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.

Muffins, Old School

Remember the pre-Starbucks America? The one where coffee was a weak-flavored, brown liquid that cost less than a dollar and came with never-ending free refills?

Thank god those days are over. That shit was vile. If you’re too young to remember those days, grab a cup of drip coffee that’s been sitting all day on a warming burner at a gas station, and you’ll get some idea.

We will return to your regularly scheduled program...

Things have been busier than usual with the day job in the last few weeks, so there has been little cooking of interest going on--or rather, no cooking worth writing about, at least. I'm hoping to get another post up soon. For what it's worth, btw, if anyone has a recipe they would like me to tackle and (amateurishly) photograph, I'm open to suggestions. 

In the meantime, I direct you to this piece written by NPR's Linda Holmes. She blogs about popular culture for NPR, and is the host of a truly delightful podcast called Pop Culture Happy Hour, which I cannot recommend highly enough if you are interested in television, movies, theatre, and/or music. 

In this case, she's written a very funny takedown of contemporary menu speak, which is one of my pet peeves. If, like me, you're old enough to remember when dishes had names, it can be particularly irritating to read of "Unicorn Ranch Free-Range Tofu Braised in Willamette Valley Shallot Confit with Wildebeest Reduction," or whatever. Ms. Holmes seems to understand. 

[Inarticulate Scream of Frustration]

1. Make sauce

2. Boil water


3. Realize I’m out of pasta

I write a food blog.

#sadreally 
#Juliaisspinninginhergrave
#goingto711tobuypizzarolls

Addendum

OK, I still want to emphasize that everyone should give the Chinese Braised Pork Belly a go. It's amazing. Really. It's a recipe from Michelle Humes at Serious Eats. 

But I’m not one to ignore the practicalities of everyday life. And although people seemed to think the preceding recipe looked great, a lot of people complained.

Chinese Braised Pork Belly

OK, this one is a bit of an undertaking. I’m aware of that. It may not be easy to find the necessary ingredients. I’m aware of that, too. And it’s time consuming. But hear me out. Because this one was amazingly good. Seriously, it was. And I don’t say that as a boast—I was just following directions. But damn. If you can get the requisite ingredients, you have to try this.

Vegans, vegetarians, and pescetarians: sorry, but I got nothing for you on this one. Check back next time.

A Salt Lick for Humans

So. I’m back.

I was talking with someone about this blog this summer, and she spoke the fateful words “Yes, but now you have to keep it going.” Argh. ‘Twas a curse. The day job got busy, the dog ate my homework, etc. Sorry.

Chicken Thighs au Pépin

We return to the works of Jacques Pépin this time. As mentioned before, Pépin has been really innovative in making French cuisine and French tastes more accessible to American cooks, and really, to home cooks in general. Classic French cuisine was largely derived from the cooking of professional chefs, primarily via the works of Auguste Escoffier. Although he is a classically trained chef, Pépin has been extremely successful in adapting French (or French-influenced) cooking for weeknights—as much as I love JC, her books lean more toward the spend-a-weekend-afternoon-making-dinner end of the spectrum rather than to fast-dinner-thrown-together-after-a-long-day end.

Pépin is particularly skilled with chicken, in my opinion, and so I’m showcasing his method of cooking chicken thighs this time. We’re really talking more about a technique rather than a recipe on this one. Once you’ve cooked them, you can serve them plain (my tendency), or make a deglazing sauce (Pépin’s approach), but they lend themselves to other applications as well. I’ve been known to dunk them in Buffalo sauce and serve them with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing, and was quite pleased with the results.

Potato Pancakes

T.S. Eliot was wrong; August is the cruelest month, not April.

April: cool and rainy. August: swelteringly hot and dry (in my neck of the woods, anyway).

I’m back. Sort of. The day job has been keeping me ridiculously busy, so I’ve not done any blog-worthy cooking. Or rather, I have, but nothing I could say anything witty or original about. For instance, the mega-talented J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats created this amazing recipe for the best gazpacho I’ve ever had. But given that I did exactly what he says (aside from straining the finished soup, because I’m lazy and straining is boring), there really wasn’t any value added to my version, if you’ll excuse my use of bureaucrat-ese.