White Pepper Ice Cream

I got an ice cream maker. I was watching the episode of Good Eats all about premium ice cream and how simple it was to make, and the next day I ran out to buy an ice cream maker. For $50 I’ll never have to go to the corner bodega to grab a pint of Haagen-Dazs again — sweet. The first batch, a basic vanilla ice cream made from the recipe in the Cuisinart machine’s instruction booklet, was refreshing, sweet, … Read More

The Nightmare that became Christmas Dinner

posted in: Regrets | 8

I’ve finally garnered the nerve to document my ill-fated cooking adventure on Christmas. I’d had a half-baked notion this year of roasting a chicken stuffed with sticky glutinous rice spiked with Chinese sausage, shittake mushrooms, and other seasonings commonly found in a zongzi, or bamboo leaf-wrapped rice dumpling. The original idea was to serve this in individual Cornish hens, but after taking a glance at the tennis ball-sized fowl wrapped in plastic in the grocery store, I realized that this … Read More

NY Times Recipe Disaster: Stuffed-Under-the-Skin Chicken

posted in: Regrets | 10

braised whatever Technology, bitter foe. I came home excited to make this recipe I saw in the Times, along with a fascinating article on Hungarian Hannukah cooking. Nevermind that I had really only read the article, and barely glanced at the recipe. I could remember well enough what kind of supplies I would need at the store–chicken quarters, Hungarian paprika, mushrooms, green beans, and carrots. But once everything was home, of course it was time to really follow a recipe. … Read More

Desserts: The Sweet Potato Pie Disaster

posted in: Regrets | 8

Everything was going fine and dandy, taking the sweet potato option from the pumpkin pie recipe in Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything.” Until pre-baking the pie crust. I’ve made my pie crust recipe (seen in Weeknight Apple Maple Walnut Pie) numerous times and never once encountered the dough sinking into the bottom of the pan, the edges repelling from their base. Even when making quiche, I pre-bake the crust a good fifteen minutes or so and never saw anything … Read More

Desserts: The Disasters Part One

posted in: Regrets | 3

Desserts have never been my close kin in the kitchen. I don’t think my mother ever prepared a dessert, and she also wasn’t the kind to keep the freezer stocked with them unless it was summer, and my brother and I begged and squealed for popsicles. Then, we got this nifty popsicle mold that we poured 100% orange juice into and froze. Its handles even had this basin to catch the melting juice, with a straw attached to slurp it up. So … Read More

Songs in the Key of Lime (Tostitos)

posted in: Regrets | 5

Wow.  The other night I experienced a serious lapse in fun, urban foodie-ness and instead became Homer Simpson.  I wouldn’t say it was an all-time low, but it involved eating a dinner of beer and half a bag of Tostitos hint of lime flavored chips.  I’m feeling the pain.  I came home from work to find three friends jamming away on instruments in my tight living room.  Cut to many songs sung, many beer bottles downed, a few hours later, … Read More

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