10 Reasons Bolognese Is No Baloney

Whenever I ask Jenny what I should cook for guests, her #1 answer, no matter what time of day or night, is “Bolognese.” Sure, it’s tasty, but there are many reasons why Jenny likes me to do it. Ten in fact…

Cooking with Orange Peels: Beware Kumquat Mouth

Last night, Jenny made an amazing dish from this month’s Bon Appetit: Pork Tenderloin Stir Fry with Tangerines. It was one of the most original stir fries I’d had in a while (that shit gets boring fast, let me tell ya). After I drew a squiggly string of sriracha around the dish then mixed it all up, it was super tasty. But after you ate too many of those tangerine wedges, you got what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, “kumquat mouth.”

Gnocchi Gnotes

The Holiday of Eating came and went, and with gut officially busted, I am collecting my thoughts. We didn’t go turkey+stuffing+sweet potatoes+broccoli casserole or creamed spinach or whatever this year. Instead we did rack of lamb+butternut squash gnocchi+spinach salad with pomegranate vinaigrette+crostini di fegatini. Treasonously Continental in the eyes of those Teabagging types, but plenty good and festive to us.

Not much to say about the rack of lamb besides “Hard to screw up” and “I screwed up anyway.” (Note to self: Now will you buy a damn digital thermometer, you asswipe???) But the gnocchi was a success/failure of a different color. A nice lively orange color.

Urfa Spiced Lamb Kebab: Their Pic, My Pic

Made Saveur’s Urfa (Spiced Lamb) Kebab, from the May 2009 issue. Followed the super-easy recipe with no troubles. I did broil instead of grilling (hey, it was drizzly!). The magazine’s beauty shot is what you see at left, with that tomato. Here’s what mine looked like:

Lettuce, Slice or Tear?

It’s just one of those things I feel may be a 50/50 split. When you’re making a salad with these big ole red-leaf lettuce leaves, do you rip them or slice them? I kinda like the look of sliced romaine in my caesar salad, but there’s something very culinary about tearing it up. So, like, I dunno.

Making and Canning Jam at Home (or 47 Different Ways To Die)

You hear “homemade jam,” and you think of grandmas puttering around a kitchen, talking to Tweetie bird and stirring a gently steaming pot, saying “Oh dear this” and “Oh dear that.” But I’ve been there, and I know the reality. I know the sting of hot bubble burns, the throbbing of skin-on-glass doozies, and the adrenaline spike of hundreds of near-misses that could have scarred me for life at the very least. Making jam is entering a world of fiery pain, my friend. Proceed with caution.

Con-diments and Other Franken-groceries

What’s a “con-diment”? Honey mustard, for one. (Secret: It’s just honey and mustard mixed together, probably of way shittier quality than the honey and mustard you already own.) Pad Thai sauce, too. Sounds exotic, but why spend $4 for a tiny jar of ketchup, sugar and fish sauce. If you’re going that route, might as well pick up a jar of Goober, too. More pre-packaged scams, off the top of my head:

Brussels Was Meant to Burn

Brussels sprouts are awesome, but I didn’t know that for like 30+ years. And the right way to cook Brussels sprouts is even awesomer, which is maybe why I didn’t know if for even longer. The main thing is to slice them each in half and burn the bejeezus out of them.

Baking Soda: Secret Pal or Two-Faced Bitch?

In the decade before he died, after 80 years of eating other people’s good food, my grandfather became a great cook in his own right. One of his tricks, when cooking a tomato-based soup he called beef borscht, was to toss in a spoonful of baking soda. It would bubble like lava and emit the most noxious ammonia smell at first, but after stirring it a while, it turned the pinkish red of new tomato into a deep rouge of a long-simmered sauce.

The Gentleman from Tel Aviv Responds

Message from Guy, one half of my Israeli-food mentoring squad: