Lamb is probably the meat that loves seasoning the most. Because it’s so assertive, with that lovely gamy richness, it can take some serious spice without being buried under it. And it matches so well with such a wide variety of strong flavors, from garlic and rosemary to preserved lemon and harissa to feta and black olives (and so many more). What I try to do when I cook it is season the meat a particular way and then use one or more complementary flavors in the accompaniments. It’s good fun to play around with different delivery systems and combinations ranging from formal and fancy to fast and dirty, and I never get tired of cooking and eating it. This application fell emphatically in the latter category, but was no less pleasurable for its informality. There’s not much better than a couple of lamb sliders after a long day spent not eating lamb sliders.

Our buddy Rich at Elephant makes excellent ones, which he calls “Lamburguesas.” I stole the dusting of smoked paprika on top from him. The rest of it was all made up on the basis of what was at hand, including some lovely ricotta I bought along with the lamb. I mixed minced garlic and parsley into the meat, along with fat pinches of black pepper, cumin, coriander, and chili powder, then I pressed grabs of the mixture into one of my ring molds to make uniform patties and sprinkled salt on the outside. Don’t mix salt into your . . . → Read More: Sliding Into Home]]>

Lamb is probably the meat that loves seasoning the most. Because it’s so assertive, with that lovely gamy richness, it can take some serious spice without being buried under it. And it matches so well with such a wide variety of strong flavors, from garlic and rosemary to preserved lemon and harissa to feta and black olives (and so many more). What I try to do when I cook it is season the meat a particular way and then use one or more complementary flavors in the accompaniments. It’s good fun to play around with different delivery systems and combinations ranging from formal and fancy to fast and dirty, and I never get tired of cooking and eating it. This application fell emphatically in the latter category, but was no less pleasurable for its informality. There’s not much better than a couple of lamb sliders after a long day spent not eating lamb sliders.

Our buddy Rich at Elephant makes excellent ones, which he calls “Lamburguesas.” I stole the dusting of smoked paprika on top from him. The rest of it was all made up on the basis of what was at hand, including some lovely ricotta I bought along with the lamb. I mixed minced garlic and parsley into the meat, along with fat pinches of black pepper, cumin, coriander, and chili powder, then I pressed grabs of the mixture into one of my ring molds to make uniform patties and sprinkled salt on the outside. Don’t mix salt into your burgers; it helps form myosin, the protein that binds hot dogs together, and makes for a denser burger that can turn more easily to a hockey puck if overcooked. Salt the outsides just before cooking.

To the ricotta I added minced preserved lemon, cured black olives, and chives, plus black truffle salt and pepper. The buns were just decent store-bought squishy potato rolls. In a perfect world I would have made rolls–and ground the meat, for that matter–but it’s important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the damn good food in 20 minutes on a weeknight. I also cut a salad of extreme lusciousness, along with some asparagus. The buns got a light toasting, then a slather with good mustard, and then burgers were assembled once the meat was cooked. I also included a small squeeze of ketchup under the cheese for some tomatoey umami. There are so many ways these simple ingredients could be combined, and this was surely not the platonic ideal of lamb and sympathetic flavors. But it’s hard to overstate how well it worked. The lamb flavor remained central, with all the other complex flavors swirling around it like some sort of diaphanous evening gown covered in big splotches of condiments.

The salad was perfect; it’s that magical time of year when we get to eat big bowls of sexy, squeaky leaves every day. The beverage pairing was absolutely spot on: a 2010 Olivier Cousin “Anjou Pur Breton” Cab Franc. A natural winemaker’s natural winemaker, Cousin farms biodynamically, adds no sulfur, and has exceptional land. The result is both quaffable and funky, with that skunky homebrew whiff entwined with garlands of tart and jammy fruit. Naughty and nice, it cavorted admirably with this haute junk food.

It’s always interesting how the addition or subtraction of a couple of flavors can radically alter the character of a dish. In this case, what could easily have been a fine bowl of rigatoni alle vongole instead became, with a bit of modification,  a superlative Spanish treat.

This thought occurred to me when I bought the clams, and then saw a red bell pepper. They’re one of my guilty produce pleasures in the too-long part of the year where fresh capsicums are not an option, and they’re one of the very best shortcuts to Spain that I know of. I began by sweating the pepper, onion, and some homemade chorizo in olive oil until all was nicely softened and beginning to color. Then I added the littlenecks, scrubbed, some sherry vinegar, smoked paprika, garlic, saffron, parsley, and a jar of last summer’s tomato purée and covered the pan. Once the clams opened, I added al dente rigatoni from the pasta pot and shook it all around to mix it up and get the beautifully colored sauce all over everything.

It looked like Italy and tasted like Spain. The combination of smoked pepper, saffron, and sherry took the otherwise perfectly Italian flavors of tomato, pepper, garlic, and clams and completely transformed them. It’s obvious, of course, but an instructive concept that I try to keep in my mind as I cook. Besides making for more interesting improvisations, this sort of remixing adds interest and variation to the easy weeknight standards that can all too often . . . → Read More: Pan, Mediterranean]]>

It’s always interesting how the addition or subtraction of a couple of flavors can radically alter the character of a dish. In this case, what could easily have been a fine bowl of rigatoni alle vongole instead became, with a bit of modification,  a superlative Spanish treat.

This thought occurred to me when I bought the clams, and then saw a red bell pepper. They’re one of my guilty produce pleasures in the too-long part of the year where fresh capsicums are not an option, and they’re one of the very best shortcuts to Spain that I know of. I began by sweating the pepper, onion, and some homemade chorizo in olive oil until all was nicely softened and beginning to color. Then I added the littlenecks, scrubbed, some sherry vinegar, smoked paprika, garlic, saffron, parsley, and a jar of last summer’s tomato purée and covered the pan. Once the clams opened, I added al dente rigatoni from the pasta pot and shook it all around to mix it up and get the beautifully colored sauce all over everything.

It looked like Italy and tasted like Spain. The combination of smoked pepper, saffron, and sherry took the otherwise perfectly Italian flavors of tomato, pepper, garlic, and clams and completely transformed them. It’s obvious, of course, but an instructive concept that I try to keep in my mind as I cook. Besides making for more interesting improvisations, this sort of remixing adds interest and variation to the easy weeknight standards that can all too often feel like a bit of a rut.

This was a simple one, but made exceptionally flavorful by a couple of small steps. We’ve been digging chick peas lately; they’re leguminously sturdy without being too beany, if that makes any sense, and they take well to a wide variety of flavors that beans might not fit quite so seamlessly with. That curry I mentioned recently was good eating, and in the case of last night’s meal it was all about the sympatico that Moroccan flavors also have with garbanzos. Step one was using dried beans rather than canned ones; there’s just no comparison in flavor. These were bone dry and pebble hard three hours before dinner, too, but a brief soak in water followed by 45 minutes of hissing yielded lovely, tender peas ready for their second cooking with all the flavors.

The flavors began with a panoply of spices that I had the kid grind up in the small suribachi: coriander, cumin, mustard, caraway, hot pepper, lemon salt, black pepper, and a clove. Grinding spices is the other important step that elevated this above a regular weeknight phone-in, and best of all I used child labor so it didn’t add any extra minutes to the prep time. While he ground spices, I peeled half an orange and diced the outer skin. He juiced the rest of it, and only drank some of it. We added peas, spices, juice, and some water to a pan in which diced onion had been sweating, then added a fistful of oil-cured olives, some . . . → Read More: If You’re Not Careful, You Just Might Learn Something]]>

This was a simple one, but made exceptionally flavorful by a couple of small steps. We’ve been digging chick peas lately; they’re leguminously sturdy without being too beany, if that makes any sense, and they take well to a wide variety of flavors that beans might not fit quite so seamlessly with. That curry I mentioned recently was good eating, and in the case of last night’s meal it was all about the sympatico that Moroccan flavors also have with garbanzos. Step one was using dried beans rather than canned ones; there’s just no comparison in flavor. These were bone dry and pebble hard three hours before dinner, too, but a brief soak in water followed by 45 minutes of hissing yielded lovely, tender peas ready for their second cooking with all the flavors.

The flavors began with a panoply of spices that I had the kid grind up in the small suribachi: coriander, cumin, mustard, caraway, hot pepper, lemon salt, black pepper, and a clove. Grinding spices is the other important step that elevated this above a regular weeknight phone-in, and best of all I used child labor so it didn’t add any extra minutes to the prep time. While he ground spices, I peeled half an orange and diced the outer skin. He juiced the rest of it, and only drank some of it. We added peas, spices, juice, and some water to a pan in which diced onion had been sweating, then added a fistful of oil-cured olives, some salt, a glug of vinegar, and a big bunch of pak choi I had picked and chopped a bit earlier. I planted them in March, and they’re ready to eat. This spring has been wonderful.

While all this got simmery, I took carrots–expertly peeled by the prep cook–and tossed them about in olive oil, orange juice, hot pepper, cumin, honey, and more cider vinegar until just tender, reducing the liquid to a glaze that coated them with a sweet and piquant shininess. This dish is a clamor-inducing favorite of the small person, and he demanded the biggest portion and all the leftovers in his lunch the next day. Besides all the efficiency of having a helper, having kids help you cook gives them an investment in the outcome of the meal, and an appreciation of all that goes into it. They’ll try anything they help make, and enjoy almost all of it. This was no exception.

So, to recap: dried chick peas, fresh-ground spices, child labor. Oh, he chopped the scallions and cilantro for the garnish, too, which explains the… uh… wabi sabi aesthetic at work there.

One of the happier recent developments in retail around here has been the inclusion of local, grass-fed beef in the offerings of a proximate but otherwise lackluster market. The selection is usually limited to a few sirloins and rib eyes, but those happy few vastly exceed the earlier number of zero; I used to have to drive 20 minutes to get any good meat, which necessitated stocking up the freezer on infrequent trips. Now, when the freezer is getting low, I can just swing by and pick something up for dinner without having to plan ahead or make a special trip. What a concept, right?

I’m partial to the sirloins, because they’re affordable and have a richly beefy flavor that rewards an attentive cooking: brown and crusty without, deep pink and sexy within. In this case, because I skipped lunch, I bought two of them for dinner. Normally I use one steak to feed the three of us; it works out to be the perfect amount. But this time I was really feeling the steak-on-a-plate thing, and heard the voice of Sam Cooke reminding me not to fight the feeling. You gotta feel the feeling.

As is so often the case, prep began in the garden, where I picked a variety of bitter greens: pan di zucchero, escarole, radicchio, and frisée, all getting ready to bolt in the winter salad bed. (Their summer compatriots are coming along nicely, so there will be no break in the action). All this greenery got spun with garlic, . . . → Read More: The Steaks Is High]]>

One of the happier recent developments in retail around here has been the inclusion of local, grass-fed beef in the offerings of a proximate but otherwise lackluster market. The selection is usually limited to a few sirloins and rib eyes, but those happy few vastly exceed the earlier number of zero; I used to have to drive 20 minutes to get any good meat, which necessitated stocking up the freezer on infrequent trips. Now, when the freezer is getting low, I can just swing by and pick something up for dinner without having to plan ahead or make a special trip. What a concept, right?

I’m partial to the sirloins, because they’re affordable and have a richly beefy flavor that rewards an attentive cooking: brown and crusty without, deep pink and sexy within. In this case, because I skipped lunch, I bought two of them for dinner. Normally I use one steak to feed the three of us; it works out to be the perfect amount. But this time I was really feeling the steak-on-a-plate thing, and heard the voice of Sam Cooke reminding me not to fight the feeling. You gotta feel the feeling.

As is so often the case, prep began in the garden, where I picked a variety of bitter greens: pan di zucchero, escarole, radicchio, and frisée, all getting ready to bolt in the winter salad bed. (Their summer compatriots are coming along nicely, so there will be no break in the action). All this greenery got spun with garlic, olive oil, mustard, and cider vinegar to make a splendid green mash, that very best of condiments for rich meat. I salted the steaks and dropped them squealing into the hot iron skillet with a knob of butter. Every minute or so, I flipped them over until they had a good crusty color, them removed them to a plate and covered them with another to rest. I scraped–literally–together a pan sauce with more butter, red wine, and miso. There was polenta bubbling, too, and I stirred in a generous dollop of pesto as it neared readiness. And I groped a chilly stack of pickled radishes from the jar in the fridge.

Man, did we enjoy this meal. The tactile attack of knife and fork on a sturdy piece of meat like this, followed by a satisfying swab in condiments both decadent and austere and then the complex and contented chewing of beef with real character is one of life’s perfect pleasures. As many of you know, I am a big fan of elegant presentations and small plates, but sometimes you just want to wreck a plate of meat and wash it down with a bottle of wine. A 2011 Les Agaves Côtes de Provence fit the bill handily, and added a third pink to balance out the otherwise rather masculine heft of the food. Rosé season is here; I plan on drinking little else until fall.

A lot of my posts are just descriptions of a single meal, which is a logical format for a blog, especially if one is diligent enough to document them regularly. Ahem. Moving on. I thought that this time around I’d show a little more about how unlike my actual approach to cooking the concept of an isolated, free-standing meal really is.

When I went to pick up a pork belly and shoulder recently, I also grabbed a slab of ribs since it had been pointed out to me by the smaller, noisier constituency in the family unit that it had been AGES since we had any. I put them in the freezer while the belly cured for a week in its usual mixture of miso and maple syrup (plus salt, to speed osmosis, and pepper, and probably some herbs and garlic too).

A few days later, it was getting late and there was nothing easy on hand for dinner, so I cut a hunk off the belly and put it in the pressure cooker with a quart of phở from the freezer. While it hissed, I steamed and mashed sweet potatoes and ran outside to pick dandelions, wild garlic, arugula, sorrel, radicchio, and parsley (and probably some other springy things that were up) and made them all into a bright green mash with lots of garlic, olive oil, and apricot vinegar. And I opened a jar–one of the few remaining–of last fall’s apple sauce.

After about 45 minutes, the belly was tender and the phở had . . . → Read More: Because You Can’t, You Won’t, And You Don’t Stop]]>

A lot of my posts are just descriptions of a single meal, which is a logical format for a blog, especially if one is diligent enough to document them regularly. Ahem. Moving on. I thought that this time around I’d show a little more about how unlike my actual approach to cooking the concept of an isolated, free-standing meal really is.

When I went to pick up a pork belly and shoulder recently, I also grabbed a slab of ribs since it had been pointed out to me by the smaller, noisier constituency in the family unit that it had been AGES since we had any. I put them in the freezer while the belly cured for a week in its usual mixture of miso and maple syrup (plus salt, to speed osmosis, and pepper, and probably some herbs and garlic too).

A few days later, it was getting late and there was nothing easy on hand for dinner, so I cut a hunk off the belly and put it in the pressure cooker with a quart of phở from the freezer. While it hissed, I steamed and mashed sweet potatoes and ran outside to pick dandelions, wild garlic, arugula, sorrel, radicchio, and parsley (and probably some other springy things that were up) and made them all into a bright green mash with lots of garlic, olive oil, and apricot vinegar. And I opened a jar–one of the few remaining–of last fall’s apple sauce.

After about 45 minutes, the belly was tender and the phở had become a thing of profound, smoky beauty. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but bacon-infused phở is about as good as a broth can get. I removed the meat and let the liquid reduce some while I got everything together. The meal, pictured above, was meat on spuds with broth, mash, and apple sauce. It was a good one, and perfect for the damp day.

The following weekend, it was lovely, so I fired up the smoker and put in the belly and the slab of ribs, the latter well rubbed with my usual assortment of spices: salt, pepper, coffee, cumin, coriander, chile, garlic, thyme, paprika, 5-spice, and probably some other stuff. They smoked for about three hours, though the bacon came out once it got to an internal temperature of about 135˚.

Three hours is really the minimum required to get ribs to that falling-apart place of extreme specialness that one looks for. I mopped them periodically with my also traditional sauce, whipped up for the occasion, of tomato, vinegar, maple syrup, tamarind, fruit juice (papaya in this case), espresso, mustard, wine, soy sauce, and I think that was it. As they rounded third, I made polenta and cooked some collards with onion using the very first of the still-steaming bacon to flavor them in porky, southern-style sympathy with the ribs. Actually, that’s not true; we ate the first of it with our fingers because bacon hot out of the smoker is fucking orgasmic.

As always, I saved all the bones, and a few days later another wet day beckoned for soup. I made a stock with all the rib bones, plus carrot, celery, and onion, and let it simmer for an hour or so. Separately, I cooked kale and udon, and made these little fritters out of leftover chick pea coconut curry from an intervening (vegetarian) meal that I blended up with the rest of that green mash from up top and a bit of flour and an egg yolk to hold them together.

I sliced some bacon thinly to double down on the porkitude, and finished the bowls with a generous hit of togarashi. Smoky, meaty, pan-Asian goodness ensued.

As with life, the trick with cooking is to keep the dance going as long as possible, to fold new ingredients in but always have the syncopated but rock-solid beat of leftovers and value-added staples like stock and smoked pork on hand so three stiff little bundles of noodles can become the bowl above long before Paul’s Boutique is done playing.

Levon Helm is buried just a few hundred yards from my house, and the outpouring of love from all over in the days following his death was moving and fitting for such a beloved and influential figure. Even though he was not particularly old, he was of the generation which, like it or not, is beginning to leave us. Adam Yauch was five years older than I am. There’s just nothing about that that’s OK.

I contributed two pieces to this month’s Chronogram: an exploration of local mixology (using just Hudson Valley ingredients) with Paul Maloney of Kingston’s Stockade Tavern, for which I also took the pictures, and a more serious look at how our farmers have coped with recovery from last summer’s flooding, including the major problems with crop insurance and waterway management that have not yet been . . . → Read More: Writing Like It’s My Job]]>

I contributed two pieces to this month’s Chronogram: an exploration of local mixology (using just Hudson Valley ingredients) with Paul Maloney of Kingston’s Stockade Tavern, for which I also took the pictures, and a more serious look at how our farmers have coped with recovery from last summer’s flooding, including the major problems with crop insurance and waterway management that have not yet been addressed. Enjoy.

So the other weekend (before I had three simultaneous deadlines) we went to a party. A birthday party, to be exact, at the scene of the Great Oyster Slaughter of aught twelve. This time around, it was more of a pot luck, and I rummaged around in the freezer to figure out what to bring. And I found a beef heart. Problem solved!

Heart is super lean, once you trim all the fat off the outside, and beefier than beef. It’s concentrated essence of cow, and best cooked rare or it gets tough and mineraly tasting. With a sharp knife, you can break a heart down in minutes flat. That’s a country song right there. Those among you who are very observant will notice that the knife is different in this picture. That’s because the other one needed sharpening so I switched. Keeping your knives sharp is step one. I failed that step, but have since taken them all to the shed for some honin’.

Seriously, look at that color. Your steaks wish they looked like that. Once you get the fat off, the inside is pretty much all good. Anything whitish or stringy should go. I like to slice the rest into thin strips to facilitate the quick cooking, whether in a pan or on the grill. In this case, I threaded them onto skewers after they had a therapeutic soak in a Korean-inflected marinade comprised of gochujang, blackcurrant vinegar, maple syrup, and sesame oil.

Once the grill was hot, I threw them . . . → Read More: I Heart Tacos]]>

So the other weekend (before I had three simultaneous deadlines) we went to a party. A birthday party, to be exact, at the scene of the Great Oyster Slaughter of aught twelve. This time around, it was more of a pot luck, and I rummaged around in the freezer to figure out what to bring. And I found a beef heart. Problem solved!

Heart is super lean, once you trim all the fat off the outside, and beefier than beef. It’s concentrated essence of cow, and best cooked rare or it gets tough and mineraly tasting. With a sharp knife, you can break a heart down in minutes flat. That’s a country song right there. Those among you who are very observant will notice that the knife is different in this picture. That’s because the other one needed sharpening so I switched. Keeping your knives sharp is step one. I failed that step, but have since taken them all to the shed for some honin’.

Seriously, look at that color. Your steaks wish they looked like that. Once you get the fat off, the inside is pretty much all good. Anything whitish or stringy should go. I like to slice the rest into thin strips to facilitate the quick cooking, whether in a pan or on the grill. In this case, I threaded them onto skewers after they had a therapeutic soak in a Korean-inflected marinade comprised of gochujang, blackcurrant vinegar, maple syrup, and sesame oil.

Once the grill was hot, I threw them all on for a minute or two, flinging them about ineffectually with tongs to get an even char on all sides before the dainty bamboo skewers burned up entirely, leaving twisted strips of heart marooned over the searing, insatiable fire. Much like high school, really.

After the meat was suitably, lasciviously, and elegantly licked by hot tongues of flame, I pulled it all off, using the tongs to strip it from the smoldering splinters formerly known as skewers onto a plate. Then the tortillas followed, receiving both a burny burnish and a flexible foldability from the fire.

It’s a common problem that a good fire outlives the meal it was built to cook, throwing precious BTUs into the atmosphere long after the lid has been closed and the hordes have gathered to eat inside the house. Sometimes I remember this fact, and thus have something else on hand for grilling that will make a future meal better, but this was not one of those times. We were not at home, after all.

The condiments, as sympathetically askew as the marinade, were John’s ramp pesto (harvested that very morning waaay up in the mountains) and our very own smoked salsa from last summer. With one pint left, this stuff is worth more than pure liquid gold. There isn’t a meal I can think of that wouldn’t have its pleasure doubled by a dollop of this magic.

When your condiments are this good–made by hand from stuff that grows right near you–you don’t need no stinkin’ cheese or nothin’. The meat, tortillas, and two sauces contained every possible flavor one could look for in a taco or taco-adjacent application. Best of all, the assertively beefy heart still shone through two pretty pungent accompaniments. The result was well received and enthusiastically eaten by many of the assembled guests, even the renowned squeamitarian in attendance. “Have a heart,” we mocked, until he succumbed.

If you’re a fan of heart, you already know how good this was. But if you’re faint of heart, take heart- it’s so very tasty and easy to cook and eat. We owe the animals that we eat the respect of eating all of them. *Thumps chest with fist.*

Swordfish. Leftover polenta re-cooked with milk and alliums (scallions, onion, wild garlic). Miso-mustard-honey-cider vinegar sauce. Black pepper. Chervil.

True story. Regular blogging will . . . → Read More: Minutes In The Making]]>

Swordfish. Leftover polenta re-cooked with milk and alliums (scallions, onion, wild garlic). Miso-mustard-honey-cider vinegar sauce. Black pepper. Chervil.

True story. Regular blogging will resume shortly.

We were in Vermont for a few days over Spring Break, during which time we visited Taylor Farm, as we always do when we’re up there. In addition to their excellent Gouda–their aged is my favorite–they also sell raw milk, and sometimes cream. For whatever reason, Milo got it into his head that he was going to make butter, so he did. I guided him through the process, but the work was all his doing. I’m all about better living though child labor.

Making butter is about as easy as burning toast, and much more rewarding. Take good local heavy cream (it’s not worth doing with pasturemogenized hormone-fed factory cream, and raw is best for that cultured flavor) and, using a whisk or a hand or stand mixer, make whipped cream. But then, and here’s the tricky part, YOU KEEP GOING, JUST LIKE A CRAZY PERSON WOULD. And then you get butter.

Cream is a complicated compound, and after thoroughly aerating it–beating tiny air bubbles in between all the microscopic globules of fat encapsulated by phospholipids, forming a colloidal suspension, (which is whipped cream), eventually the phospholipid membranes that surround all those tiny bubbles break down and the fat clumps together and you’ve got butter and buttermilk, which is the water and water-soluble substances that appear as if by magic when the emulsion is broken.

You go past the whipped cream stage, and it starts to get sort of grainy and crumbly. (Note the filthy fingernails. We live like animals. Don’t be like me. . . . → Read More: It’s Like Butter, Baby]]>

We were in Vermont for a few days over Spring Break, during which time we visited Taylor Farm, as we always do when we’re up there. In addition to their excellent Gouda–their aged is my favorite–they also sell raw milk, and sometimes cream. For whatever reason, Milo got it into his head that he was going to make butter, so he did. I guided him through the process, but the work was all his doing. I’m all about better living though child labor.

Making butter is about as easy as burning toast, and much more rewarding. Take good local heavy cream (it’s not worth doing with pasturemogenized hormone-fed factory cream, and raw is best for that cultured flavor) and, using a whisk or a hand or stand mixer, make whipped cream. But then, and here’s the tricky part, YOU KEEP GOING, JUST LIKE A CRAZY PERSON WOULD. And then you get butter.

Cream is a complicated compound, and after thoroughly aerating it–beating tiny air bubbles in between all the microscopic globules of fat encapsulated by phospholipids, forming a colloidal suspension, (which is whipped cream), eventually the phospholipid membranes that surround all those tiny bubbles break down and the fat clumps together and you’ve got butter and buttermilk, which is the water and water-soluble substances that appear as if by magic when the emulsion is broken.

You go past the whipped cream stage, and it starts to get sort of grainy and crumbly. (Note the filthy fingernails. We live like animals. Don’t be like me. I die. Amen).

And then all of a sudden it gets much yellower and you’ve got actual clumps with a pale liquid at the bottom of the bowl. Mazel Tov! You made butter.

There’s just one more thing you need to do, unless you plan on eating it all in one sitting. The buttermilk will turn rancid in short order (which is why we use it to make fabulous sour things) so it needs to be rinsed out. Press the clotted mess against a sieve or wring it gently in a towel (saving all the buttermilk; I leave it out on the counter for a night or two to ripen), then plunk your hunk of butter in a bowl of ice-cold water and mash it around with a wooden spoon or similar device until the water gets good and cloudy. Change the water and do it again; it should get much less cloudy.

Purists might keep going until the water remains absolutely crystal clear, but a couple of times should do it. A little bit of residual buttermilk adds that inimitable cultured butter tang, anyway, so unless you really want it to stay fresh for weeks in the fridge, don’t sweat it too much.

Pour this through a strainer to catch all the solids, besprinkle it with a pinch of sea salt if you wish (I do), and then roll it into a log in waxed paper or parchment to store in the fridge. The amount below was the yield from one pint of cream. It’s pure genius, and if you use good local (ideally raw) milk the flavor can be a revelation. Especially if you slap a fat pat atop the pancakes you make the next morning using that fabulous buttermilk you so wisely saved.

I was so busy posting fraudulent nonsense on Sunday that I forgot to mention that the new Chronogram is out and in it I profile Café Le Perche, an excellent bakery in Hudson where they’re making some seriously pedigreed bread at a high level using local, organic flour. I also have two pieces in the new issue of Edible Hudson Valley: one about my homemade Camembert and a sidebar about uses for all the whey that results from cheese making. These pieces also represent my first photo credit, which is nice. The Edible site is not updated, so if you don’t live in the area you will have to wait to read those.