Everybody’s always talking about lobster--in a roll mixed with mayonnaise, sliced in two and charred on a grill, served with dipping butter next to a tender piece of filet mignon. The fact is, this animal gets far too much attention. No doubt about it, lobster is quite something--but how often can you afford to eat it? For the same reason we rarely eat filet mignon--and then only when it/a>...
"That's it?" you might be saying. But yes. This is a recipe for broccoli. Well, roasted broccoli. I did salt that beef lurking around out of focus in the background for hours, submerge it in lukewarm water for another hour, and sear it at high heat. But the broccoli was better. Even the stems were great. Long relegated to second class citizens to the beautiful florets up top, whe...
A couple months ago I was eating at Otto , which is the place to bring friends who are visiting: a bit touristy, but very affordable; good to great food that’s easy to share; and most importantly, they have olive oil gelato , which floors just about everyone who tries it. One thing we always do is order lots of the $4 vegetable dishes, like tiny radishes with anchovy-mustard sauce, o...
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...
I’ve bought two cookbooks in the last week that teach you how to do funny things with pigs. The first, which I haven’t had nearly enough time to explore, is Michael Ruhlman ’s Charcuterie , co-written with Brian Polcyn, a book about the wonders of salting, smoking, and curing meat, a tradition of which pork is the oinking mascot. Much has been written of this book’s breakt...
It's the food I never really think about, yet can't help but order. While everyone else is thinking about fries or onion rings, whenever I hit a diner for some reason the one thing I want is coleslaw. Maybe it just has the appearance of being a vegetable dish in a fried food haven, but it seems a cool retreat for all the hot food.
The problem with coleslaw is that it can often feel like t...
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...
I tend to get caught up on certain cook book authors, and for the past month it has been all about Heston Blumenthal. Head chef at the Fat Duck in the U.K., his cookbook In Search of Perfection has been fostering idea after crazy idea. In a Serious Eats article, we wrote about cooking a pizza on the bottom of a cast iron skillet , to great success. The best part is that his mad-...
I was cleaning out my fridge, throwing away plastic bags full of blackened herbs and limp celery and muttering about how I felt wasteful, of course, but also uncreative. Why does the ability to look into the fridge and dream up recipes with what’s there elude me? I'm a failure and a hack. Why even cook anymore? I should just order takeout and go to sleep.
But in the midst of this crisis...
Blake and Nick live in Chicago and have written for The Paupered Chef and other publications since 2006.
