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  • The Comfort of Eggs in a Basket
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    Eggs in a basket was the first meal I ever cooked. I was in 5th grade, and it was a Sunday morning at my best friend's house after a sleepover. We woke up hungry, and for some reason his parents weren't home. This confused me--my parents would never do that--but more important than confusion was the fact that I was terribly hungry, and I didn't see how that problem was going to be solved, since his house never had any cereal in it.

    "We'll make eggs in a basket," my friend said, pulling out a loaf of bread, a jug of oil, and a carton of eggs. You mean, we'll be cooking? I wondered. This was a novel idea. I would later find out that he'd only watched the process before, never having actually cooked it himself. No matter. We found a skillet and turned the heat to high. It was the beginning of my sometimes reckless, ask-questions-later approach to cooking.

    The resulting breakfast was awesome: runny yolk and crisp bread dripping with oil (we filled the skillet so much oil it was basically deep-fried). And since then I always prepare it with fondness. More importantly, it is one of the best 5 minute meals on the planet, and one of the only meals that literally takes 5 minutes. There is no hidden prep work. You will likely be eating a few minutes after hunger sets in.

    Ideally, make this with slices of toast cut thick. Over time I've found that for large eggs, 1-inch thick slices of bread with a 2" x 2" hole is the ideal vessel for the egg. This allows, over medium heat, for the bread to reach just the right golden crispness, the egg whites to fully set, and the yolk to remain nicely runny so you have something to dip in.

    I guess I have a fondness for very fast and simple eggs + bread dishes, my love of "eggy bread" evidence of this, which is basically French toast without sweetness or spices. Maybe it's because when I'm hungry, I'm hungry, and it's a substantial comfort to know that a dish like this--and one that tastes as good as this--is just 5 minutes away. I know that hunger won't have dominion long. Eggs and bread is my protector.

    What are your go-to quick meals when hunger looms?

  • The Butter Steak: What's the Best Way to Cook a Steak?
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    I'm not interested in carbonizing the surface of the meat. To me that ruins the flavor.
    - Alain Ducasse

    It was a bachelor weekend of sorts. My wife mercifully let me pass on attending a wedding of an old family family friend, so I had the whole weekend alone in the apartment to get work done.  I had some crazy projects planned including a mad braise of a cow tongue, but the first night alone was all about pure unrestrained male gluttony.  I bought a bottle of wine, a potato the size of a shoe, and an enormous rib eye.

    This should have been a simple meal, one requiring little skill beside turning on the stove and plopping a pan on a burner.  But somewhere along the way I realized I hadn't eaten much ribeye in my life and I began to wonder whether this stove-top method was the best way to do it.  The only "steaks" I tend to eat are skirt or flank, as they're about the only ones I can afford. This splurge had me stumped. Should a sear it on an iron skillet, broil it, or should I dump a bunch of charcoal into my little hibachi and try to get that sucker as hot as possible? Really, what is the best way to cook a ribeye?

    My initial thought was to mimic the technique nearly every serious steak house in the Midwest does: broiling it under an inferno.  And I mean that.  They reguarly reach hellish temperatures of around 1800 degrees.  The quick sear blackens the outside while leaving the inside nice and rare.  Of course, much like the perfect New York pizza oven, one cannot easily recreate this temperature at home.  I could only try hard and hope to get close.  I was looking around on eGullet to see if there was a better way of doing this when I came across an article called The Best Way to Cook a Thick Steak.  I figured it would be a good place to start. 

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    But I was a little taken aback by what I read.  Instead of hellish temperatures, and visible flames, this article claimed that the best way to cook a steak was over medium heat in a skillet bathed in butter.  The reasoning is that while high temperatures do a good job of searing the meat, they create burnt flavors.  This more  moderate approach allows for even cooking and a great flavor because of the Maillard Reaction.  And suddenly, and without warning, my simple meal of meat and potatoes required a science lesson.   

  • How to Make Proper Barbecue Chicken

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  • English Cucumber Sandwiches

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    (Hey everyone. Be sure to check out my most recent post on cucumber sandwiches for a slightly more authentic version.)

  • Baja Fish Tacos

    Our own version culled from a few different recipes, an emulation of the classic recipe of homemade tortillas, lightly fried tempura-style fish, a dairy-based white sauce, and fresh, crunchy, gently spicy cabbage.

  • The Proper Way to Cook a Hot Dog?

    By Blake Royer I hardly ever cook hot dogs at...

  • Authentic Carnitas and Three Pounds of Lard

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  • The Five Dishes that Surprised Me In Mexico
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    The Al Pastor was way better...

    We travel to be surprised, right? While picking my favorite five dishes took some deliberation, coming up with five different foods or dishes that surprised me on a trip to Mexico should have taken me all of five minutes. But for some reason I wasn't expecting this. I have a vertiable library of Mexican cuisine in my condo courtesy of Rick Bayless, Diana Kennedy, and Susana Trilling, and have researched and cooked as many authentic dishes as I possibly could in the past three years. So how come I was wrong about so many things? Almost everywhere I turned in Mexico I was bewildered by some detail I’d never thought about, and which shattered my expectations. Luckily, they all turned out to be those good kind of surprises--cases where my preconceived notions actually hid something more intriguing and delicious.

    1. The Tacos

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    Carnita Tacos at Mi Mercado in Coyoacan

    I expected to find some kind of insight about the taco during my two weeks in Mexico. By seeing it in its homeland, I’d formulate some kind of hypothesis on the correct proportion, contents, and preparation to create some kind of Grand Taco Manifesto. But I can’t. While I ate tacos nearly every single day on my two week trip through Mexico City and Oaxaca, I left more confused than when I came.

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    Goat, Al Pastor, Chorizo and Potato, and Chicken Tinga Tacos

    I found them tiny and rolled, like the petite little al pastor tacos found at El Huequito. But I also encountered huge, generously filled ones from Tacos Gus in Condesa, where dozens of great cazuelas of stewing meats and vegetables were open for examination. Some were fried like taquitos, and others were housed in unnaturally soft and pillowy corn tortillas.

    The fillings were just as diverse. I ate thinly shaved versions of Al Pastor, juicy hunks of carnitas, and tongue so tender it nearly disintegrated in my mouth. But I also ate rajas with queso, mushroom with crema, and vegetable guisados stuffed with squash and corn. The possibilities for tacos are endless.

  • Slow-Roasted Chicken
    By Nick Kindelsperger I realize now things have gotten out...
  • How to Make Hard Apple Cider
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    As we realized on our last post, it was time to stop talking emphatically about the cultural significance of cider, and start getting to the business of making it. Though we had read more websites, emails, and books than we could know what to do with, we were still confused, and more importantly, l didn't have a solid recipe. It was beginning to be a problem.

    At its simplest, hard apple cider is pressed and strained apples that are left to sit around until residual yeast on the apples' skin turns the sugar into alcohol. That's the traditional way to do it, how it was done for a long time. But today, most people prefer to use packaged yeast: this ensures that the cider will taste right, rather than being subject to a wild yeast, and it is the only way to succeed if the juice has been pastuerized, which is usually the case unless you press your own apples.

    The appeal of hard cider is enormous: all that's needed is apple cider, some yeast, and equipment to ferment it in. But the information available about each part of that process--the juice, the yeast, and technique--ranged from overly simplified to dorky and confusing. Finding good advice was proving difficult.

    Our salvation came in two forms: first, the fact that Whole Foods Market carries 1-gallon glass jugs of apple juice, for $6.99, which would suddenly supply us with both the container and the juice to begin our adventure. And two, a confidence-boosting e-mail from a reader named Michael, who noted my tweet about using champagne yeast to ferment some cider, and who explained the process clearly via email.

    And so we gathered four glass jugs, two kinds of yeast and juice, and some rubber stopper airlocks from the local Brew & Grow store near Bucktown. Our adventure would begin.

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