One more thing...

Quick pic of my repast at Rudy's, home to some of the best barbecue in Texas.

Wine Cookies

To clarify: the cookies in question do not contain wine; they are meant to accompany wine. The name's origins are somewhat murky. As I recall, a friend of mine once expressed a wish that there were cookies that would go with beer. I looked around a bit, found a recipe from Julia Child's magnum opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and produced these. Best as I can remember, the people I first served them to determined that they were better suited to wine than to beer—possibly because of the blue cheese, but who the hell knows, frankly. For the record, JC calls these Galettes au Roquefort, or Roquefort Cheese Biscuits. I'm sticking with Wine Cookies. 

Port in a Storm

Should you find yourself in Denver Airport's Terminal A for an extended period of time, Chef Jimmy's Bistro actually has a decent burger.

"Feasting on the Remains"

I put the title of this post in quotation marks because it is an expression I took from the divine Julia, who used "Feasting on the Remains" as a chapter subtitle in her book The Way to Cook. Sounds much classier than "What to do with the leftovers," don't you think?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled posting...

End-of-semester madness has wreaked havoc on the blog and in the kitchen (don't judge me). Be back soon.

Holiday Treats

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Chicken with Mustard Crust

As I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve come to regret my “Welcome” post. I suspect this is normal. But as I think through the list of people and publications that I like, I’ve realized that there were several glaring omissions. For one thing, I completely forgot about Serious Eats, which is a website I check and use all the time. Although its mission seems to have shifted somewhat—it seems to me that it is less focused on home cooking and more focused on restaurants over the past year—it’s still a great resource.

But the true glaring omission from that first post was Jacques Pépin. I have multiple Pépin books, and they are uniformly wonderful, with interesting recipes that always work, in my experience. As much as I adore Julia (which is a lot), and as much as I admire her works for bringing the traditions of French cuisine to the United States, I think that Pépin has really taken that tradition and updated it in some really creative and interesting ways; he can definitely do the classical French, puff-pastry-and-hollandaise sort of thing, but he is also able to streamline and modernize French cooking with ingredients and techniques from (gasp!) other cultures.

Existential Crisis, Lunch-on-the-go Edition

Jamba Juice Employee: You're lucky, you got the last of the carrot juice.

Me: DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I BECOME???????????

Seasonal Drinking

Please note that the season for cloying, pumpkin-flavored beverages has now officially ended. The season for cloying, peppermint-and-chocolate-flavored beverages has begun.

Chocolate Pots

We return to the works of Nigella Lawson today, with a sublime little dessert she simply calls “Chocolate Pots.” You could, of course, call them “Pots de crème de chocolat” if you were a Francophile, or just call it chocolate pudding if you wanted to be Molly-Bloom-ish about it.

Nigella does have recipes that do not involve chocolate, although you wouldn’t know it by reading this blog. We will address some of her other, non-dessert preparations at some future date.