Content about Food
June 16, 2009
How to save money in the stylish Spanish city.
While Nick has been saving the world with quick no-soak-beans and investigating the roots of Wisconsin bratwurst (part of my family is from Wisconsin and I hope to weigh in with strong opinions on the subject sooner than later), I've been on the run, away from a kitchen, squeezing every trip out of Europe I can afford. Which isn't much at the moment. But a lack of cash didn't deter us from enjoying some of the best...
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June 11, 2009
How do you make this Wisconsin classic?
I have been thinking about bratwurst for days. What started as an idea for a simple cookout on my little Webber Grill has now completely consumed me because I simply can't find the right recipe. The question eventually led me to walk into Hot Dougs on a recent Wednesday and ask Mr. Doug himself what was in the sausage.
But first, do you know? What is it, exactly, that makes a bratwurst a bratwurst? I know...
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June 9, 2009
How to make great beans in less time.
It seems that in the past few years there have been a few monumental revelations of the "everything you thought you knew about cooking was wrong" variety.
- Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy", Executive Director, eGullet Society
When the timer sounded, I was caught off guard. I reached for a kitchen towel, carefully folded it around the hot handles of my dutch oven, and transfered the hulking pot to the top of the...
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June 3, 2009
The spiciest way to grill your chicken.
My first bite of jerk chicken, fresh from two hours of mingling with smoke, was everything I wanted it to be. The rub of allspice berries and black peppercorns mixed with fresh ginger and thyme and created this incredible aroma --one that I couldn't help but adore. I was completely happy and content until quickly, and without much warning, the spice hit. A double dose of habanero cut through all of that complexity,...
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May 24, 2009
Blake eats the best of France.
After we spent our Saturday morning at the sprawling market in Apt, sampling cheese and charcuterie, the only task ahead of us was to find a tiny hillside town called Buoux by lunchtime. Exploring a mountainous countryside of hamlets and hairpin turns was all that awaited us. By the time we'd arrived a few hours later, the sun was falling lazily on a descent toward dusk; the air was fragrant with grass; and a sumptuous meal...
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May 21, 2009
Blake finds hidden gems in France.
Our goal for eating in France, as our budget was limited, was to find simple and unpretentious food. And though we hit the ground running with a list of online recommendations culled from a number of sources--an article in Travel + Leisure, searches on Chowhound and eGullet, guidebooks galore--some of our best and most memorable meals came from eclectic little spots that nobody had written about. One was hidden on a side street...
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May 17, 2009
How to use a foodie's most scorned appliance.
Do most people use their microwaves often? Or am I just now coming round to what most people know?
I bought my microwave at a sidewalk sale for 10 bucks. I simply asked the sellers if it still worked, and they assured me that it did. That was good enough for me. My previous model had just stopped working a few weeks before and Abby and I had nowhere to make popcorn. Though I used it only rarely, a microwave...
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May 13, 2009
How to pickle brisket.
I was standing in the meat section of my local Korean grocery store (the excellent Joong Boo Market) with fellow food blogger Brian, from the Daily Ikura. He was talking me through his favorite Korean dishes and ingredients, and I was loving it. We were discussing uses of red bean paste, which ramen was worth its price, and whether some brands of soy sauce were really so good you could sip them. Then I picked up a hunk of...
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Blake visits a famed watermill in Estonia.
I knew next to nothing about watermills before heading down to see one in southern Estonia, so I had an open mind. The website promised a tour, a glass of milk and fresh warm bread. So when the offer of a ride down came up, I had little reason to turn it down.
When we arrived, we found an idle lake reflecting the brilliant blue sky, clouds tossing across the sky, and a brick building with what seemed to be about 15 front doors...
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April 30, 2009
Nick throws a perfect Derby party.
The authentic Julep is a drink from the Heroic Age of American Tippling, and as such is not for novices. That's perhaps the chief reason it's fallen out of favor in these weak-livered times.
- David Wondrich
I'll get to the julep soon enough. But first I want to talk about the Kentucky Derby. Though I grew up on the Indiana side of the Ohio River, I don't care much about the Indy 500. I lived far...
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April 27, 2009
What if French toast could be improved by the Brits?
Eggy bread, a slice of white loaf dipped in egg whisked with milk and fried in butter, is simply French toast without the sweetness. It is a food I've consumed in countless American diners, and on countless Sunday mornings as a kid. But that morning I found eggy bread unrecognizable without its sheen of maple syrup and its fragrant nutmeg and cinnamon spices. Still, there it was, plain and obvious. And it floored...
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April 23, 2009
A better way to make Japanese soup.
Turns out, once you have all the ingredients, the process is rather straight forward and won't take longer than 30 minutes or so. And since most of the ingredients besides the tofu are pantry items, whipping up a new batch of miso soup in the future should be a breeze.
Bonito smells like, well, dried fish, but it looks more like pencil shavings. They are the body behind the miso, and make the whole ordeal more rounded and complex...
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April 16, 2009
How to make Grand World Champion ribs.
I returned home from a weekend in Ohio to to find that a fire had struck Honey 1 Barbecue. The building was still intact, but the smoking aquarium where they cook all their meat had been destroyed. According to owner, it might take a few months to get back in order if smoker is salvageable and the insurance company gives up the money quickly. It could take much longer.
I found the news hard to take. It's...
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April 14, 2009
Cooking Easter dinner with no oven.
Easter dinner has always been a giant-baked-ham affair for me. Glazed with a sticky concoction loaded to its saturation point with brown sugar and splashed with bourbon, studded with cloves, and baked until warm and tender--ah, it's hard to beat.
Living here in a country full of pork, I figured reproducing this wouldn't be too hard to pull off. But two problems presented themselves: one, it's quite hard to find any...
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April 13, 2009
Does it have anything to do with hunting?
On Thursday the New York Times published an op-ed piece written by a Texas historian named James E. McWilliams called "Free-Range Trichinosis," which argues that the public's perception of free-range pork has been misguided. On the contrary to our idyllic view of healthy, happy animals, the "free-range option can pose a heightened health threat to consumers." Citing a study which claimed free-range pork...
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April 9, 2009
How to cook your next porterhouse.
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...
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April 3, 2009
Nick learns from his mistakes and makes a good deep-dish pie at home.
I was determined not to fail this time. My last attempt at deep-dish wasn't an absolute failure, but it was close. It was too soggy and messy, and had none of the glorious qualities that my favorite Chicago pizzeria, Pequods, displayed. I theorized about all kinds reasons for the failure, thinking it had something to do with the crust. Then I just gave up and asked you all to help me. Ended up I was way off...
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March 30, 2009
How to make Chicago's favorite condiment.
Most of the recipes online are found on generic websites and just have a bunch of cut up vegetables mixed with olive oil, which I already knew was completely wrong. There needed to be some kind of acidic kick, something to balance the aggressive heat and the fair amount of oil.
I had my first breakthrough when I found this random video from the Food Network show "Unwrapped". They were visiting agiardiniera factory, and...
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March 17, 2009
Nick struggles to perfect deep-dish pizza at home.
Or at least, that was my hunch. I searched for a long time and finally settled on this recipe from pizzamaking.com. Deep-dish dough is very different from its thin crust counterpart. The crust has a healthy dose of cornmeal, which gives it an interesting crunch and texture. All the elements seemed to be here. I tracked down some tomatoes, cheese, and even decided to add some spinach (an addition that has worked well...
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March 12, 2009
Korean barbecue solves the challenges of cooking short ribs.
Short ribs and I don't have a good history. The first time I tried to make these with Blake we ended up with a collection of tough, greasy, hunks of impenetrable meat. The second time I solved the toughness factor by cooking them for ages, but forgot about the fat. Even after stashing the pot of short ribs in the fridge for a day so I could easily skim some off, I still felt like I had dunked the meat in fryer grease. That's...
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March 10, 2009
What Nick cooks when he feels nostalgic for simplicity.
I think part of the reason I took a break from roast chicken was the rising absurdity of my preparations. A few years ago I had chased after juicy meat and crispy skin, by trying various combinations of slow roasting, extreme slow roasting, experiments with baking soda, and high, high heat. The results were often spectacular, if never quite practical. And somewhere along the line the game lost its fun.
What...
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March 6, 2009
The best bread to make for those that don't like to make bread.
If bread making scares you like it scares me, but the lure of authenticity is irresistible, then focaccia may be the place to begin.
The intoxicating smell of yeast; the wet stickiness between your fingers; the magical billowing quality of the dough when a warm spot trns it into a living thing. These are the pleasures of bread making. And these are the pleasures I am almost wholly unfamiliar with. Until now.
See, I've...
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February 23, 2009
Make the perfect topping for your pizza.
For the sausage novices, nothing could be quite so easy as this recipe from Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie. Because I was using it straight away I had no need to stuff it into casing only break them free a moment a latter. I essentially just mixed everything together, ground it on the small die of my meat grinder, and cooked it. It was about as time consuming as cutting up a bunch of vegetables. And since I...
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February 17, 2009
The German way with round.
Sauerbraten is a national dish of Germany, and there are many variations in its preparation, all hailing from different regions. However, I didn't have to look much further than Alton Brown for a good recipe--the reviews on the recipe's page at Food Network are almost exclusively raving. A combination of cider and red wine vinegar provide the recipe's twang, and all the traditional notes for the marinade are hit (...
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February 13, 2009
How to make this Chicago classic.
The other issue I had to face was how to cut the meat. As I remembered from my visit to Al's #1, the beef should be shaved as thinly as possible. Al's used an huge deli slicer, which I obviously didn't have. Saveur recommended just tossing the meat in the freezer for 2 hours before serving and then slicing it as thinly as possible with a chef's knife. Some recipes recommended taking the cooked meat...
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January 30, 2009
A recipe for Texas-style chili.
Diced instead of Ground Meat
I had stopped using ground beef a few years back, after watching a Good Eats episode. The reasoning makes sense. When ground beef is used, the fat either needs to be drained off immediately, or needs to be skimmed off the day after when all the fat has accumulated at the top. But if you use chunks a lot of the juices stay inside, leaving both the chili less greasy and the meat more...
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January 29, 2009
The best chili starts with the best chili powder.
That meant forgoing the blend I had in my spice rack and picking up a load of dried chilies from the local Mexican market. I needed to create my own blend, something that was completely unique to me, but where do I start? There honestly aren't that many recipes for chili powder out there. My only real resources were Homesick Texan (great site) and Alton Brown.
Thanks to the large Mexican population in...
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January 21, 2009
A better way to make ravioli.
What kind of flour should I use? I had quite quickly settled on 100% Semolina flour when I first made tagliatelle, because I loved the bite that it gave my fresh pasta. When I made the first batch of ravioli, I just started there, figuring it would work for all fresh pasta recipes. But as I read more and more, I noticed that most of the recipes specifically called for all-purpose flour. Perhaps the flour would...
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January 5, 2009
Lard is the secret to this Mexican classic.
By the time I fished the three pounds of pork hunks from the lard and stacked them on the cutting board,far more guests had arrived than I had originally planned. It was a New Year's Eve party, but I thought dinner would just be an intimate gathering of 5 or so, and then we'd meet up with more friends later in the night. But apparently my calls for meeting up later meant that they should come over right then and make me...
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December 11, 2008
How to make the best burger at home.
You know the burger obsession is going off the deep end when semi-serious discussion takes place over the burger making skills of a cartoon. Please stick with me. This cartoon happened feature J. Wellington Wimpy, the burger-loving sidekick of Popeye. Hamburger America author George Motz found this clip and was there to comment on Wimpy's burger making skills: "Notice how even in cartoons back then they got it...
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December 3, 2008
Start a holiday morning tradition with delicious coffee cake.
Coffee cakes come in two types--leavened by baking powder and/or soda, or by yeast. The first is what most Americans would call a coffee cake, that tender, cakey variety which is often made with sour cream. The other kind is more recognizable as cinnamon rolls.
This is the sour-cream variety and really couldn't be easier. Inexperienced bakers--that's us--should have no trouble with it. The result has a tender crumb...
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November 30, 2008
A baby step towards making salami.
It's similar in appearance and texture, and has that unmistakable salty tang of cured meat. I'm surprised it never occurred to me before, but the idea is simple. Pork tenderloin, which is already in a convenient salami-like shape perfect for slicing, makes a perfect dry-curing project.
There is already one traditional cured meat called Lonzino, Italian, which is made not from the tenderloin but the regular boneless...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
