Cheap Ass Monday: Down by the Boardwalk 30 Jun 08

Not actually on, near, under, or down by a boardwalk.

I’m going to tell you right now: this post? Is not really funny. Feel free to leave if that’s a problem, and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming later this week.

As you can imagine, it’s been a bit of a rough weekend; I haven’t really felt like cooking, let alone photographing and describing my meals in detail. Funerals and their associated activities are always kinda rough, and I’m not nearly far enough in the mourning process for my own father not to have all that shit get dredged up, compounding things. Blargh.

I gotta tell you, the Orthodox Jews and their burial services? I to the N to the T-E-N-S-E. It’s so…biblical, with the actual rending of garments and the shoveling and the Hebrew and the phlegm. I’m emotionally drained just thinking about it.

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Cheap Ass Mondays: A Little Fancy, A Little Schmancy 23 Jun 08

I made this dinner purely as an excuse to gloat about my egg-poaching skills. Seriously, look at that fucking thing. It’s like art.

Did I make this dinner just so I could gloat about my infinitely awesome egg-poaching skills?  I may have.  But maybe I ALSO made it so I could gloat about my willingness to make things painstakingly by hand - let us not forget the angel hair cucumbers - rather than relying on the modern conveniences that would hasten dinner’s journey to my table. Because I? Am better than you.

To wit: fresh, hand rolled and cut pasta tossed with onions, garlic, red spinach and bacon and topped with a poached egg. Proof that cheap can still be pretentious!
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In which people get the animal fats they want and deserve. 07 Jun 08

All cow fat, all the time.

Let everyone’s collective panties be unbunched: tofu doesn’t live here any more.

I’m not giving up on integrating more vegetarian or vegan meals into my repertoire, but I am giving up on frankenfoods like tofu. It’s still not in the same category as truly unearthly “foods” like quorn, but my kitchen doesn’t need it. Healthy vegetarian foods are easily assembled using whole, fresh ingredients.

That’s not what this is about, though. Well, at least the “healthy” part: this is real deal mac and cheese, the kind made with a classic butter-and-flour roux, milk that has been expelled from a real live cow and not extruded from a bean of some kind, and a shit-ton of cheese. And it feels GOOD, SO GOOD, right up to and including the moment that the final particle of arterial plaque settles in your carotid artery, stopping all bloodflow to the brain.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Now With 100% Less Pork! 29 May 08

Get ready for a whole lotta beige.

I’m having a very love hate relationship with pork right now. On one hand, pork is unbelieveably delicious, and bacon is one of my major food groups. On the other, exposure to 18+ hours of smoking pig has left every one of my pores, hairs, lungs, bath towels, dogs and pieces of upholstered furniture embedded with immense amounts of microscopic pork particulate. Which is not as much fun as it sounds, trust me.

The week has been pretty meat-free since Memorial Day to give my kidneys some time to recover from protein overload, so it was as good a week as any to bust out The New Moosewood Classics for some tofu mac and cheese and a simple green salad and vinaigrette. Because if I’m going to eschew pork, there should at least be cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

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The 12 Minute Challenge: Penne alla Vodka 06 May 08

Yum-O!…I’m already sorry I said that. LIGHTEN UP, PEOPLE.

This delicious meal of penne alla vodka and spinach salad with caesar-ish dressing, pecorino cheese and proscuitto can be made in 12 minutes.

Can a post describing it be written in 12 minutes? It’s 10:06. Let’s go!

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Spring Lamb By Way of Italy By Way of My Ass 27 Apr 08

My ass is due east of Suck On It, Tunisia.

If I’m not cooking directly from a recipe or making one of my standby dishes, I’m trying to riff off someone else’s ideas. I can poach a mean egg and I have a decent sense of what goes with what (e.g., bacon goes with everything), but I don’t flatter myself that I’m particularly innovative or have some kind of culinary talentg. I have more of an all-around genius than a specific savant-like gift.

Every once in a while, though, I make up a dish that seems pretty unique (at least to me), an unexpected combo of flavors. I think this dish is one of those, at least until I buy a new cookbook and find out that it’s some kind of classic that I should have already known. Fuckin’ A.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. 17 Apr 08

Prunes, prunes, the musical fruit; the more you eat, the more you shit uncontrollably.

So I pretty much dream about prune-stuffed gnocchi with vin santo and foie gras every night. And often during the day, as well. So it’s a good thing that No. 9 Park gives out the recipe on request. And since Chef Barbara Lynch has a cookbook coming out this year and I’m taking the liberty of assuming that this recipe - her signature - will be in it, I feel justified in selecting it as this week’s smackdown.

Because maybe this will help jar the dish from my head. GET OUT OF MY BRAIN, YOU DIABOLICAL POTATO PILLOWS.

Also: This meal involves a $55 stick of butter. I am not kidding.

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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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You can’t beat this meat with a stick: Quick Heretical Bolognese 02 Apr 08

You know you want it, baby.

Traditionally, Bolognese sauce is an all-day affair, which is why most people only make it on weekends if they make it at all. I reject that, because when I want a big pot of meat, I want it right fucking now. Also, because the recipe in The Silver Spoon, Italy’s Joy of Cooking, doesn’t have you simmer it all that long, and that book don’t lie.

This version veers even further into heterodoxy with the substitution of ground lamb for ground veal, and a pinch of cinnamon to play off the lamb and add a touch of non so che cosa (that’s je ne sais quoi, or “what the fuck is that?” for you non-polyglots). I’ve done it with veal and it’s good, but the eyes of a thousand baby cows haunt my sleep. Fully-grown animals, not so much.

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When life gives you lemons, make orzo with goat cheese and spring veggies. 24 Mar 08

What do you mean, that’s not how the saying goes? Fuck you.

You know how sometimes you come home after a long, tiring day sitting in front of a computer and stapling various pieces of paper to other pieces of paper, and you want a satisfying meal that won’t take very long? Usually when that happens I order in some lamb shawarma, because who wants to cook when they’re fucking tired? I had to collate things today, and I walked to the water cooler twice. But sometimes, I decide to throw some crap in a pot and see if I can make a go of it myself, and the result ends up being a tasty, easy, quick meal that instantly becomes part of the weekday repertoire.

Of course, sometimes it ends up being an inedible pot of shit and I have to order shawarma anyway. But this is not one of those times, I promise.

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