It was a last-minute whim, but there I was at the checkout, buying a whole duck. I've cut up dozens of roast chickens into legs, thighs, and breasts -- usually with the meat and skin steaming and burning my fingers -- so how much harder could it be to do the same with a duck? Above all, it's much cheaper to buy a whole duck and cut it up yourself than it is to buy the parts separately -- and...
The recipe comes from Diana Kennedy's "From My Mexican Kitchen". This particular version comes from the Michoacán region. She does give direction on how to stuff the mixture into casings, but I bailed out early. Some day.
As first sausage making experiences go, I'd have to say this was pretty remarkable. I got about 2 pounds of fresh sausage and spent about $12 dollars. Half of it is fro...
But all I did was worry. Why was there no garlic in the dill pickles? Every other jar of dill pickles I had bought contained garlic. And why did the pickling spice smell so sweet? Dill pickles weren't sweet. I worried that Ruhlman's recipe was too refined. I wanted simple dill pickles. I'd have to look elsewhere.
I pulled out Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking and found Dill Pi...
When I spent a week with Nick in Chicago, we had grand plans for every single meal - especially the ones we cooked in his kitchen. Nick's already covered the fatty, home-ground burger and our foray into making red enchilada sauce , our two major kitchen experiments. But I also know that Chicago is a great eating town. I grew up in the area, but my knowledge of Chicago food is sham...
A couple days ago Elin and I went to our community garden plots to asses things after a two and a half week absence from New York. When we left, our garden was thriving with tomatoes, kale, collard greens, beets, carrots, corn, and peppers. Despite our best efforts to screw things up, the Brooklyn soil continues to sprout edibles.
We returned to find out tomato plants brown, drooping,...
This whole site was started when we were fresh from college and cooking together recklessly. Since our lives have changed--moving in with girlfriends, marriage , and new cities (and boroughs )--we don't always get to indulge in those old times. But with Blake in Chicago visiting this past week, it was like we were back at York Avenue in that tiny little apartment . From ab...
At first everything was fine. Taking a cue from Adam Kuban , we decided to make our own onion rings instead of the normal burger pairing of fries. The recipe was taken from Simply Recipes , which soaked the onions in buttermilk and coated them in flour and cornmeal.
We fried them in canola oil set to 350 degrees for a few minutes, until nice and golden brown. We stashed them i...
For the past year I have been banned from buying new kitchen appliances. Once Abby and I got engaged, she decreed that I could not willfully purchase anything new for the kitchen because we would be getting wedding presents. She was immovable. So as Blake ground his own meat for hamburgers with a Kitchen Aid and made his own no-knead bread in a Dutch oven, I sat and read wondering w...
My last post about the Fulton Street Fish market covered its history, including corruption and mob connections, leading up to the 2005 move from lower Manhattan up to Hunts Point in the Bronx. This post is about our actual experience in the market: how it functioned, what Hunts Point is like today, and a few good eats in the area. While in Hunts Point we met a few fish buyers, ate in 2...
If you walk around Manhattan, it often seems like more than half of the stores are restaurants, most of them busy and stuffed with people. It doesn't take much thinking before one wonders how all that food gets into the kitchens to feed them all. And not just the dining-out set: what about grocery stores? And bodegas. And butchers. And fish mongers. The sheer quantity of food moved...
Blake and Nick live in Chicago and have written for The Paupered Chef and other publications since 2006.