Carmelized onions. Hint of shallots. Last bottle of Yuengling Lager from last weekend’s burger feast. Score: the roast with the most. How many times have you seen that commercial for Fresh Direct where Cynthia Nixon keeps asking “What’s the TLC? Where does it say TLC?” Well, not all recipes necessarily need TLC. With some, you can walk away perfectly aloof to a simmering pot for a couple of hours, and come back to a balanced, tender, moist and delicate hunk … Read More
I’d like to think of this as less a recipe than an olfactory cooking cure. Somewhere along the ranks of boiling a slow-cooked pot of chicken soup — it’s those hours of comforting smells, I’m convinced, that ease the common cold long before its consumption. The savory, sweet and spicy smells emitting from my oven as I baked this helped lift me out of an early spring slump — and eating it didn’t hurt, either.
We all know that ground turkey is the new hamburger if you’re looking to go easy on your heart. But I never found this a satisfactory replacement unless it was used in a sauce or stew of some type — in which juices from all kinds of ingredients run free and wild as piglets in a pen. A turkey burger? Not even close… but ground turkey in chili? Seconds, please. Besides, you’re bound to end up draining most of the … Read More
A completely uninspired twist? A seemingly pointless reverse-effect pastiche? Maybe, but it made for some of the greatest chicken sandwiches I’ve ever had. Since seeing the recipe for chicken fried steak on The Homesick Texan, I was homesick for some of that, too. Let alone I’ve never been to Texas and have no roots to the state. Some things, like fried chicken, are so classic that they inspire new classics like the chicken fried steak. But one of the nice … Read More
Curry is only optional here. I had begun this dish with the thought of splashing in the remaining cupful or so of white wine I had left in the fridge and maybe sprinkling some rosemary in the pie mixture; instead, I drank the wine. Something in between a mild chicken curry and a stuffing mixture, this meal was a quick alternative to baking a real chicken pot pie. I shouldn’t even call it a pie, really, since the “crust” was … Read More
Congee, you know what I mean? Except not. First, I’ll admit that this was not the most convenient meal to make on a weeknight–but it can be done. Just remember to pop the squash in the oven as soon as possible, then begin the rest of your preparation and cooking. That way it should be soft enough by the time the risotto is ready for it to be added. Timing is everything.
Winter was a good time for oxtails when I was growing up. My dad was fond of the Basque oxtail recipe in Jeff Smith’s The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors, a really good soupy dish perfect for sopping up with warm crusty bread. There wasn’t much meat on those starburst-shaped discs of bone; it was about the flavor, and of course the gelatinous cartilage that felt slightly more jellyfish-like than fat in your mouth.
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.
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
that’s a spice satchel in the middle which should have been removed for the shot It might seem a little redundant for a blog only about food that’s cooked at home to post a recipe for something “homestyle.” But I defend my usage here to emphasize the fact that you will never see or eat this dish in a respectable restaurant (ever). And yet most Chinese people will probably have eaten something very similar to this recipe at home more … Read More