My friend Matt's email arrived in my inbox, forthright and serious.
"This coming Saturday, March 22, a turducken will be assembled and cooked in my apartment...in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Beginning at about 12 or 12:30, the birds will be deboned, the stuffing will be made, and the ingredients layered and sewn up...resulting in the creation of a delicious culinary grote...
I'm definitely not the first to point this out, but Chicago has some great food. You know, with all the high accolades for their inventive restaurants and classic comfort foods, and the fact that they are hosting this year's Top Chef , I have nothing new to add. It's just that over the past weekend Abby and I managed to fit more good food into our bellies than we had any right to do...
Photo from Flickr user Flatbush Gardener
I didn't see this coming. I didn't imagine that suddenly, aged 25, living in a city, I'd want to be a gardener. Gardening does not seem cool. Nobody thinks gardeners are trendy. It's as old and musty a hobby as any. Yet there I found myself this past Saturday, spending seven hours of my weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden , where a larg...
Time to play catchup. Blake has been on the forefront of this curing business for awhile now and I just couldn’t stand back while he was slicing off hunks of his own fresh bacon and duck prosciutto . I picked up a duck and a pork belly and got to work.
It might seem a little redundant to document two projects that Blake has already covered, but in all fairness, these are d...
A couple weeks ago, I left work promptly at 5pm to head to the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library near 10th St. in Greenwich Village. There, along with over 40 other people, I learned how a person in New York can buy worms, keep them in a container in their apartment, and feed them food scraps . The morning of the class, which I'd stumbled upon at the web site of the...
Corn tortillas are my comfort food. I use them as carrying cases for simple, satisfying meals and I use them a lot. They are a mainstay on my lazy Sunday breakfasts and always around when it’s time for a feast.
Part of that comfort factor comes from having them in my fridge at all times. While not as resilient as Twinkies, they can hold up for a time if properly wrapped in the fridge. ...
As a cook, I've been rather reluctant to prepare homemade stock. I give the usual litany of excuses: too much hassle, not enough time, not cost-effective. I keep a little jar of Better than Bouillon in my fridge door (one chicken, one beef, one vegetable) and I've always got instant stock whenever I need it, in small quantities or large. I don't have to worry about it going off, beca...
I took a little break from food this past weekend, turning my back on all the pieces of meat curing in my stairwell (I’ll get to those later in the week), and set off for the rolling hills of Kentucky to sip the best bourbon I could. I’d been blabbering on and on to my brother-in-law about the stuff for well over six months now and it was about time to actually see where it all came from...
Grinding meat may seem like an exercise for those with too much time on their hands, or those overly devoted to doing things from scratch--which I am. But I'm here to argue that there are more compelling and more logical reasons for doing so: for one, the meat will taste better. You'll also know where it omes from, unlike with a styrofoam tray from the grocery store, which is likely the su...
Do fancy ingredients make better meals?
Over the last couple years, with a great deal of enthusiasm, I've learned to cook more skillfully. I spend all sorts of time reading endlessly about technique, ingredients, and recipes, and I cook almost every day. I think my cooking has improved. I've developed good instincts. I know that a roast chicken needs to be very dry before it goes in...
Blake and Nick live in Chicago and have written for The Paupered Chef and other publications since 2006.