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Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Kitchen Gadget Purge

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , on 01 Mar 2013| 5 Comments »

Simple LivingIt’s time to make some pasta!

Why? Because if I don’t, I have to throw out my pasta maker. Them’s the rules. Yes, that’s right. I run my kitchen by Alton Brown’s “Use it or Lose it” system.

Foodies accrete clutter–That shiny new thingumbob at Sur La Table, that “People who bought that also bought this” add-on from Amazon, those stupid whatsit prezzies from well-meaning relatives. They all build up. (Some say they even multiply in the late hours of the evening, while the dishwasher is running.)

Alton’s “Use it or Lose it” system is a great way to de-clutter your kitchen and simplify your life. I strongly recommend it, if for no other reason than it provides a guilt-free excuse to get rid of all that junk. Here’s how it works.

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Something Old, Something New

Posted in Food, Low Tech, tagged , , , , , , , on 23 Jan 2013| Leave a Comment »

As I’ve often mentioned, I do not like single-taskers in my kitchen. In order for a single-tasker to remain in my kitchen it must:

  1. do its job very well
  2. take up a minimum of space
  3. be inexpensive

Today, I’ve got two of them. One was a gift from this past holiday season, and one is an old stand-by that has proven itself time and again. (more…)

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Cheese Food

Posted in Food, Low Tech, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 15 Jan 2013| 2 Comments »

Ages ago, in a place and time long forgot, I acquired an old-school cheese lyre. It was, essentially, a Y-shaped piece of steel with a stiff wire across the opening. It did not have one of those roller bars that dictate the thickness of your slice of cheese; the makers assumed you were an adult, and could decide for yourself how thick you wanted your cheese, from wafer-thin to inch-thick hunk. It was a marvel of low-technology—a bent piece of steel with a wire—and it lasted nigh on twenty years.

Two years ago, it broke. Since then, I’ve been looking for another one, but it’s impossible. (more…)

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A Brisket, A…Brasket…Whatever

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , on 08 Jan 2013| Leave a Comment »

Simple LivingBrisket. The word alone can conjure images of bubbehs and kosher delis on the Lower East Side. It can also conjure images of oven slavery and hours of kitchen torture that produce only a tough, stringy mess.

I’ve seen dozens of recipes, each calling for anywhere from 9 to 18 hours of preparation and cooking time. Feh. What I have for you is an easy and (so far, for me anyway) foolproof recipe for a nice, thinly sliced, savory brisket.

This is for a large cut of meat (providing days’ worth of leftovers!), so you must have a large enough pot. I used a hard anodized ovenproof 8 quart oval pot, which can hold a 5 – 6 lb brisket snugly, and can move easily from stovetop to oven. However, if your pot isn’t as big, reduce the size of the cut to fit.

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Gear Up

Posted in Food, Low Tech, tagged , , , , , , , , on 09 Nov 2012| Leave a Comment »

And for the Foodies…a couple of gear recommendations.

First, a great stocking stuffer idea.

I’ve made a bit of a study of corkscrews. I’ve tried a ton of them, of nearly every type. There’s the old-school helix-with-a-handle jobs; turn the handle and pull with all your might. There are the standard wing version (or, as I always thought, the little man who raises his arms when you twist his head). For a decade or so, the two-prong slip-n-grip models ruled the world; they were good, too, but they’re not as popular now. Most recently, it’s the “rabbit” type that’s in vogue; a gripper and a handle that plunges the screw down into the cork in one clean shoop, and pulls it out on the pull-back.

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Back in Stock

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 01 Nov 2012| 1 Comment »

There are some times when life opens up the box in which you’ve been thinking since…since you’ve been thinking. Last week, that happened to me. It wasn’t earth-shattering or life-changing. It was a small, simple idea about a small, simple thing. I love moments like that.

Last week, I wrote about consommé and received a comment from my friend, Iron Chef Leftovers, over at the Cheap Seat Eats blog. He mentioned how his stock never got cloudy because his stock never boiled.

When I read that, I guffawed. Literally. I guffawed. Reason? Because no matter how assiduously I oversee my stock while it’s coming up to the simmer, and no matter how much attention I give it during the long process, it always comes out cloudy. Even when I succeed in keeping it below the boil, there’s always a cloud of particulate matter in the stock.

But this is beside the point, and this was not outside the box of my current thinking. The thing he said that stopped me mid-guffaw was this:

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Consommé

Posted in Food, Low Tech, tagged , , , , , , on 26 Oct 2012| 8 Comments »

Obey the Kitty!(All the puns I could have used to title a post on stock, consommé, and au jus are terrible, so I refuse to pain you with them. Besides, you’re hearing them all in your head right now, anyway.)

Egg whites and I have a long, antagonistic history. I don’t “get” them, and they don’t do much for me. It all goes back to my attempt, at the age of about twelve, of making an angel food cake, from scratch, while my family was out for the day. “Whip the egg whites until they form peaks,” the recipe said. So, bowl in arm and whisk in hand, I beat them until my wrist was ready to crumble. What’s a “peak” anyway? How does one judge”peakiness”? I poured the resulting froth into the cake pan, presuming it would rise during cooking (don’t all cakes rise during cooking?) I took it out of the oven just as my family arrived home. The resulting half-inch high hard-pan custard…jerky…would forever be known as my Angel Food Flop. Egg whites and I have never gotten along, since.

One of the things I’ve always wanted to be able to make is a nice, flavorful, crystal clear beef stock. A consommé, to be precise. Years ago, I went to my copy of La Varenne Pratique to find out how to do it. Great. Egg whites. I tried again and again, and all I got was cloudy stock and a couple of wasted eggs. Or worse. Enter Julia Child.

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