Hear me out: making kimchee at home is really easy! And the payoffs are practical in the kitchen, too. Here’s a look at my first attempt at making a true, Korean friend-approved batch of kimchee, and one way to put it to delicious use: as a seasoning for everyday, ever-versatile roasted potatoes.
photo by MHT What do figs, spice and everything malty and nice have to do with one another? They’re all ingredients of a specialty beer I helped brew this week, for Sixpoint and BeerAdvocate‘s Beer For Beasts festival. It’s an event we’ve been “brewing” up for a while, and the pieces are all coming together in the form of twenty-some unique, one-off beers that will be served for it. This is just one of those among the lineup, but an … Read More
I love Asian ice cream, milkshake and flavored tea flavors, but so often they’re sad, powdered relics of the real stuff. The pale green “honeydew” makes me miss the juicy, floral freshness of the real fruit, slushed up, that I’d get in Taiwan. Bright lilac “taro” flavor just plain is not. Although I may never have enough sun to grow fresh, tropical fruit and coconuts here, one flavor I don’t see the need to place in artificial form, anywhere, is … Read More
My friend was talking about how she’d made spanakopita, the Greek savory spinach pie, recently. Only, she didn’t actually finish making it: “The filling was so good I just ate it up with a spoon, and didn’t bake it with the crust.” She was also impressed with how much spinach she had eaten; the one-pound bag, the size of a fluffy pillow, had all cooked down to a portion that neatly filled a soup bowl. That’s a good way to … Read More
Today was gusty like a regular dust storm, at least in Red Hook where I was a-working. And there was some music playing, by a feller named Woody Guthrie, and he was a-talkin about some dust storm in a song called “Talking Dust Bowl Blues.” In one verse, he sings, “My wife fixed up a tater stew,” and it got me hungry and thinkin’ food. So I’ll stop with the bad sing-song writing here, but now you know the reason … Read More
This Thursday, I’m pleased as hot punch to announce a special get-together in the back room at Jimmy’s No. 43. I’m throwing a party for the paperback release of The Art of Eating In, and want to share a whole lot of other books as well. See, I recently moved, and upon packing up boxes of cookbooks, foodie lit books, and books of all sorts, it dawned on me that instead of keeping all the ones I’ve read and enjoyed … Read More
In the summer, beans were for dressing in a gloss of olive oil, tossing with a confetti of crisp, chopped vegetables, and having as salad. In the winter, we simmer them with rich fats, sometimes with finely chopped (less colorful) vegetables, which dissolve into the resulting soup or baked casserole. While it’s definitely winter, I tried to make a compromise between these two polar opposite ways to eat beans. Starting with the king-size fava (or “broad”) bean, dried.
I would have named this recipe tom yum soup, since the popular Thai dish is certainly its inspiration. But it’s missing a few crucial — and difficult to find — ingredients, and prepared rather on the fly instead of slow-simmered. It wouldn’t seem quite right to purists of Thai cuisine. It is, however, absolutely right to those looking to quench their appetite for something a little exotic, restorative and refreshing, and you don’t have much time.
When a purchased food becomes such a habit that I can’t fathom a day without this item, it’s usually when I decide to make something like it at home. This winter, it’s been cookies… boxes, and boxes of cookies. All kinds of cookies. Chewy, grainy, nutty ones; flat, crispy sugary ones. It’s an awful way to start off the new year, I suppose.
If the fashion sensibility “peasant chic” were translated to food, this would be a runway highlight. It’s a melange of the penniless pantry, but manages to come out vibrant with flavor, and chock full of nutrition. A little funky, offbeat, and very magenta (is that an “in” color?), it’s what I call making the best of the least — and the cheapest — ingredients. It’s also filling enough for a one-dish dinner alone, but plop in a poached egg and … Read More