Year: 2010

June 2, 2010

I had a pretty interesting meeting and interview today with the subject of my next article, and Jen (who was driving) kindly agreed to make a detour on the way home so we could pick up my fish order. It’s great that the fish is back, and we took excellent advantage of its return: wild salmon, scallops, and–most interestingly, because of a long hiatus–shrimp. We haven’t bought shrimp for a long time, because they’re mostly farmed in horribly destructive ways or wild-caught in horribly destructive ways. These, from Laughing Bird in Belize, are raised in inland ponds with filtered seawater and vegetarian feed. The company has received approval from the World Wildlife Fund.

June 1, 2010

What do you do when “burgers” is the request for dinner and there’s no ground beef in the house? Visit the chest freezer, for starters, to grab a bag of local, grass-fed stew beef. Then, because it’s so lean, a goodly portion of homemade prosciutto fat, and because a custom grind clamors to be bespoke, a handful of herbs (lime thyme, chives, oregano) and a clove of garlic. The result (plus a pinch of salt…

June 1, 2010

As a follow-up of sorts to last month’s piece on Red Devon, in this month’s Chronogram I take a look at some local alternatives to both mainstream supermarkets and typical (read: expensive) small-town health food retail. photo by Jennifer May

May 31, 2010

I finally ordered some nigari (magnesium chloride) for making tofu. I had bought organic soybeans–both white and black–a while ago, but it took an age for me to get the order in. Once it arrived, though, the intervening time spent waiting helped spur me to quick action. I soaked some of the white beans overnight and re-read the tofu recipe I wanted to try from the Shunju cookbook. (Shunju is one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants,…

May 29, 2010

So we returned home from a day trip to Delaware county later than forseen, and with nothing at all planned for dinner. A quick stop at the place in town that carries wild Alaskan salmon later, and we were fully in business, thanks largely to the presence of some high-end leftovers in the fridge. And I like a high end. We lost power on Thursday, but it was only for four hours, so nothing was…

May 28, 2010

So prior to our dinner with Mike and Claudia, I ran out to procure some libations. Rosé was easy, and yes, I know I’m supposed to be writing a post about the ones we’ve been knocking back with extreme prejudice in this suddenly sweltering weather. (It’s a good thing Al Gore is fat, or I’d really be worried about this climate change hoax that he’s trying to scam us all with). But I also wanted…

May 27, 2010

After I made all the stock on Sunday, I threw the beef bones away and rescued the lamb stew meat from the bottom of the big stock pot. After hours of simmering, it was shreddy and lovely, but still had some good lamby flavor. I put it in the fridge with an eye towards doing something later using the goat whey we had left from cheese making. And a day or two later, I noticed…

May 27, 2010

There will be more food shortly, but in the meantime this article made me smile.

May 26, 2010

When at the butcher’s the other day, I also stocked up on some things for pantry and freezer. First off, a big bag of beef knuckles for stock (which have now, along with a bit of lamb stew meat, been transformed from nearly 3 gallons of stock into about 1 cup of utterly sublime demi-glace) and some marrow bones because the kid adores marrow bones. When I mentioned that, the guy who served me asked…

May 24, 2010

Friday night Mike and Claudia, our favorite celebrities, came over, but this time Mike cooked for us. It had been suggested by my wife that some Korean barbecue might be in order, since she had seen him make it on Bourdain’s TV show (he loaned us the DVD) and couldn’t shake the craving. (If you watch the Hudson Valley episode, you can see it too, as well as Mike’s then 10-year-old daughter completely pwning Bourdain…