Ina Garten

Maple-Roasted Winter Squash

December 24, 2009 by Charles 3 Comments

Cooking offers the chance to learn something new.

Sometimes, it’s a new cooking style – broiling or deep frying, perhaps. Other times, cooking offers the opportunity to try a new spice or a new vegetable. When I learned the difference between sweet potatoes and yams, I went out and bought two different types of yams.

Not surprisingly, when I learned the difference between the different types of winter squash, I went out and bought three different types of squash. Among them were two varieties I had never tried: acorn and ambercup.

Roasting different varieties together has its advantages. It offers the chance …

Apple Cider Brined Roast Turkey

November 29, 2009 by Charles 9 Comments

Thanksgiving is no time for experiments. On any regular Thursday, the pizza parlor is just a phone call away. But on Thanksgiving, there is no such luxury.

This year, I stuck with Ina Garten’s recipe for roast turkey. Though, unlike the two previous years, I decided to brine my turkey – a technique which I had not yet tried. Brining – the process of immersing the meat in a salt-water mixture – works to dry and salt the meat by osmosis. That is, excess salt from the juice flows into the meat, while excess water from the meat, flows into the juice. Which doesn’t sound great: who wants dry, salty meat?

Fortunately, the osmotic process is not finished. As the salt enters the meat, …

Spanakopita

October 20, 2009 by Charles 19 Comments

During my senior year of high school, I got my first laptop. By today’s standards, it was slow and it was heavy. It hardly had any memory and it couldn’t even play a movie. But it had an ethernet port, and so, it had potential.

When I got to college, Firestone library was only a few hundred yards from my dorm room. But on a cold, wind-swept winter day, its collection and online database couldn’t have seemed farther. Fortunately, with a few keystrokes, and mouse clicks, its newspaper articles and scholarly journals were within reach. From the university network, I could also stream my Russian language files and download my French politics assignment. Early into freshman year, my laptop had become the epicenter of my college education.

Ten years later, …

Apple Pie

October 6, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

This weekend, Caitlin and I went apple picking in nearby Belleville, Illinois. Armed with our plastic bags, we each set off to collect the perfect apples. Careful not to overload on the apples, we each filled our respective bag to the half-way point. Yet, when we made it to the scale, we had collectively picked over sixteen pounds of Red and Golden Deliciousness.

Faced with the prospect of an overflowing fruit drawer, …

Ina Garten’s Perfect Pie Crust

October 6, 2009 by Charles 4 Comments

As with any recipe by Ina Garten, the question is not whether the dish will be great: it will be. Rather, the question usually is: “How much butter can I leave out, and still have a great dish?”

In this case, Ina called for twelve tablespoons of butter, which struck me as a bit much. I consulted my Cooking Light Dessert book, and found a nearly identical recipe, calling for six tablespoons. Being my judicious self, I simply…