Last night as an experiment I decided to make Chinese hot-pot, creating a large spread of briefly seared but otherwise raw steak and chicken sliced very thinly, along with another of zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower heads, and a couple of sesame-based sauces, one sweet, one salty. For Kouryou-chan's sake, I also threw in a ( Read more... )

Kouryou-chan made dinner this evening. She made her favorite, macaroni & cheese, but she made it with real white sauce and she did an amazing job. I mean she followed our grown-up instructions exactly-- she read the recipe all the way through, laid out all the ingredients before she started cooking, and ran the cheese through the food processor ( Read more... )

Well, we were low on food supplies today. I did manage to find four small, slightly soft potatoes, a pound of ground beef, 3/4 cup of brown lentils, a can of tomatoes, a frozen bag of old chicken bones and kitchen scavengings, an onion, some garlic, parmesean cheese, and some bacon fat ( Read more... )

Whiskey-kissed whipped cream appears in a story I wrote many moons ago, and I've always wondered how to make it. I've had it in desserts before, but only at restaurants.

Last night, I figured it out. The secret is coldMeasure out a half-shot of good bourbon whiskey and a quarter-cup of heavy whipping cream. Put the whipping cream into a metal ( Read more... )

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I must be in a foody mood. I've been cooking a lot recently. Today's menu: Seared scallops, pasta pilaf w/lemon & chives, and asparagus w/honey & lemon.

• 1 small onion
• 1 cup orzo or other small pasta
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 tsp thyme

• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 handful fresh basil
• 1 tbs olive oil

Right now, in your kitchen-- unless you have a low-sodium diet, and even then you might still have it-- you have the tool needed for making perfect home-made mayonnaise ( Read more... )

Biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham has proposed that cooking was a necessary step in human evolution, because cooking breaks down fibers and improves the bioavailability of many nutrients we don't normally extract from raw foods ( Read more... )

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