Entries tagged with 'cooking'
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Regina Schrambling, on tricks to cooking for two: "The best thing about dinner for two is that you can brave dishes that would be too labor-intensive and time-consuming for a crowd. You can fry up little corn cakes to top with smoked salmon and crème fraîche, or skillet-roast a whole duck cut in half, or sauté two skate wings that can go from skillet to plate without waiting for four or six more to be cooked. But when you want a night to remember, you can pull out more stops and spend a little more money. In polling coupled friends on their ideal menu with wine but no cliché roses, I found the ingredients and dishes always differed, but the...
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Erin Hartigan's Sure-Fire Rules for Sparks in the Kitchen is about the do's and don'ts of cooking as a date activity: "When it comes to cooking together, an otherwise compatible new couple can break down faster than a sauce sabayon. The annals of my own dating history are singed with kitchen mishaps. During a triple first-date cooking night at my best friend's place, each couple helped produce a meal of chicken pot stickers, spaghetti with meat sauce and Key lime pie. Nobody wanted to take control; we socialized as pasta turned to mush and pots boiled over. What began as a promising soiree ended early, with six scowls and three inedible courses." Other highlights: In A Drink to Make You...
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Today's à la carte: "How many times have you seen a recipe instruct you to “season with salt and pepper”? This is incorrect! You season with salt, but you flavor with pepper. Yes, pepper is a flavoring, not a seasoning. And it’s only one of the flavorings used in French cooking."...
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Tikka in No Time: "Food manufacturers and even local grocers are now tempting people to cook easy Indian—a concept that once was oxymoronic—through the use of time-saving products."...
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While men cooking at home frequently raise an eyebrow, restaurant chefs are, if anything, considered
more masculine for what they do. Who’s gruffer than Anthony Bourdain? Who’s more brazen than Mario Batali? And look at how those Japanese Iron Chefs wield their knives like action stars.
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From India to Great Britain and then to Japan,
curry rice had a circuitous trip in becoming one of that country's most popular dishes. Adam Kuban adds his own regional take on it.
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In this week's gusticomic,
The Amateur Gourmet forsakes Jewish tradition in favor of pine and swine. How does his first Christmas ham turn out? Oy veh!
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Just in time for Hanukkah,
Jason Perlow provides his method for making lots of latkes. Complete with video filmed in "Latke-vision."
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It's so easy to bash Rachael Ray, so maybe that's why I found David Carr's column in yesterday's Times so interesting. My two favorite lines from the story: "But Ms. Ray's folksy approach belies the sophistication of her message. She is part of the cut-to-the-chase genre of media, like Lucky, Domino and Real Simple magazines, and their success is built on this fact of modern life: if people are more secure economically, it is only because they are working longer and harder than ever before." And: "Ms. Ray's recipes may call for store-bought turkey loaf she is really trafficking in the ultimate modern luxury: time." Carr's piece was really the first one I've seen that tries to place the Rachael...
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Pableaux Johnson wrote rapturously about cherries and other fruit in the Hood River Valley in Oregon, and though I've never been there, his story had me thinking about a roadtrip. The folks at Chefshop have been sending me many reminders about the fantastic cherries they will start shipping from Batch Family Farm in eastern Washington. I know you can get cherries at your local market starting right about now, but the Batch cherries are something special. I've had the Lapins, which are juicy and huge, with a deep cherry flavor. This year Chefshop is also selling BFF Sweetheart cherries, which are a new strain of sweet cherries first grown in British Columbia. These are picked right after the Lapins, in...
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