Category: Home Cooking

Greek Easter Lamb Roast

We had one at Peter’s godmother’s place in Chicago for “real” Easter. Photos are here.

Man, we’ve been operating in the bush leagues. We still turn our crank by hand. Out in the Chicago suburbs, though, you just sit back and watch the spit turn itself, giving you more time to muse on man’s eternal connection with fire and meat.

Really, the most illuminating thing to see was the fire: they build it on the ground, off to the side of the meat, in two separate piles of wood (no charcoal). This way you can control how much heat the shoulder and the leg are getting separately, and the center, with the loin, doesn’t get too cooked through.

Anyway, go see the pics. More illuminating than anything I can describe here.

And another thing to read

I mentioned it back in the fall, but then I was just guessing at how enjoyable it would be. Now I know The Upper East Side Cookbook, by the lovely Parsley Cresswell, is the next volume to add to your shelves.

Poor Miss Parsley. She feels herself losing her toehold in the society of the Upper East Side. And I think, in these troubled economic times, we can all relate to that. Just yesterday, downward mobility was the subject of breakfast conversation.

Miss Parsley is inventive, though, and cooks and forages to save money, as well as to cheer herself up. And the recipes in this book are all quite accessible and delicious. But that hardly does the book justice–it’s really a wonderful document of NYC life, and I feel proud to have had a very small hand in it. (I know Parsley’s alter ego, and provided light copy editing services.)

Your copy, printed on demand, is available here. Or you can pick one up at The Corner Bookstore (91st and Madison) or Kitchen Arts & Letters (on Lexington).

Maybe it’s just the thing for Mother’s Day? You know, just to show that even though you’re actually not doing quite so well as your parents, you’re still managing to feed yourself…

Stuff to read while I’m gone

I leave for Syria on Wednesday, for a week of dining with Anissa Helou and a gang of other people who think this is a delicious idea. It is my third trip to Syria, and I cannot wait. I’m looking forward to green almonds, buttery sweets, passing kindnesses and maybe the elusive desert truffle. I will probably be too stuffed too blog regularly, but believe you me, I will let you know in the end.

In the meantime, you may content yourself with SALTS: The Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine. The helpful folks sent me a link months ago–I’m finally leaping into action. I’m a huge canned sardine fan, having been raised on them enthusiastically enough that I thought it was normal to take them for school lunch. No one ever wanted to swap with me, but their loss.

Also, if you need some more home-cooking inspiration, visit Cathy Erway at Not Eating Out in New York. If you’re not hopelessly out of the Brooklyn food loop like I am, you probably already know about her. But it is great to see someone take the leap to home cooking (especially in NYC), and rock it in such a short time. Totally coincidentally, she has a book coming out this fall, from the same publisher as ours and Tamara’s. And I like that a lot of her food skews Asian-y, because I don’t cook that way much.

And in that same vein, yowza, thanks Eric Gower, aka The Breakaway Cook! His food is the kick in the pants I need–I’ve got a pantry full of spices, condiments and assorted syrups, and a lot of days I do precious little with it. His blog might also be the way I break into Japanese food, which I’ve failed with before because I can’t get the underlying rules. I promptly ordered his cookbook, and am very excited to see it.

Between that and my Syria trip, this summer, it’s gonna be hot in my kitchen, for sure.

Amateur Gourmet Smackdown (in the nicest way)

A couple days later, and I’m still a little more agitated than is healthy over this Amateur Gourmet video on Food2.

First, I was planning a big trash-talk smackdown, pro-wrestling style. I’d gotten halfway into my spandex unitard and was starting to tease out my hair, and then I had a twinge. That developed into more of grad-school-y relativist approach. Now I’ve backed down from saying the Amateur Gourmet’s omelette was WRONG. It’s just different. Different in a way I wouldn’t want to eat.

So I devoted this week’s Cooking in Real Time episode to a polite, positive corrective.

Don’t get me wrong–I love the Amateur Gourmet video. It’s totally entertaining. Adam Roberts is hilarious, and so is his neighbor. The clip is goofy, and I’m a sucker for goofy. There should be more TV shows with talking pasta boxes and not-slick-looking people.

It’s just that…uh, if you follow the AG’s advice–and that of Chef Dude Whoever–you’ll wind up with a crappy omelette. (Unless it’s Opposite Day–in which case their advice will turn out a lovely tender omelette with perfectly melted cheese and a nice soft texture in the middle!)

Fine, I understand–TV is entertainment first. Or, really, money-making first, then entertaining, then maybe if you learn a little something you’re lucky. But caring so little about the end result (whether your omelette is nice and fluffy and soft or just a blob of scrambled eggs shaped in a circle with some cheese slapped in there) seems like bad practice.

If the Food Network cares so little about the actual food, perhaps it can change its name to the Fun and Money Network? I’d settle for that.

I also get that the Food Network has to cover its ass and tell you to cook your eggs all the way through. But if you do that…well, again, you wind up with something that’s a bad omelette.

But, good lord, there is no legal reason to tell people to beat their eggs for 2 or 3 minutes! That is just a silly waste of time. See the video for the right different way.

Food2: Amateur Gourmet

OK, I found something genuinely entertaining, and not something that exists in a weird I’ve-heard-this-is-cool universe: The Amateur Gourmet shorts.

I haven’t been a big fan of the Amateur Gourmet online because…I dunno. He’s not enough of a wise-ass or something. I admit I gave him about one chance, about five years ago.

But in person, he’s actually kind of adorable. And there is just enough to weirdness to make me not feel like a tool for watching food TV.

(Clip after the jump, to stop the autoplay annoyance.)
Read more

Food2: Kitchen Conspirators

This is interesting. Food2, a new online arm of the Food Network empire, is on the march.

One of the things I’ve been waiting for is a (for now) online-only show called Kitchen Conspirators, which basically takes the supper club idea and gives it the reality-TV treatment.

I think Tamara and I might’ve even put our names in to be the “underground chefs” on this show–I was out of the country last summer when there was some back-and-forth with the Food Network.

So it makes it doubly funny to watch some of the episodes and sort of see my experience reflected in it. It’s what I imagine having your life adapted into a movie must be like. There’s more mainstream music; there’s a narrative arc that you never quite noticed at the time; there are wacky montages.

But let’s just say that after a little brainstorming session, I do not turn to Tamara and propose, “Let’s go to band practice and rip out those Scorpions covers.”

(To be fair, it looks like the mustachioed guy barely managed to say that with a straight face either. Er. I mean, I hope? I get lost in the layers of hipster irony.)

I guess FN is holding out the option of putting this on TV, because it’s still edited for a 30-minute time slot (although broken into smaller “episodes” for the web). I’d really like to see a more self-contained, short version. And I’d also like to see the party! That’s a weird let-down at the end…and that’s coming from someone who generally likes planning the parties much more than the parties themselves.

Embedded clip after the jump, so it’s not auto-play cacophony here on the main page.
Read more

New CiRT: Pad Thai

Check it, if you’re not already on the Cooking in Real Time podcast tip:

Cooking in Real Time Episode 7: Pad Thai and Cucumber Salad

Wherein I only barely remember all of the damn ingredients that go into pad thai. And wherein I utterly fail to make a joke about pad-casting–wasted opportunity!

But really, if you’ve been meaning to kick the takeout habit, this is a good place to start.

PS: If you like the podcast, I’d hugely appreciate reviews/mega-tons of stars on iTunes. You can review without subscribing, even.

Down with Food Pr0n! Up with My New Podcast!

giada1So, Heather over at Gild the (Voodoo)Lily was having some qualms due to her blog stats skyrocketing over some damn bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, when her far more inventive and interesting stuff causes nary an online ripple.

It’s because, sadly, hungry women (and men) are sitting at their desks, or up late at night at the family computer, staring moonily at food they’ve decided they can’t eat. And even if they did, they’d never have the gumption to make it themselves.

People, they call it food porn for a reason.

Staring at pictures of inaccessible food gets you all titillated and salivating. But when you click away, you feel empty inside.
To understand the true insidiousness, let’s look at real porn. (No, wait–not yet! Click back here, you!)

Real porn does not help you get laid. No one ever jumped up from watching a porno and said, “Gosh darn it, I’m going to a bar, and chatting someone up, and telling my best jokes, and then having terrific sex!”

No–they just shuffle off to bed, where the not-dirty-enough-to-wash clothes need to be swept off to one side, and the magazines are piling up.

Likewise, anyone watching the Food Network for more than ten minutes is not going to leap up and start cooking dinner. No, they’re going to sit there, glum, eating Frosted Flakes. And then shuffle off to bed.

“Maybe tomorrow I’ll cook,” they think. “I’ll cook something fresh and healthy, but also really satisfying–something kinda Giada, not all Paula Deen.” Yup, just like the avid porn consumer wakes up the next day and meets the hot chick of his dreams, who’s smart and sweet but just a little nasty.

fingerAnd just as porn fashion has inspired boob jobs and merciless muff waxing, food porn has given every would-be cook the idea that what they make has to be artfully plated and garnished with edible flowers.

I’m telling you, the food porn is soul-killing. You must switch off the TV set now. You must stop idly surfing the twee, pretty-picture food blogs and flipping through the glossy mags. Put it all away, and just go into the kitchen.

Real pleasure of the culinary kind is going to be dull and a little hard to begin with–and, like sex the first few times, it will seem messy and maybe not worth all the trouble. But trust me, it gets a lot better.

And if you happen to have overlapping needs–you’re not getting laid and you’re not eating well–this is actually handy. Not having sex means you have plenty of time to learn to cook. And learning a new skill like cooking makes you confident–hence sexy, hence more likely to catch someone’s eye. (Also, you’ll probably give yourself a couple of burns or scars–also pretty damn sexy.)

And when you cook up a hot meal for that someone–straight ticket to the sack.

What you can do

This is all leading up to: my new podcast! It’s been a long time coming, but the wheels are finally in motion over at Cooking in Real Time. There’s just a little intro post there now, explaining the premise–give a listen, subscribe and get ready for next week, when I actually cook something.

And you can too–once you put away the porn.