My Go-To Risotto

As I’ve written before, risotto is one of those dishes that most Americans were unaware of until relatively recently and thus tend to find intimidating. This one, as the title indicates, is my go-to risotto; when I’m in the mood for a risotto, this is the one I usually make. Except for the dried porcini mushrooms, none of the ingredients are particularly difficult to come by. If you can do a bit of multitasking, this is a one-pot meal* that can be cranked out in an hour or less. This amount serves two to three, but you could easily double the quantities for more people. There’s no formal recipe on this one, but I’ll list all of the ingredients at the end.

Almond Cake

I’ve been putting off writing this entry for some time. Not because of any concern regarding the recipe, which is perfectly straightforward and worked really well.

Netherlandish Children

As I write this, tomorrow is Mardi Gras, alias Carnival, alias, Shrove Tuesday, alias Pancake Day—we’ve discussed this before. So a pancake recipe seemed apropos. This is an oven-baked pancake called a Dutch Baby. I don't know why. Feel free to google it if you're curious. Odds are the original name of it was "Deutsch," rather than "Dutch," and it appears to be a regional American dish. It’s a sweet breakfast dish where I come from. That said, there are all kinds of sweet and savory variations on this, most notably the Popover and the Yorkshire Pudding. 

The Mediterranean, as seen by the Midwest

Let’s get this out of the way: although this dish is called Italian beef, it isn’t Italian, in that it does not hark from the nation-state known as Italy. It does come from the Italian-American immigrant community, and is typically associated with Chicago. But it’s not Italian in the Tuscany/Parma/Liguria/Emilia-Romagna sense of the word. It is, as my grandfather would have put it, “Eyetalian.”

Wherein I Suffer for My Art

Gumbo, as I mentioned in my last post, was served for dinner on Christmas Day in the Moss household, but it’s a very nice dish to have in your repertoire for entertaining people on non-feast days as well. First, it’s pretty much a one-pot meal. It’s traditionally served with rice, and you can add a salad if you’re feeling some post-holiday-indulgence guilt or something, but that’s optional, really. You can also make it a couple of days in advance and just park it in your refrigerator until you need it; if anything, this improves the flavors. It’s a little time consuming, but none of the steps involved is difficult, and since it actually benefits from being made in advance, you can prepare it whenever you have time. You can even spread the prep over several days if you wish. You can make it with meat, with seafood, or with just vegetables, or all of the above. 

Let's try a book review

Happy New Year, y'all. Hope that you enjoyed or successfully endured the holiday season, depending on your point of view. 

Holiday Dip/Schmear

It’s crunch time at the day job, so I don’t have anything terribly sophisticated or involved today. But then again, that’s probably not a bad thing. The holidays are complex and stressful enough as it is, and given how elaborate and involved the cooking on Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and Christmas tends to be, it’s not a bad idea to have something that you can throw together quickly and without much effort. Assuming you have a food processor, that is. If you don’t, this recipe is probably not in your future, although a blender might suffice in a pinch.

Anyway, this is dip season, as far as I’m concerned. Yes, during other times of the year we all like salsa or guacamole with chips, but this is the time of year when you start to throw together all manner of dairy-based gooey concoctions that you then eat with reckless abandon on chips, crackers, bread rounds, or whatever. This is a favorite dip of mine, although as the title indicates, it can serve as either dip or schmear, depending on context. Hell, if you're a fan of the lesser works of a bygone comedy troupe, you can call it "The Salmon Mousse" in a sepulchral voice. Knock yourself out.

Pepper-Seared Tuna, Limited Illustration Version

Why “Limited Illustration,” you ask?

(I know, I know, you don’t care. Play along.)

Chicken Curry, Improvised Ersatz Version

Authenticity? Never heard of it.

Every time I venture into Asian cooking, I always feel I need to acknowledge that I don’t really know what I’m doing.* But the truth is, so many heinous things have been called “curries” or “stir-fries” or whatever over the years, that I tend to go into preemptive apology mode when I try something like today’s dish.

So for the record, I am not an expert on Thai cooking or on Southeast Asian cuisines in general. I’m just an amateur cook with access to an Asian market. Mind you, I’m not sure whom I think is going to chastise me. I’m reasonably certain that there is no Thai culinary police out there, although if I’m wrong, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t turn me in.

The Problem with Chefs' Cookbooks

I am not a chef. I’m a decent home cook, but I’m not a chef. Never have been, never will be. The word chef gets thrown around far too freely these days, largely due to an influx of “TV chefs” from the Food Network. But a chef is not just a good cook; a chef is a trained professional who runs a restaurant kitchen. This is something I have no experience with—from everything I’ve read, I would be reduced to a gibbering wreck after ten minutes in a restaurant kitchen.