After work and a trip to the gym, it may be 8:00 by the time I get home. And despite a liberal, daytime-snacking policy, I’m hungry for dinner by that time.
Even though I enjoy cooking, a Wednesday evening — with only a few hours left before bedtime beckons — is not the best time to launch into an hour-long culinary experience. Quick, easy, and delicious are the weekday watchwords.
Sloppy Joe fits the bill. This meal …
Whenever I’m in a sour mood or feeling down, I reach into my fruit drawer, and pull out my lemons. For me, lemons are not synonymous with problems – lemons are the solution.
I had been wanting to make a lemon soufflé for several weeks now. The first recipe I tried had a good lemon flavor, but did not puff as much as I would have liked. It also had a faint taste of the corn starch that figured prominently among the ingredient list.
I scrapped that recipe, and created my own, …
Every so often, I like to treat myself to a steak. During the week, I often settle for a cold sandwich of almond-butter and jelly, chicken salad, or sliced turkey. Lunch is unabashedly dull. If I have the energy, I try to make something more exciting for dinner: fish, perhaps, or even arepas, the Venezuelan corn cakes that I recently discovered.
Fish and arepas are appealing because they are quick and easy to cook. But so is steak and so is couscous (provided I don’t make it more complicated than necessary). And unlike a broiling fish, there’s a certain pleasure in hearing the sizzle of the steak, as the hot iron meets the cool, raw side of the meat. After a quick flip and a few minutes in the oven, the steak is cooked, leaving you five minutes of eager anticipation, as the steak cools and cooks under its foil tent.
If you remember to marinate the …
Quinoa is a pseudocereal – a plant that looks like a grain and behaves like a grain – but that, in fact, is more closely related to spinach and beets, than any wheat or oat. Gluten-free and packed with protein, quinoa has seen its popularity surge in recent years.
Unfortunately, this sudden rise in popularity has produced unintended consequences in the global market.
As the demand for quinoa has surged, so has its price, commensurate with the laws of supply and demand. Bolivian farmers have responded to the demand by shipping their quinoa harvest abroad, reaping …
As I’ve noted before, it’s important to have a food gameplan when picking Caitlin up from the airport. That means having a restaurant and itinerary picked out in advance of pick-up.
In addition, I also like to have a snack waiting for Caitlin when she arrives – a little something to tide her over during the drive back into the city. Often, the snack is home-made, something sweet that I’ve made either that day, or the day before. Occasionally, though, time gets ahead of me, and I have to settle on something from the store.
But whether it was store-bought or home-made, I had, apparently, developed a steady habit of having a snack in the car on those airport trips. To the point where I had created a nearly Pavlovian connection between the airport and baked goods.
Sure enough, …
If you know Caitlin and me, you know that we love a good pancake. You can find us at IHOP now and then, but for the most part, we prefer making our own. And boy have we: from gingerbread to butternut squash to lemon ricotta.
From the sheer number of pancakes we make, you might think that pancakes hold a special place in our relationship. You’d be right — I made banana sour cream pancakes for Caitlin on our first date (and in spite of my friends’ concerns about having a date in the morning).
So when Caitlin suggested …
When I’m in the supermarket checkout line, I often look longingly at the Cook’s Illustrated in the magazine racks. The magazine always looks so informative and helpful. The sleek black and white drawings, the hands-on, practical tips, and the absence of advertisements. But at $5.95, it always gives me that moment of pause.
So I was particularly excited…
Popovers are one of my favorite things to make – and eat. The only problem is that, right now, I’m usually cooking for one. And it’s just not safe to leave me alone with warm popovers. Indeed, the last time that happened, I wolfed down five vanilla eggnog popovers before noon. I think I was able to save one for Caitlin, but I may be wrong.
This past Friday, I attended a pot-luck “dinner.” Only instead of the usual dinner items, everyone was charged with bringing a brunch item. There were donuts, scrambled eggs, french toast, more french toast, smoked salmon, bagels, and the like.
My contribution, naturally, was popovers. Herb and cheese popovers to be exact. I had been meaning…
Choosing a recipe can sometimes feel like putting together a baseball team. It is the home chef as general manager.
In each field, the objective is the same — to please the folks at home by offering them a winning dish while remaining within the allotted budget. The objective is straightforward. As is the theory behind it: acquire the best ingredients, assemble, and serve warm.
But this process is never as straight forward as it seems. Expensive ingredients, like high-priced free agents, may…
A few months ago, in one of my nightly phone dates with Charles, the topic of Valentine’s Day came up. Since we live in Memphis and Cincinnati this year, we were planning to spend the holiday apart, a reality that left me somewhat bummed.
Now, I’m not wedded (pun intended) to the February 14 greeting card extravaganza, but the prospect of spending the night alone was still unappealing. So, after agreeing to acknowledge the occasion on our next visit, Mr. Romance reminded me …
