Turns out, once you have all the ingredients, the process is rather straight forward and won't take longer than 30 minutes or so. And since most of the ingredients besides the tofu are pantry items, whipping up a new batch of miso soup in the future should be a breeze.
Bonito smells like, well, dried fish, but it looks more like pencil shavings. They are the body behind the miso, and make the...
Hey everyone! Check out the most recent DIY issue of Time Out Chicago and you'll see me ! The issue is online today and should be sent out tomorrow. The article focuses on some of the more absurd projects Blake and I have done here on the site. It also quite accurately describes the chaos of creation and the battle scars that occasionally result. There's even a great picture of...
I returned home from a weekend in Ohio to to find that a fire had struck Honey 1 Barbecue . The building was still intact, but the smoking aquarium where they cook all their meat had been destroyed. According to owner, it might take a few months to get back in order if smoker is salvageable and the insurance company gives up the money quickly. It could take much longer.
I found the n...
Easter dinner has always been a giant-baked-ham affair for me. Glazed with a sticky concoction loaded to its saturation point with brown sugar and splashed with bourbon, studded with cloves, and baked until warm and tender--ah, it's hard to beat.
Living here in a country full of pork , I figured reproducing this wouldn't be too hard to pull off. But two problems presented themselves:...
On Thursday the New York Times published an op-ed piece written by a Texas historian named James E. McWilliams called "Free-Range Trichinosis," which argues that the public's perception of free-range pork has been misguided. On the contrary to our idyllic view of healthy, happy animals, the "free-range option can pose a heightened health threat to consumers." Citing a study which claime...
I'm not interested in carbonizing the surface of the meat. To me that ruins the flavor.
- Alain Ducasse
It was a bachelor weekend of sorts. My wife mercifully let me pass on attending a wedding of an old family family friend, so I had the whole weekend alone in the apartment to get work done. I had some crazy projects planned including a mad braise of a cow tongue, but the first nigh...
Welcome to the new Paupered Chef design!
Over the last month or so, both of us have scratched our heads figuring out how to move our blog from Typepad to Wordpress, and in the process redesign the site. After a lot of research, tinkering, and a huge helping hand from a company called Foliovision who helped us with the transfer, we're now safe in our new, Wordpress-hosted home. Biggest...
Over the weekend, Elin and I moved into a new apartment in a different part of Tartu. Our previous digs belong to her relatives, who only live in Estonia for the better half of the year, when the sun shines and the days are long. Last week they came back to Estonia to claim their apartment, leaving us to find somewhere else to live for the remaining few months of our time here.
To say the...
I was determined not to fail this time. My last attempt at deep-dish wasn't an absolute failure, but it was close. It was too soggy and messy , and had none of the glorious qualities that my favorite Chicago pizzeria, Pequods , displayed. I theorized about all kinds reasons for the failure, thinking it had something to do with the crust. Then I just gave up and asked you all...
Most of the recipes online are found on generic websites and just have a bunch of cut up vegetables mixed with olive oil, which I already knew was completely wrong. There needed to be some kind of acidic kick, something to balance the aggressive heat and the fair amount of oil.
I had my first breakthrough when I found this random video from the Food Network show "Unwrapped". They were visiti...
Blake and Nick live in Chicago and have written for The Paupered Chef and other publications since 2006.
