Here’s a dialogue I keep having with myself: You haven’t given them any recipes Who needs recipes? Your readers might like one or two. You know, that’s why people come to a cooking blog. For recipes. They shouldn’t. No? No. Besides, I’m not very good with recipes. Mine are always slap-dash and imprecise. Then why [...]
Category Archives: Ingredient
Cooking methods: boil, steam, sauté
Also posted in bacon, boil, brussels sprouts, carrot, chop, Essay, extra virgin olive oil, onion, potato, salt, saute, sear, skirt steak, steam Leave a comment
A sample menu plan
One of the reasons I get to cook every night is that I spend several minutes Sunday coming up with a menu plan for the week’s dinners (I’ve also been cooking a while and don’t have to teach myself a set of new skills every day). Even if you’re a beginning cook, though, making a [...]
Mastering salt is the first step towards mastering food
“What’s the most important thing for a cook to know in your kitchen?” [Keller] paused, then said, “Seasoning.” “What do you mean, seasoning?” “Salt and pepper.” He paused again. “Salt, really.” “The most important thing for a cook to know is how to salt food?” “That’s right,” he said. -Michael Ruhlman, The Elements of Cooking [...]
Black Bean Tacos
I love transferrable skills. It’s one of the reasons I do my best to talk about understanding food rather than memorizing recipes. If you understand food, then you can take an idea and move it across an entire spectrum of entrees. Like, for example, the idea of including onion in a recipe without really including [...]
Also posted in black beans, cheddar cheese, mince, olive oil, onion, saute, simmer Tagged black beans, gluten free, vegan 1 Comment
Burning questions: what to consider when cooking fish
Q: How to pan fry fish without it flaking apart or burning? Pan-seared tilapia with bacon and shallots (links to a previous post) A: We’re all scared of fish. Undercooked, fish of any but the best quality ends up cold, clammy and unappetizing. Overcooked, it falls apart or ends up chewy. Overcooked fish also tends [...]