Spaghetti Alla Carbonara is my favorite pasta dish. It’s basically just noodles with fat and cheese, so what’s not to like? When done right, it’s the cheapest gourmet meal you’ll ever have. The problem is, almost no one does it right.
An instant-read thermometer is indispensable in the kitchen and at the grill. Unfortunately, they’re often wrong. I discovered that recently when I slightly overcooked a small rack of lamb. Something had knocked my thermometer out of alignment, causing it be be off by a whopping 12 degrees. Luckily, it only takes a minute to recalibrate.
We make pestos pretty frequently, but that’s mostly because the herbs in our garden need to be trimmed occasionally. I made one the other day to dress some lamb. It always surprises me when people are impressed by homemade pesto. It literally takes two minutes to make.
I’m usually a stickler for fresh ingredients, but sometimes the prepackaged stuff is just easier. For my clam sauce, I like to use cans of minced clams. I sometimes eat these directly out of the can as a snack. It’s weird, I know, but I was never really a potato chip kind of guy. My mother always kept junk food in the house for my sisters, but she bought wild rice, minced clams and mac & cheese for me.
Sometimes I find myself in the mood for some good old-fashioned, unhealthy comfort food, Brady Bunch style. I didn’t have enough vegetables to make Alice’s famous meatloaf, so I decided to make some big meatballs, flatten them into patties, and fry them. And since I abhor the solid ketchup “crust” that people put on meatloaf, I decided to make a pan sauce instead.
I’ve always been more of a people-watcher than a beach reader. Before our recent vacation, I planned to listen to a lot of Bob Dylan and flip through some magazines between my frequent bouts of stir-craziness. I brought two books to the beach in case I got the itch to read something longer than a few paragraphs. One was Purple Cow, an advertising/marketing book. The other was Frank Stitt’s Southern Table: Recipes and Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill, a very large and heavy coffee table book. Purple Cow was pretty good, but I was on vacation to get away from work. Oddly enough, I read Frank Stitt’s cookbook cover to cover.
There are a thousand recipes for greens out there, and I’ve tried a lot of them. They’re all pretty good, but some are more complicated and don’t offer much of a reward for your hard work. I’ve come to rely on a relatively simple recipe that makes sweet and spicy greens with a mild, savory glaze.
Over the years, I’ve tried countless marinades, rubs and cooking styles to bring out the best flavor in pork chops. I’ve finally settled on the best recipe, which oddly enough is one of the easiest. When done this way, they come out sweet and tender. Most importantly, they taste like juicy pork chops, not like salty fruit juice.
One of the reasons my no-knead bread recipe is so successful is the pot it’s baked in. The heavy cast iron traps heat and moisture like an old-world brick oven, causing the bread to develop great texture and a hard crust. To create the perfect baking environment, the pot must be preheated in a 425-475° oven for about a half hour. For whatever reason (fashion, I presume), all the manufacturers of dutch ovens seem to be mimicking Le Ceuset
You know what all the ladies say; you’re not a real man until you’ve tricked out your overpriced, cast iron dutch oven. But if you one of those people who cares more about style than substance, you can pony up an additional $14 to Le Creuset for a stainless steel replacement knob that “can withstand any oven temperature.”
Remember how I said I was trying to cook healthier dishes at home? This isn’t one of them.
