The alliteration wunderkind strikes again!
So, I have this recipe file that dates back to, oh, 1989. When I was 10. Yes, I’ve always been food crazed. Most of them are things I’ve never cooked: some family recipes, some things pulled from magazines and newspapers, or sent to me by friends. I thought it would be fun to go through and selectively try some of these out, and on this freaking cold ass day, chili sounded perfect.
Harold McGee, the author of On Food and Cooking, has a new column in the NY Times: The Curious Cook. I’ve been slowly trying to get my way through On Food and Cooking. It’s really a cool book if you’re interested in knowing what happens to food when cooks do various cooking things to it, and I think that if I manage to read the whole thing I’ll be a better cook. That’s the theory anyway. It’s kind of dense, though.
This new column could be a way to get the McGee goodness in smaller, more palatable doses. I’ll still try to do battle with the book, though–it will be defeated!
After Saturday’s hearty midwestern pork-and-potatoes dinner, Mr. X made me dinner on Sunday–stuffed pork tenderloin with roasted potatoes and brussel sprouts. Pork overload! It was very tasty, and the very best part was the Butternut Squash soup he’d made that morning–full of ginger and perfectly buttery and creamy. Yum. I don’t really know how he made it, as I was very busy sitting on the couch, probably watching the Food Network or something. If I can convince him to recall how he made it, I’ll put it up here. Thankfully, he did manage to keep all his fingers in the squash cutting process.
Pork dinners two nights in a row, frankly, made me blanch when I remembered that I still had a pound and a half of pork tenderloin in my refrigerator, waiting for my cooking prowess (ha!) to transform it into something…cooked…and edible. What to do, what to do?
I bastardized this recipe from Epicurious, and roasted it up Monday afternoon for a week’s worth of sandwiches. Here is what I did to it:
I am not a big pork eater. In fact, for many years I have stayed away from chops because I think they taste like farts. Maybe it was bad preparation in my past, which is what Miss Crystal insists must be case. Maybe it’s some kind of vicarious Jewishness (although a pretty shabby one, if that, because I luuurve bacon). For whatever reason, the pork cookin’ was something I have stayed away from. Until now. Now there is pork cookin’ with a vengeance.
I have no idea what compelled me to buy a 2 1/2 pound pork tenderloin at the Roche the other day, but I saw it, and I wanted it, and I bought it. Then I came home and tried to figure out how I was going to cook it for our Christmas Tree Decorating dinner that night. I wanted something simple, so I couldn’t eff it up too much, and I found this. Perfect.
Slashfood is featuring a cookie a week until Christmas, and I am all over that. I used to think I was no good at baking, but after my pumpkin cheesecake and oatmeal cookies and two loaves of whole-wheat break with nary a problem, I’m starting to revise this opinion. This week’s cookie: Chocolate Peppermint Drops.
Continue reading We are Chocolate Peppermint Cookies, and you will be happy if you eat us!
This week, the NYT addresses something I’ve always been peculiarly interested in: how much drinkin’ is too much drinkin’ when you’re With Child? In the grand tradition of American Fear Mongering, we’ve been taught to think that if a pregnant lady has even a sip of wine she’s dooming her childto mental retardation, and maybe she should be locked up. We’re never good at drawing lines between moderation and abuse, and with that knowledge in mind, I’ve always thought that the French probably have the right idea–a few drinks (not hard liquor) a week is probably fine.
It seems some obstetricians (unofficially) agree. I appreciate Julia Moskin, the author, for being really upfront about the realities of being preggers, and still wanting to have a beer with your husband at the end of the day. And frankly, I think that if a lady is giving birth to anothing human being, she’s responsible enough to make her own decisions about her own body.
As a person who doesn’t cook a lot of fish, I’ve been especially intimidated by the shrimps. Hence, in my few shrimp-cooking experiences, I always bought them not just peeled and deveined, but already cooked, so as to avoid the “what the hell do I do with this thing” question altogether. Whenever I saw the little guys at the fish counter, I couldn’t really tell if they’d been peeled and deveined, or just beheaded, or what, and I certainly didn’t know how to do all that stuff to them myself. Yeah, people told me it was easy, but…well, ewwww.
Well, tonight I had my first experience with shrimp I had to deconstruct myself.
Apparently, if everyone else jumped off a bridge I would totally do it, too.
I have recently become a bit crazy about all food- and cooking-related things. I always enjoyed cooking, but never really had a clue about technique or flavor combinations (yes, I once made spaghetti with beets, garbanzo beans, and feta). Well now I’m learning, and I’m ready to share with you the knowledge that I imbibe. Or something.
Of course, I don’t have a decent digital camera yet (I’ve been resolutely clinging to my 35 mm film), and it’s a Universally Awknowledged Truth that a food blog without pictures is scarcely a food blog at all. But hopefully that will be remedied soon, and then the whole tricky Taking Pictures of Food will be another thing I have to learn. (You’ll see that the early attempts are less than awesome.)
I hope my adventures are suitably amusing, and merely strive to be half as witty and creative as so many of the great food writers already out there in the world.