I have been meaning to get around to this earlier: I really like the food blog New Orleans Cuisine . I have no real connection to New Orleans outside of a dead great aunt and gorgeous visit a month before that storm came when my girlfriend and I flirted with the idea of staying. But that's really it. I listen to Louis Armstrong occasionally. I've heard of Juvenile. But I do lov...
Sometimes all you can hope for at the end of a long day is a little bit of harmony. Whether through yoga, walking your dog, or blasting Bona Drag , you find it and somehow the day washes away. Often I find this harmony by cooking (sometimes with the Morrissey at the same time)--a chance to relax, create, and then have something delicious to show for it. I have a recipe that, while dec...
The most well-documented failure on this website was the first time we cooked beef short ribs . Tough, sinewy, and ugly--a big fibrous brick of protein fastened onto a sled of white bone by tendons and mysterious pieces of grizzle. Short ribs are the beef equivalent to a Salman Rushdie novel: willfully difficult, at times indecent and gross, but after an extended period of histrionic o...
There is "no doubt early man cooked his meats using dry heat," claims Madeleine Kamman, author of the esteemed Making of a Cook and a very friendly-looking lady who I sometimes wish was my grandmother. She speculates that he might have discovered this gastronomic feat in the instance of two different accidents, producing two enduring ways of cooking meat. The first, a discovery...
Every weekend I quickly scan Fairway's specials to see what deal I'll get off with this week. This time, I thought it was a joke, because I saw this sucker staring back at me . Filet Mignon for $5.99, which is a minor miracle on par with shooting stars and finding a real pastrami sandwich. Considering this cut regularly fetches prices that stumble towards the $20 mark, something...
I screwed up. During the last throes of summer , I treated my grill with the utmost love and care. But I'm apparently a fair-weather fan, for as soon as the temperature dipped I completely forgot about it and retreated into the warmth of my kitchen. Not only did I neglect my cooking apparatus for a solid month, I didn't even bother to cover it. I didn't even set it close to a wall...
I had no idea. Abby and I are staring at this picture of skirt steak with string beans with mouths agape, salivating over the chance to make this fine meal , when we notice that nowhere in the ingredients are those beans listed. We double check, and then wonder what it was exactly that we were looking at. All they they had was something called haricot verts. "I'm not sure what that...
Just like your grandmother, I now own a cast-iron skillet. It seemed like the logical choice after I realized the finite possibilities of non-stick, yet was not ready to burn my whole month's salary on an All-Clad frying pan. This cost $19. It's heavy as a brick--actually, more like a couple bricks. You can toss this war-horse around with glee and it will take it all. Clang it around...
Besides meatloaf, it's the ultimate mystery meat. Coated with a thick brown sauce and usually hard as a rock, Salisbury steak was the meal I most genuinely hated during my school years. Its presence institgated the hoarding of dinner rolls and the unfortunate act of talking to girls, just so I could make off with one of their mini cobs of corn. It was a tough day on the streets, and one I...
If you were functioning on the subway this morning, you probably saw a steady stream of backpacked kids parading around with wide mouths and unsure stares. That daze was the stern face of school, the great unknown and the official end to summer. Standing amongst those kids, I tried remember my own back-to-school feeling, the churning stomach, the moment when I knew it was all over, and tha...