Serious Eats: meeralee's Profile

About six years ago I ate a sweet potato kibbeh with tomato & brown butter at Oleana in Cambridge, MA. It was sweet, oily, savory, and creamy. Several minutes of incoherent moaning followed.

meeralee at 1:07PM on 03/30/11

From Serious Eats

Seriously Delicious Holiday Giveaway: Zingerman's Praise the Lard Gift Box

A transcendent brunch special at Lula Cafe in Chicago, involving an enormous bowl of pork belly, buttermilk biscuits, greens, and poached eggs. I ate it all even though it very nearly killed me.

meeralee at 11:01PM on 01/03/11

From Serious Eats

The Food Lab: Fresh Ricotta in Five Minutes or Less

Kenji, you rock.

Can anyone recommend a cheaper instant-read thermometer?

meeralee at 9:06AM on 02/19/10

From Serious Eats

Portrait of Obama Made Out of Cereal

Dude.

meeralee at 1:09PM on 03/10/09

From Recipes

There are two ways to thicken chana masala -- add a little heavy cream (yum), or, as sloppydelicious suggests, crush some of the chickpeas. We often remove a portion and whiz it up with a stick blender.

And yeah -- more tomatoes! Those should also be crushed or blended at some point.

meeralee at 1:08PM on 03/10/09

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'Into the Vietnamese Kitchen'

Cheesecake. :-)

meeralee at 3:29PM on 01/05/09

From Serious Eats

Seriously Delicious Holiday Giveaway: Zingerman's Praise the Lard Gift Box

Finally making bacon perfectly on our cast iron skillet.

meeralee at 4:28PM on 12/15/08

From Serious Eats

Seriously Delicious Holiday Giveaway: Southside Market Sausage

The hawker center near my house in Singapore. :-) Char siew is my favorite kind of barbecued meat.

meeralee at 7:17PM on 12/13/08

From Serious Eats

Seriously Delicious Holiday Giveaway: Edible Chocolate Box from Charles Chocolates

Mousse or a pots de crème. Mmm.

meeralee at 3:05PM on 12/12/08

From Serious Eats

Seriously Delicious Holiday Food Giveaway: Russ & Daughters

The notion of a New York brunch is a little foreign to me, but heavens, if a bagel piled high with cream cheese and lox isn't the perfect way to brunch, anyway, I don't know what is.

meeralee at 4:18PM on 12/11/08

From Serious Eats

McDonald's Filet-O-Fish: Yea or Nay?

Ohhhh, I used to LOVE Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. I'm totally with you. I haven't had one in a long time, but I bet I'd still love it. Yeah, they're a little weird, but they don't creep me out nearly as much as McDonald's beef does these days.

meeralee at 9:12PM on 12/10/08

From Serious Eats

Seriously Delicious Holiday Giveaway: Two Peter Luger Steaks

Filet mignon!

meeralee at 3:20PM on 12/10/08

From Serious Eats

Holiday Giveaway: Zingerman's Praise the Lard Gift Box

Oh, ha! My freshman year at college, my mom sent me a care package from Singapore that included a packet of pork floss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousong) and every. single. one. of my friends thought it was the most insane thing they'd ever heard of. I remember it fondly because it was one of the first times I realized that a lot of the food I grew up with seems really fucking weird to a lot of Americans.

meeralee at 2:14PM on 12/09/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'How to Cook Everything, Revised Tenth Anniversary Edition'

Oh, the no-knead bread recipe -- not just because it works, and is wonderful, but because it led to all sorts of other breads -- and helped me realize I like kneading, anyway. ;-)

meeralee at 8:55PM on 12/08/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'Simple Italian Snacks'

Rounds of baguette, topped with fresh mozzarella, a tomato slice, a leaf of basil, and olive oil. Or just a bowl of almonds, really. Yum.

meeralee at 2:28PM on 12/03/08

From Recipes

Dinner Tonight: Curried Red Lentils with Coconut Milk

I love dal with coconut milk. We make lots of different versions of dal (I can't get enough of lentils), but the coconut milk one, which I reverse-engineered from a meal at a Sri-Lankan restaurant, is the most decadent and the most delicious.

We don't use ghee when we make dal with coconut, because it really doesn't need it. Sometimes we heat a bit of the coconut cream until it becomes oil, and use that to fry the onions in. The crucial thing with dal, as with all Indian dishes, is frying the heck out of the onions. Wait until they're well and truly brown, and some of them are black -- it's worth it. Also, toasting and grinding whole cumin makes a huge difference.

Mmm.

meeralee at 10:46PM on 11/25/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'Baked, New Frontiers in Baking'

Ice-cream stirred methodically until it was a melted bowl of soup.

I wouldn't say that I'm over it, exactly -- I'm just not that patient anymore.

meeralee at 2:15PM on 11/25/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'The Cook's Country Cookbook'

Spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, or potato salad.

Oof.

meeralee at 2:32PM on 10/20/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'The Modern Baker'

Oy. I bought a bottle of pomegranate molasses, and having no idea what to do with it but thinking it smelled delicious, decided to substitute it for regular molasses in a recipe for ginger-molasses thins.

Uh, yeah. Brilliant plan. Know what pomegranate molasses tastes like? Yup. Pomegranates. Those cookies were SOUR. Go me!

meeralee at 1:17PM on 09/22/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'Chocolate Epiphany'

I think I'd have a chocolate-espresso tart dusted with cocoa and a large curl of chocolate.

And I think it might have to be the size of my head.

meeralee at 2:20PM on 08/28/08

From Serious Eats

Win Fuchsia Dunlop's 'Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper'

Eggplant noodles with e-fu sauce. Sigh.

meeralee at 7:09PM on 08/01/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'The Food Life'

I love my local independent grocery store, Hyde Park Produce (I live in the Hyde Park neighborhood of South Chicago) so much that if they weren't right next to my apartment, I would probably move.

meeralee at 9:39PM on 07/18/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: 'Margaritas, Mojitos & More'

Basil. :-)

meeralee at 10:48PM on 07/01/08

From Serious Eats

Cook the Book: Grill Every Day

Barbecued husband!

Just kidding. My husband did make himself the center of a rather startling conflagration several Fourth's ago, though, when he opened the lid of a barbecue grill and was confronted by a flaming ball that singed his eyelashes and earned him the nickname "burnt toast."

Ahem. I like to make barbecued shrimp, prepared with a very simple olive oil, red chilli, and lemon juice marinade.

meeralee at 3:48PM on 06/23/08

From Serious Eats