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.
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
I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never picked up a fennel bulb and cooked with it, and am not quite sure if I’ve tried it before. I had a leftover fennel bulb after using some of the sprigs for a jarred experiment I’ve been working on (more on that to come), so it was high time.
Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours making sauce, dough, preparing the toppings and putting it all together in a cheesy, sausage and jalepeno pizza to share with a couple of friends. We all had a great time. Then afterwards, I got really sad when I realized, thinking about the cost calculator section of the blog post that would be, that I probably would have spent just the same if I’d just bought a large sausage and jalepeno pie … 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
Of course, I have been discovering all the classic French sauces with the help of my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and am scandalized by the amounts of butter and fats they require. I just have never cooked (aside from baking) with that much butter before. My immediate thoughts: was I really eating that every time I went to a French restaurant? Was that why it tasted so good and…French? So when I felt like coating my … Read More
Isn’t it a pity New York seems to have a relative dearth of really good cajun restaurants? There’s tons of barbecue and even soul food spots, but New Orleans-style cajun cookin’ is hard to come by. Menupages.com listed only 25 restaurants in the “Cajun and Creole” category, and from just eyeballing it I noticed some that were definitely not. I wondered about this after visiting Portland last summer and eating at a great, cute restaurant called Montage which served an … Read More
And while you’re at it, slug back a few hundred calories. Just because. As someone who only cooks for one or two, I’m a natural user-upper, which means that something deep inside me feels very unfulfilled when I see half a tomato in the fridge begin to rot before it can be used. Or half a lemon–which, poor thing, doesn’t last too long without its sliced-off other half. So when I opened my fridge the other night I looked at … Read More
Food that looks as good as a summer’s evening. And it almost was, after the temperature reached seventy degrees this Saturday in New York. I put on a light sweater and headed outside, with the tune from Amelie in my head as I strolled over to Fort Greene Park, thinking of the scene about the man who buys a chicken every day and cooks it with great care and tenderness, savoring the moment he bites into the oysters. I had … Read More