one and a half cups of sugar for $3.79. fancy, super-molasses dark brown sugar (billington’s dark brown molasses sugar). i’m behind on my issues of gourmet because of studio, and i flipped through the…november? december? issue and glimpsed a two-handled bowl-cup filled with some sort […]
it’s a good thing i didn’t eat breakfast. because i just made a cake that made me remember why millions of people survived without chocolate cake for centuries. typically i’m not a huge fan of vanilla-flavored cakes; they tend to be overly dry, or have […]
looks like a muffin, but really it’s a nicely flaky crust shaped like a muffin that contains a mixture of pork, beef, onions, carrots, peas, and other sundry things. and baked together for close to an hour, it definitely hits the spot. if we consider the shape of the pie, i find it a bit lacking – i think what is really needed is a muffin top pan (or, no pan at all) so that the pie is shallower.
but let me start from the beginning. what i was aiming for was basically comfort food – but luscious, stick-to-your-ribs, mind-blowing, “this is just a meat pie??!” comfort food.
i especially love things that you eat with your hands, and that is what a meat pie is (yes, i realize the photograph has a fork in it). we eat with forks and knives so often that it’s surprising and completely sinful to eat something with your hands, which hide the food object while you consume it furtively. a meat pie is different from buns, muffins, cookies, rolls, all of those other things that we eat with our hands. you can cradle it in your hands, and there is something about a completely sealed pastry enclosure that makes you think it must hold something wonderful inside. because it’s handheld, you can be completely selfish and keep it all for yourself, unless you’re a generous soul, and this makes it all the more sinful because you don’t want to share it with anyone. and this is what a meat pie should be. (more…)
sometime (again, my memory is pretty much shot) after my final review, carrie wanted to make coq au vin from the latest issue of cook’s illustrated. i offered to make dessert, and then cast about thinking of a winter dessert that would be suitable. i […]
take a moment to ponder the following phrase: “sausages with sherry caramel glazed pears.” have you ever heard anything more wonderful in your life? it was even better than i could have expected. sausage? glorious. sherry? sure. caramel glazed pears? oh yeah. then, i was […]
looking at my favorite food blogs, i’m starting to realize that half (ok, maybe a third) of having a successful food blog is having a really fabulous variety of dishware and silverware. porcelain, stoneware, metal, glass, different colors and shapes, and the like. i have my bowl collection, but it sits in the cabinets, loved only by pasta and ice cream; apparently i need to make better use of all of these things i have acquired. these are the times when i wish i had a couple of people to cook for every night, and then i could plate everything individually and it would be wonderful. i think the most successful dishware use i’ve had in the past year or so was the chocolate party celina and i had, where i got to break out all of my ramekins for the panna cotta, plus sundry tiny glasses that i own (like those fabulous amber glass ones that i bought for 25 cents at the mit furniture exchange). it reminds me of the times in high school when i would go to yard sales in concord with jessy and nicola, trolling for cheap glass in pretty colors that i could use in my pottery (for your information, crushed glass settled in the bottom of a piece of pottery destined for the glaze kiln melts into a crackled pattern). i’ve thought about yard sales a few times since i’ve moved to cutcat, but i don’t really want cambridge yard sales – students’ yard sales, young people’s yard sales, containing random ikea furniture and other bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. i don’t want another “lack” style table, i want cool random crap – something more readily available in yard sales in the wealthy suburbs. i dream of a kitchen full of mismatched yet beautiful dishware that holds the possibility of infinite permutations.
tonight v and i made dinner. i was feeling too lazy to go out to the supermarket (also, i had gone out a couple times already so i didn’t want to spend more money, and i felt the need to be near my computer to at least feign doing work), so we worked with what i had in the fridge. and in the end, it was quite respectable. there is always a very specific type of satisfaction that comes from using up the leftovers in your fridge. i had some roast turkey that my mother had made and given me last week, along with some snow peas, grape tomatoes, and broccoli. then there were the staple onions, some shallots i found in a cupboard, and v’s yen for biscuit (or starch of some kind). we decided on a casserole, so i sauteed the onions, then the shallots with the snow peas and tomatoes, then the broccoli, and tossed it all into a bowl. i thought some eggs might be nice, but instead of adding them raw, i scrambled them and tossed them in as well. we found some cheese in the fridge and grated that in, then baked it covered with the biscuit topping. it was actually rather like a patchwork pot pie, which is entirely wonderful when you’re still subconsciously missing american food. (more…)
it always begins like this – i had bought something at star because it was on sale (raspberries at 2 pints/$5), with no actual plans to make anything in particular. as i had bought them a significant number of days ago, carrien and i went […]
carrie: and when we go to star, we could get – me: pork loin! carrie: yeah, that too…but i was thinking of ice cream. (24 hours later) carrie: last night i had a dream about rare meat…i think it was the pork loin. * * […]
right now i’m sitting at the kitchen counter, my impending chicken broth on obsessive surveillance for the purpose of skimming off any foam that dares break the surface of the broth. i have vague memories of michael ruhlman’s book about food school and a raft, but i can’t remember if i’m supposed to skim it off or not, so off it comes.
the countertop on which my laptop sits is completely clean. gloriously clean, in fact, because i am anal and it shows, in the wonderfully white, white countertop.
yesterday v came over for dinner and carrien and i made dinner. carrien and i had talked about making risotto the day before, but didn’t make set plans until about 7 the next evening. in anticipation of beet risotto, which we had looked since we had beets from our boston organics delivery a few weeks ago, i wrapped the beets in foil and stuck them in the oven to roast. they were a bit squishy and wrinkly but i washed ’em, foiled ’em, and hoped for the best. (more…)
did you know that trader joe’s (at least the one on boylston) now carries a brand of herbs called “infinite herbs”? if only the “infinite” were true. at any rate, the herbs are perfectly good and a whole 60 cents cheaper than herbs at star […]