I’ve been making leek and potato soup for years. I couldn’t tell you where the recipe came from; it’s cobbled together from several websites and magazine articles. I don’t ever cook it the same way twice. If I’m busy doing something else, I’ll slow cook it for hours until the potatoes break down. If I only have 45 minutes or so, I’ll puree the soup and serve immediately. Still, I thought I’d finally put the basic recipe on the site so I can reference it later.
I remember trying to make ‘smashed potatoes’ once before and it not being a very good experience. However, Cook’s Illustrated recently did a piece on smashed potatoes that took some of the guesswork out of the process. I’ve made them with baby red potatoes and Yukon golds recently, and they came out great both times.
I’ve been making homemade potato chips ever since the wife gave me a mandoline. I like my chips nice and thick, and I can control what goes into them when I make them at home. It’s taken me a while to perfect the process, but I’ve finally gotten to the point where I thought I’d preserve my pointers for posterity.
This weekend, I decided to make some fresh French onion dip to eat during the Alabama and Auburn games. You have to caramelize the onions, which takes about twenty minutes, so it’s a little time consuming. I wouldn’t have considered doing this on Saturday if I didn’t have a TV in my kitchen. Thankfully, I can wheel the island into the middle of the room and chop onions while I’m watching the game. What could go wrong?
It took me years to perfect my chicken carnitas recipe. Some batches came out dry, others came out greasy, but most were just bland. What’s funny is that the best-tasting version I eventually settled on is also the easiest to prepare.
The wife and I have been making carnitas for years. My recipe has evolved over time. It’s based on one I saw in Bon Appetit. It’s really easy and makes a great meal.
I’ve been craving fish for a while, so I decided to pick up some grouper. We had some zucchini and roma tomatoes that were getting a little ripe, so I wanted to incorporate them into the dish as well. As part of our attempt to eat healthier, I decided to bake everything. I ran across a recipe from Steamy Kitchen that included a helpful YouTube tutorial on how to steam fish and vegetables in parchment paper, so I thought I’d give it a try. It was a huge success.
Ever since I started making my own noodles, I’ve come to realize that pasta sauce should be more like a gravy than a soup. I’ve been experimenting with thinner sauces lately and this one came out really good. It’s cheap and easy, but you have to take your time or it’ll come out bland.
I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never really cared for the typical Southern version of cheese grits. The grits are tasteless, the cheese is lumpy, and the eggs dry everything out. When the casserole cools down, you have to cut a cube out of the solid yellow mass and smash it down with the back of your spoon. That’s about as unappetizing as it gets. My version makes a rich and creamy dish that actually tastes like cheesy grits instead of a corn-based custard.
After my successful experiment with homemade linguine noodles over the weekend, I decided to make some spaghetti. Over the years, I’ve learned to experiment incrementally to see what my flavor limitations are. Like with bread, pasta is 95% flour. That means that you’d have to add a lot of another ingredient to be able to taste it. I thought I’d roast some garlic and mix it with some olive oil in lieu of an egg in the basic dough recipe. I figured even if we couldn’t taste the garlic, the noodles would be healthier.
