Content about Wine
February 2, 2011
We've all been there. Bottle of wine and no corkscrew. Check out these videos on creative ways to get your vino. Our favorite is the shoe--isn't physics amazing?
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January 22, 2011
Mmmm spiced wine. How do you mull your Glögg?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-goldwyn/glogg-hot-spiced-wine-recipe_b_808157.html
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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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November 20, 2008
Because fresh pasta deserves a sauce this good.
Once I figured out how to make fresh pasta, I waited all of 12 hours before I set out to create my own Ragù alla Bolognese. It was a goal of mine ever since watching an episode of Heston Blumenthal's TV series In Search of Perfection. The premise of the show is for the acclaimed chef to reexamine some stodgy British classics by going back to the roots of the original dish. His final recipe usually involves...
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April 16, 2008
A few months ago I was wandering the poultry aisle at my food coop looking at the bewildering number of options for a roasting chicken. As the words free-range and humane--proclaimed on every package--began to lose their meaning, I came across a pile of frozen, gangly-looking birds with their long necks still intact. The label, announcing this new product, read “Amish stewing hens.” “Great for stock!”...
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January 24, 2008
From his memoir Heat
My favorite passages from Bill Buford's Heat are set in the Babbo kitchen, when he describes with fear and awe the wonder that is a busy restaurant kitchen at dinnertime-- tickets flying, steam vaporizing, oil popping. Orders arrive faster than they can be made; you are perpetually behind. The heat, of course, is unbearable-- like a shimmering wall when you enter the kitchen. Sweat pours down. Timing is everything. A mistakes can...
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November 8, 2007
Back when I was writing about corn risotto and the magical risotto pancake, I was kicking around the Internet trying to discover exactly how to make one correctly. Recipe after recipe called for a very specific risotto preparation, one I'd never even heard of, something called Risotto alla Milanese, or Milan-style Risotto. It's flavored with chicken or beef stock, a simplified base of only sauteed onions and olive oil, and this...
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November 5, 2007
I bought the rabbit by mistake. I was procuring a nice free-range chicken when I saw a whole rabbit at the local poultry counter in the North Market. I gawked when I saw that the price was about $2 a pound. The skinny little critter could be mine for under $5. I hadn’t the slightest concept what I’d do with it, but when faced with such remarkable prices, why even worry? Quicker than I could I have...
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October 17, 2007
As you may or may not remember, I’m attempting to go somewhat local. Click back to Week 1 to see how it got started.
We’ve written about short ribs twice before and I’ll be honest in saying this isn’t the master recipe. Part of the problem is that both previous recipes were really Blake’s babies. It was his pot and his enthusiasm that spurred the effort. While I was there for the first go...
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The other day I was watching Iron Chef and Lidia Bastianich was a judge on the show. I'd never seen her in this role, and, frankly, it was scary. The woman is a strange blend of passion and unsmiling seriousness. Generally people who love food are laid back and groovy, and enthusiasm is usually tempered with a good dollop of sheepish self-consciousness: "I know I'm obsessed, and it makes me a dork, but I'm so excited I...
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April 25, 2007
I’ve only recently reached a point where I’m ever so slightly bored with cooking. Don’t worry--it’s only a very subtle, mild boredom, easily fixed. But it’s there, and it’s a stage I’m sure many cooks experience periodically. What compels me to make the same old dish again? And even if I use new ingredients, isn’t it still the same technique? I’m a qualified saute-er, I can braise...
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March 19, 2007
The most well-documented failure on this website was the first time we cooked beef short ribs. Tough, sinewy, and ugly--a big fibrous brick of protein fastened onto a sled of white bone by tendons and mysterious pieces of grizzle. Short ribs are the beef equivalent to a Salman Rushdie novel: willfully difficult, at times indecent and gross, but after an extended period of histrionic outbursts and piquiant flavors, in which patience...
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December 1, 2006
These are called Brussels sprouts, and unless you had some especially mean parents growing up, this might be your first time together. Even I, who had been force-fed green beans for the first 10 years of my life, never had to touch them because my dad hated them so much. I don't think I'm the only one. I've never seen them on a menu, and have never been confronted with them at a friends house. And for most of my adult...
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November 17, 2006
I (Blake) turned 24 yesterday and, in celebration, my girlfriend thought up and orchestrated a gorgeous meal of French provincial food. From the surf to the turf, we ate, drank, and otherwise acted like shameless hedonists. Since I'm groggy and barely awake this morning, and don't much feel like working very hard, I'll just put up some pictures and perhaps post the recipes some other time. Above, the moment when we decided to put candles in...
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October 30, 2006
I had no idea. Abby and I are staring at this picture of skirt steak with string beans with mouths agape, salivating over the chance to make this fine meal, when we notice that nowhere in the ingredients are those beans listed. We double check, and then wonder what it was exactly that we were looking at. All they they had was something called haricot verts. "I'm not sure what that is," I blabbered out trying to...
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Every time I go to a grocery store and, while making my merry way down the produce aisle, I see leeks, a little jolt of suspicion and hesitation runs through me. My shoulders tense up a little, my eyes get shifty, and I keep walking. What are those giant, oversized green onions? What steroids have they been fed? Are they from a Jonathan Swift novel? And why do these arm-length vegetables require me to commit to bunches of three?
So I...
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September 26, 2006
On Sunday night, I was subconsciously looking for a kind of willing-the-weather-to-change activity. After a cool week of light sweaters and no sweating on the subway platform, Saturday and Sunday heralded the return of muggy weather, which was very unwelcome. The threat of rain provided sufficient justification for me to hole up and read and watch movies all weekend (save a trip to Bensonhurst to nab some homemade ravioli and salamis)--in...
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August 29, 2006
To make a grill week interesting, you have to move beyond the basic hamburger, steak, boneless skinless chicken breast, and the occasional fish. We've done steak twice before, and as we espoused during the Shake Shack Alternative week, we're not big fans of the charred-on-the-grill burger (naysayers and defenders, feel free to comment away). Leave that business to dad.
So, we looked for new territory, some item that might be removed from...
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It began when my friend Glen T. Tremaldi, who runs a community garden in Boerum Hill, informed me of his zucchini overstock. "You should see the zucchinis I picked. The size of your calves," he said. And he wasn't joking. They were the size of melons. Then he related something about a frozen rabbit that was bought some time ago from a butcher on Court St., who had divided it up into serving pieces while it was still frozen, with a saw. He...
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June 4, 2006
How to roast a chicken at 500 degrees
High heat has its positives and negatives, but one thing for sure is that it definitely tastes much different than whatever the Joy of Cooking will throw at you.
In fact, one of the only downsides is that this recipe is easy to the point of being rather boring. For the busy this is a godsend, but we cooked it with some much more challenging melting potatoes, that upped the ante on the fat factor ten-fold, and required constant love...
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June 1, 2006
Tackling the art of braising
When I got to the grocery store I had no idea what short ribs look like, so I simply asked for 2 pounds of them, and that amounted to 4 short ribs. Thankfully the butcher didn't look at me funny or say "They're right in front of you, bub" (which they were). They were only about 6 dollars a pound, amounting to 12 dollars of meat feeding four people. This was looking good. It was time to learn how to braise....
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March 29, 2006
In which we find a wildly handsome Spanish man
Step 1: Find a Spanish Man.
Step 2: Find a Spanish Ham.
Preferably, a wildly handsome Spanish friend with a hunk of Spanish ham that his mother sent him. Jorge had looks. And he had the ham. What follows is an evening of many, many stages that included overcoming fears of anchovies, quail eggs, and two romantic party members who ate their share, doted on each other, and cooked absolutely nothing at all....
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
