Entrees

Three-Cheese Risotto

April 15, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

Having a food blog doesn’t stop me from asking silly food questions.

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I could not find the risotto. After several minutes of scrounging around the different rice and grain shelves, I decided to solicit help. As I explained to the store clerk, I was making three-cheese risotto, and all that was left on my list was what the recipe referred to as “risotto rice.” He kindly pointed me to arborio rice.

Risotto, I learned, does not refer to an ingredient, but rather to a dish.

The key to risotto…

Chicken Piccata

March 30, 2009 by Charles 2 Comments

“We have not an hour of life In which our pleasures relish not some pain, Our sours some sweetness.” — Philip Massinger.

Why does sour get such a bad name? The word is practically synonymous with misfortune and unpleasantness. A business deal goes sour. A friend develops sour grapes. A neighbor becomes a sour puss. You can’t help but develop a sour disposition. In fact, under these conditions, your whole outlook on life may turn sour.

These expressions are hardly novel or recent. Sour has held its pejorative crown for centuries. The expression “sour grapes” dates back …

Chicken Roulade

March 8, 2009 by Charles 5 Comments

Within my circle of friends, two of us cook. Which gave Jamey, the host of our weekly poker game, an idea. He would volunteer to host a cook-off between Eric and I – a Top Chef Deathmatch as he billed it. As part of the competition, Eric and I would be charged with creating an appetizer and an entrée in ninety minutes, which our friends would then collectively judge and critique. As part of the rules, Eric and I could bring our own proteins and rely on our girlfriends as sous-chefs. We could also help ourselves to any ingredients and cookware we found in Jamey’s apartment. The competition had yet another element. The four judges would be bringing…

Spaghetti and Meatballs

March 3, 2009 by Charles 1 Comment

In August 2002 (back in the early days of blogging), Julie Powell began an interesting project on her blog. Frustrated with her job, her marriage, and her living arrangements in one of the “outer boroughs,” she vowed to master the art of french cooking. That is, Powell decided to make every one of the 536 recipes contained in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year’s time. The project’s simplicity, balanced with its sheer scope, soon captured the interests of her fellow bloggers and several media outlets (and eventually earned her a book and movie deal).

On a much smaller scale, the Barefoot Bloggers make it their goal to blog roughly twenty-four of Ina Garten’s recipes every year – or two every month, which…

Thomas Jefferson’s Chicken Fricassee

March 1, 2009 by Charles 3 Comments

At a dinner honoring forty-nine Nobel laureates, President Kennedy looked around and pronounced that this was the “most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

That Thomas Jefferson was brilliant is undeniable. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He founded the University of Virginia. He was a renowned horticulturalist, botanist, and architect. He was an accomplished inventor, designing the Lazy Susan, a folding chair, and a pedometer, though he refused to pursue a patent on any of them.

That Thomas Jefferson dined alone is more suspect. …