Korean Barbecue feast last weekend we figured it was time to lavish attention on banchan, giving them the attention and care usually just reserved for the main course. Along the way we made...
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September 15, 2009
Not like most pancakes...
I recently experienced Korean Barbecue for the first time, and I'm not sure I'll ever be quite the same. For days afterwards, I could taste the spicy, sweet, marinated short ribs between my teeth. The heady scent of kimchi haunted me; I'd walk around corners and swear I could smell it. Korean barbecue is soul food. It's comforting, the flavors are deep, and it's all based around communal eating.
The concept of Korean...
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September 7, 2009
The best kind of wedding appetizers.
A pure expression of the pig: nothing extraneous, nothing wasted. Pork, salt, and a little bit of time: that's all you need to make rillettes. It was a beautiful idea which had led me to the kitchen, where I had 25 pounds of pork (a ball of lard, huge hunks of shoulder, and a bag of spare ribs larger than a medium-sized dog) and where I realized I was in over my head.
Confiture de cochon--"pig jam"--is what the...
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November 30, 2008
A baby step towards making salami.
It's similar in appearance and texture, and has that unmistakable salty tang of cured meat. I'm surprised it never occurred to me before, but the idea is simple. Pork tenderloin, which is already in a convenient salami-like shape perfect for slicing, makes a perfect dry-curing project.
There is already one traditional cured meat called Lonzino, Italian, which is made not from the tenderloin but the regular boneless...
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April 30, 2008
A different method for hard boiling eggs.
And what better place to find proof than Harold McGee? His On Food and Cooking had a whole section on long cooked eggs. He calls them “an intriguing alternative” which can be cooked for anywhere between “6 to 18 hours.” Still no recipe, but I’m finally on to something. The most interesting aspect about the process is what happens to the flavor, which he says generates “flavors and...
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November 28, 2007
A results of a simple dry-cured meat project revealed
About ten days after I hung a salt-cured duck breast in the vestibule of my garden apartment, wrapped in cheesecloth and suspended by kitchen string in a little tent of wooden dowel rods, I retrieved it, unwrapped it, and laid it on a cutting board in my kitchen. It was my first attempt at curing, my Duck Prosciutto.
The flesh had taken on a dark red, almost black color on the outside, and the fat had become yellowed. The...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
