Bread Crumbs

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…