Boston I: Fine Burgers of Beantown 13 Apr 08

Burger the First: An above-average room service burger.

For the most part my travels are foodcentric, if not completely food-related. Before undertaking any journey, my most extensive travel research is on good restaurants, local specialties and street food, often to the detriment of other necessary pieces of knowledge like language (except for food-related terms) and currency (except the prices of common food items). When I travel to a place I’ve been before - I lived in Cambridge and Boston for several years in grad school - I like a mix of old favorites and new experiences. Since they use dollars and speak English* in Boston, I was free to focus entirely on the food.

*One must, of course, point out the unique variety of English that is the Boston accent. Also, it may be convincingly argued that many Cantabrigians (yes, it’s what they’re called and yes, it’s irritating) speak a unique form of English called Critical Neo-Academese.

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You can’t beat this meat with a stick: Part Deux 06 Apr 08

Thyme for dinner, everyone! (Ba-da dum!)

Sometimes, life gives you extra Bolognese sauce. When that happens, I’m firmly of the mind that you should make lasagna Bolognese.

You’ll probably be tempted to invite some friends over for dinner when you do this, because one typically does not make a lasagna for two. I’m here to advise you that you might want to reconsider this; consider having your friends over on another night, a night when you’re having something not quite so good and you won’t mind having NO LEFTOVERS AT ALL because your friends LICKED the inside of the baking dish clean.

Just saying.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Redemption Burgers 27 Mar 08

I relish the thought of this week’s Smackdown! Ahoy-hoy! Rim shot!

I thank you all from the bottom of my shriveled little heart for all your commiseration following last week’s trouncing at the exacting hands of Thomas Keller. I am still coping with my sense of shame and loss, but my therapist assures me that it will only take a few years to work through. Yay!

This week, we decided to do a 180 from the French Laundry: burgers and fries. It may not sound like Smackdown material, but you’ll have to trust me on this one. Cindy Pawlcyn’s Big Small Plates brings us mini burgers with pickled onions and roasted pepper relish on black pepper biscuits, and papas bravas (fried potatoes with a tomato-chili-smoked paprika sauce). It has a lot of moving parts, but they all work together to produce a harmonious whole. It’s like what Jesus would make, if he were doing a burgers-and-fries Smackdown. Or maybe Rube Goldberg.

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i dare say, that is a dreadfully good sandwich. 10 Mar 08

Red sky in the morning, vegetarians take warning.

I guess I could have put something prettier above the fold, but I want people to know what they’re getting into here: a great big hunk of cow. More specifically, a full steakhouse on a bun. Steak, onions, stinky cheese, butter, spinach, the whole nine yards. Stuffed first into a bun, and then down my gullet. And then I called for the humidor and settled into my Louis XIV wingback to enjoy a fine single malt and peruse the latest issue of Angioplasty Afficionado. Tally fucking ho, my good chap!

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Holy cheese-filled beef, Batman! 31 Jan 08

It’s Thursday, I’m in love.

Tonight, from Susan Spicer’s Crescent City Cooking: herb cheese-stuffed beef filets with bordelaise sauce, simple roast potatoes and carrots, and green salad with cider dressing, apple, comte and hazelnut. This is the ultimate over the top need-to-impress-someone meal, and though it takes a little time to pull it all together each step is pretty simple. The cider dressing is something you’ll want to keep on hand at all times (in the fridge, in your backpack, in the glove compartment…), and the bordelaise takes the “tense” out of “intense” and replaces it with a puddle of drool.

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Leftovers for Lunch 22 Jan 08

People who need ribs are the luckiest people in the world.

The only thing better than beer-braised short ribs are more beer-braised short ribs.

We had lots of rib parts from Saturday night’s ribstravaganza.* Rather than hunching over the kitchen counter and gnawing at the bones like starved vultures, I decided to try and turn them into a respectable dinner. After picking the first two shreds off the bone, I realized that this task would involve more congealed beef tallow under the fingernails than I had anticipated. But I had already started and my fingernails were already befouled, so I stuck with it.

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January Monthly Mingle: Comfort Foods 20 Jan 08

This is where the ingredients picture would have gone if I had remembered to take it. Have some onions instead.

My favorite mid-winter dish to prepare on a cold, lazy weekend day: Belgian beer-braised short ribs. For this edition, I went with Asian-inflected short ribs with a hoisin-beer reduction, a blue cheese potato-parsnip puree, and some simple wilted spinach. It’s been a while since I’ve made short ribs, and I offer profuse thanks to What’s For Lunch Honey and the Monthly Mingle (for which this entry was written) for inspiring me to give it another go.

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