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Posts Tagged ‘cooking’

Black Gold

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 25 Mar 2013| 2 Comments »

Black TrufflesFoodie Alert!

If you don’t know already, it’s black truffle season. What? What’s that? You can’t afford them? You refuse to pay $500/ounce for these bad boys?

I don’t blame you. I won’t pay that much for anything unless it’s going to save my frakking life. (Or my wife’s life, but don’t tell her. She’ll get a big head.)

So, where did I get these black beauties? No, I didn’t fly to France and take my snout for a walk in the woods. No, I didn’t waylay Gordon Ramsay on his way home from work. No, there isn’t some guy in a Pioneer Square alley with a trenchcoat and a gruff voice who says “Psst. Buddy. Looking for some fungi?” (Okay, maybe there is a guy like that, but (a) I haven’t met him and (b) he’s probably selling a different kind of mushroom.)

No, I found Oregon Mushrooms, a small(ish) but respected purveyor of mushrooms for over a decade. And they grow black truffles. Yep. Real black truffles. White ones, too (more about those after the jump).

Expensive? Well, yes, but at $20/ounce, it’s not impossible, at least not for a once-a-year treat. (more…)

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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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