After I miraculously created a ball of mozzarella from a gallon of milk and some powdery substances, I declared it a miracle and couldn’t wait to do it again. And true to my plan, I tried to make it twice since that date and failed bitterly both times. Much could have gone wrong. I believe the first failure happened because I used cheese salt instead of citric acid at a crucial ste...
Nick:
A Paupered Week in Flatiron
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
I miss Flatiron. Of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan that I dearly, truly miss, this one has to be first. I suppose that was because I walked through it everyday for about a year trying to find something new to eat. I knew every street corner, every bodega, and every cart. I had a whole hour w...
These are books not necessarily published in 2007, but discovered in the last year.
Blake:
Charcuterie - Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn
Of any other food book I read this year, this one was the most pragmatically enabling: there was no excuse for not participating in the great culinary art of charcuterie. It wasn't enough to admire those who make salami, or cold-smoke their own...
While Blake was jetting across the globe last year, I was nestled up in my nice, big apartment in Ohio. Between planning a wedding and Abby going to grad school, we didn’t have much free time to do much of anything on the weekends. Which is fine by me. I spent much of the year in the kitchen waiting a long, long time for things to cook.
The spark came from the Perfectionist about how...
As a new year begins, we mostly try to think forward to what's to come. But January is also the time for us to look fondly back, to two years ago this month, when we started this website with very little idea of what we were doing. Though our last year-in-review-posts didn't make it up onto the site until March , this time we're on the ball. It's been a very interesting year, with...
I've done more traveling this year than any other on record. And what better way to really dig into a place and gracefully breach the tricky tourist barrier than by eating where the locals do? It's often the reason Elin and I get on a plane in the first place, and if it's not, then much obsessing is done anyway. We conduct research so that no meal will be wasted, no chance for pleasure los...
Welcome to 2008! Abby and I spent New Year's Eve constructing the ultimate meal. We spent a small fortune at Whole Foods and walked away with a lot of shellfish and a fillet mignon or two. Since we weren't going to some fancy black tie event, we felt okay about spending more money than we would for a weeknight meal. We sort of had a carte blanche to create whatever we could dream up. He...
I had read about making cheese--like a lot of people, I assume--in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle . It had never really occurred to me that cheese could be made easily at home, but once I read the passage where they made mozzarella in 30 minutes, I rashly bought the recommended kit . And a three days later I had a bright yellow box from the New England Cheesemaking...
"No, no, no!" our waiter was saying, dashing across the room to our white-tableclothed table, where we were sitting in front of a grilled Turbot. I was politely transferring a portion of the fish's glistening meat to my plate with two forks.
"It's very important to us," he began to explain, almost out of breath, while taking my fork and knife, "to eat with our hands." He picked up the fis...
We were in a tiny silver Citroen, maps strewn all over the dashboard, Elin in the passenger seat, me driving us in circles (literally, around the roundabout over and over) trying to get us to the correct highway and out of Madrid. Elin was reading Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island during our trip--and while overall she couldn’t help but write him off as a mostly unfunny curmud...
Blake and Nick live in Chicago and have written for The Paupered Chef and other publications since 2006.