The induction burner that I bought to cook on while I waited (with less and less patience) for the new stove has now transitioned from being the bootleg bachelor construction kitchen to being a useful appliance that now allows us to enjoy something I’ve been hankering to have for quite some time: shabu-shabu. Cooking at the table is fun, and customizing the doneness of every morsel makes for an excellent eating experience. Good broth is…
Category: Beef
I’m neck-deep in renovations, the family is in Florida, and I’ve gone Full Caveman; I’m cooking with one portable induction burner until the new range arrives, skipping meals and working 10 or more hours a day to get this into some kind of shape before the family returns. Thanks for checking in; I really appreciate all of you taking a few minutes out of your busy lives to read about what I made for dinner.…
One one level, this was a pretty straightforward meal: local ribeyes, a gratin, polenta, and mushrooms. On another level, though, it was, well, on a whole other level. The polenta was leftover from a few nights before, and thoroughly congealed–as is the wont of polenta. I brought it back to a pleasing pourability by whisking in some homemade beef stock, local butter, and lots of pepper. The maitake mushrooms got a long, slow sear until…
It has no doubt become tiresome for you all to hear me plaint repeatedly about the lack of time each evening affords me to whip the grub together. So I won’t. But it did(n’t). A trip to the market made for some good fixins: ground beef, romanesco, blue potatoes, a leek. The sky, ostensibly, was the limit, though ironically was itself limited by the hour flat I had to make something happen. Iron Chef maybe…
We made it back from Chicago in much less time than it took us to get there; all told we could nearly have driven the 800 miles in the 11-ish hours we spent on Thursday getting from here to there. Winter holiday travel can be such a treat. I’ll put up a post about Xmas dinner, and I have a couple others which predate the trip, but for now we’ll just have a look at…
So dinner yesterday was not soup, actually. It was steak. The roads improved a bit, so the family set off to buy a Christmas tree. And returned with strip steaks. (And a tree, sure, but let’s concentrate on the important stuff). There were also maitake and brown birch mushrooms. Instead of just making sweet potato fries, I busted out the saladacco and spun a tuber into lovely thin strips which I then double-fried into appealing…
So this isn’t about the excellent shellfish-kielbasa stew in Vermont. I’ll get to it later, though I don’t actually have a picture of it. Maybe some fall foliage instead for atmosphere. This is about a wife coming down with something, and the lack of anything easy to prepare in the house. A quick trip later, we were the happy owners of some lovely short ribs. And since we have a pressure cooker, shreddy, falling-off-the-bone-ness was…
Today, being a day of atonement- and more saliently, a day in which Milo’s school is closed- begged for some time-devouring activities to chew up the portion of the day in which I was the sole parent in charge. Copious swinging helped, as did some garden-checking (the rutabagas and black radishes are actually swelling a tiny bit! At this rate they’ll be big and fat by Christmas, except for the whole not-growing-in-winter thing, so they…
It was a busy week, and it’s good to be back; it’s so clear, mild, and perfect here after the tropical heat and humidity. Despite the hard work, there were some good meals (and not a little time in the pool at my gallerists/hosts’ house). Initially, it was just me staying there; the other artists arrived later in the week. I had one evening to myself, so I rummaged around in the fridge to construct…
I’m heading off to Miami today for a show- I’ll be gone a week- so here’s the post of the ridiculously off-the-hook steak we had the other night to tide you over until I get back. It’s a perfect example of how the simplest ingredients can attain perfection when they’re properly sourced, grown, and prepared. In this case, a seriously badass steak and a bunch of just-picked vegetables. Sounds pretty average, right? But oh, what…