Slurrrp. I do miss a hearty bowl of pork chop soup noodles, the kind you might get for $3 at any number of noodle shops in the lower east realms of Chinatown. Most people think of soup noodles as a wintery dish, but I’ve seen them devoured by all kinds of people as a summer lunch, shoveling yards of noodles down the chute as perspiration threatens to dot the soup.
I watched Jacques Pepin make a dish on public television that was so appealing for a cold weeknight, a casserole of pasta baked with peas, corn and diced French ham in a simple beschamel with cheese sprinkled on top. He put it in the broiler–one of the most overlooked part of your kitchen, according to Mark Bittman–to brown a warm, cheesy crust on the top, and voila! Gooey and liquid inside, contrasting crisp. Countryish warm fuzzy feelings abound.
As a Christmas gift, I was given a one-night class at Camaje cooking classes. The course for the evening at the West Village French bistro that my benefactor chose to enroll me in was “A Taste of Thai.” This was the first cooking class I had taken since seventh grade home economics, and I couldn’t wait.
“Unlike an earlier wave of food blogs focused on home cooking, recipes and basic restaurant recommendations, the new breed is gossipy and competitive; it trafficks in pointed restaurant criticism and tidbits of news — Craftsteak has installed a new stove!” Whatever, New York Times. I’d rather be cooking at my tiny stove than trumpeting the most hoity-toity restaurant news, and reading the other article in the Magazine section on the American-Taiwanese-Hunanese roots of that ubiquitous dish “General Tso’s Chicken” anyway. … Read More
This is probably two days past the point to bother saying, but I don’t really do football. I just don’t watch it. And I don’t feel left out of an annual popular culture event by not going to a Super Bowl party, sitting on a friend’s couch and routing for a team, catching the first glimpse of all the “great” commercials, and snacking on endless bowls and mountains of appetizers: tasty fried, stuffed, dipped, blanketed morsels. Okay, maybe I feel … Read More
For the coldest weekend to date this winter in New York, I had a mind for stew. With far too many types fighting for attention inside it. Beef bourguignon was foremost, then marsalas or perhaps a scallopini, then I thought of making a scallopini of pork medallions instead of veal (which I haven’t eaten in ages, and most of my peers don’t eat as a rule). And then it all kind of jumbled into one dish, finished with sour cream. … Read More