Diced instead of Ground Meat
I had stopped using ground beef a few years back, after watching a Good Eats episode. The reasoning makes sense. When ground beef is used, the fat either needs to be drained off immediately, or needs to be skimmed off the day after when all the fat has accumulated at the top. But if you use chunks a lot of the juices stay inside, leaving both the chili less...
Once I figured out how to make fresh pasta , I waited all of 12 hours before I set out to create my own Ragù alla Bolognese. It was a goal of mine ever since watching an episode of Heston Blumenthal's TV series In Search of Perfection . The premise of the show is for the acclaimed chef to reexamine some stodgy British classics by going back to the roots of the original dish. His f...
A few months ago I was wandering the poultry aisle at my food coop looking at the bewildering number of options for a roasting chicken. As the words free-range and humane--proclaimed on every package--began to lose their meaning, I came across a pile of frozen, gangly-looking birds with their long necks still intact. The label, announcing this new product, read “Amish stewing hens.€..
My favorite passages from Bill Buford's Heat are set in the Babbo kitchen, when he describes with fear and awe the wonder that is a busy restaurant kitchen at dinnertime-- tickets flying, steam vaporizing, oil popping. Orders arrive faster than they can be made; you are perpetually behind. The heat, of course, is unbearable-- like a shimmering wall when you enter the kitchen. Sweat...
Back when I was writing about corn risotto and the magical risotto pancake , I was kicking around the Internet trying to discover exactly how to make one correctly. Recipe after recipe called for a very specific risotto preparation, one I'd never even heard of, something called Risotto alla Milanese, or Milan-style Risotto. It's flavored with chicken or beef stock, a simplified base of...
I bought the rabbit by mistake. I was procuring a nice free-range chicken when I saw a whole rabbit at the local poultry counter in the North Market. I gawked when I saw that the price was about $2 a pound. The skinny little critter could be mine for under $5. I hadn’t the slightest concept what I’d do with it, but when faced with such remarkable prices, why even worry? Quicker t...
As you may or may not remember, I’m attempting to go somewhat local. Click back to Week 1 to see how it got started.
We’ve written about short ribs twice before and I’ll be honest in saying this isn’t the master recipe. Part of the problem is that both previous recipes were really Blake’s babies. It was his pot and his enthusiasm that spurred the effort. While I was ther...
The other day I was watching Iron Chef and Lidia Bastianich was a judge on the show. I'd never seen her in this role, and, frankly, it was scary. The woman is a strange blend of passion and unsmiling seriousness. Generally people who love food are laid back and groovy, and enthusiasm is usually tempered with a good dollop of sheepish self-consciousness: "I know I'm obsessed, and it m...
I’ve only recently reached a point where I’m ever so slightly bored with cooking. Don’t worry--it’s only a very subtle, mild boredom, easily fixed. But it’s there, and it’s a stage I’m sure many cooks experience periodically. What compels me to make the same old dish again? And even if I use new ingredients, isn’t it still the same technique? I’m a qualified saute-er, I can braise successfull...
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...