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 …
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 …
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…
There are over twenty cookbooks on my kitchen shelf, the collection squeezed between a small, black, plastic bookend on one end, and the beige kitchen wall on the other end. From the kitchen, you can see the various spines, with a variety of colors, types, and themes. There are books on baking and grilling. There are books devoted only to Italian and Greek cooking. And there are books from restaurants encountered along the way.
My collection, in other words, has a nice variation. Except in one respect. On the wall side, wedged between my Cooking Light Desserts and Justin Wilson’s Cajun Cookbook, sits seven books, each spine beginning with the words “Barefoot Contessa.”
Ina Garten is, in other words, my go to chef. So with my New Year’s Resolution to make more main courses, I naturally…
For the new cooking year, one of my goals is to make more dinners.
I’ve become very comfortable with side dishes, breakfasts, appetizers, and dessert, but sometimes I lack the motivation to make a full-fledged entrée. When I first started cooking, I didn’t think I’d ever use the word “comfortable” to describe how I felt in the kitchen. But now that certain cooking styles and methods …
