Brunch

Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

January 22, 2009 by Charles 5 Comments

We live in an era of convenience, where promises of easier and faster abound. We have drive-through windows for almost every facet of our life – from the pharmacy window, to the bank window, to the fast-food window. Indeed, the specter of convenience is particularly pernicious when it comes to the kitchen and our collective eating habits.

In the 1950s, one out of three Americans was overweight, and just one out of ten Americans was considered obese. But with the advent of Jack In the Box (founded in 1951), McDonald’s (1955), and others of its kind, obesity rates have skyrocketed. At last count, 65% of Americans were overweight, and 30% of Americans were obese.

And hamburgers are not the only culprit….

Home Fries

January 18, 2009 by Charles 3 Comments

Whenever I go out to breakfast with my siblings, my two brothers always order hash browns. No matter where we go or what they order, there is going to be a side of hash browns. They love their hash browns – or so they think.

What my brothers really love are home fries. And the confusion is not their fault. For whatever reason, hash browns, especially outside the South, has become a generic term to describe almost any sort of fried potato. This is incorrect, and I’m here to set the record straight.

Hash browns are shredded or finely diced potatoes that are pan-fried to a crisp brown. Typically, hash browns do not have anything added to them. Home fries, meanwhile, …

Cheese Grits

December 9, 2008 by Charles 2 Comments

Not every great recipe requires seven steps and several stopwatches. Cheese grits are one such example.

Grits are crushed kernels of dried corn. The dried kernels are crushed between millstones and the resulting fragments are sorted according to density. The dense shards are grits, and the lighter shards are cornmeal. Polenta is an even finer grind of yellow corn, with all the particles of flour later removed. These stone-ground grits can be made from either white corn or yellow corn, with little difference in taste between the respective varieties.

Stone-grounds grits are coarser than …

Popovers

November 17, 2008 by Charles 7 Comments

Popovers are a fickle lot. Sometimes they don’t pop. Sometimes they explode. And sometimes, they simply refuse to come out of their cups. According to one article, chefs at Neiman Marcus spent five weeks perfecting their popover recipe, experimenting with nearly a dozen variations before arriving at their now-famous recipe. Popovers, they felt, were worth perfecting.

I couldn’t agree more. Growing up, …

Buttermilk Pumpkin Pancakes

November 9, 2008 by Charles 2 Comments

Sunday pancakes are a bit of a family tradition. I can remember Dad yelling “PANCAKES” and all of us rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, and running down the stairs to plates full of warm, stacked pancakes. The first one down could usually claim the Sunday comics, and first dibs on the syrup. Brothers being brothers, we also competed to see who could out-eat the others. Fortunately, I think Dad usually ran out of batter.

Last week, a co-worker brought in a pumpkin pie – a real pumpkin pie, she noted. Not one of those …