Gastropodiatry

Puzzling out the personal life of a famous food critic can be hazardous to your cherished impressions. I’ve just tripped over (I’m still not technically savvy enough to have “Stumbled Upon”) Regina Schrambling’s blog gastropoda.com, and it’s a little too revealing. I wonder if she’s obsessing sincerely about the sorry state of food journalism today, or bitter toward those who still have solid writing gigs at the major newspapers (I know I am), or whether she just hasn’t noticed how far she’s gone in the direction of the classic rant blog. Throughout, you can discern the deep frustration of someone who does her own homework and legwork, and sees less and less of that career dedication in a field she regards as intellectually worth the effort as the times roll on. Gastropoda is Schrambling’s “Howl”.

Cutting the salt in Indian cuisine

Last week I got a Chanukah package in the mail from my sister. In it was India with Passion: Modern Regional Home Food by Manju Malhi, a British food writer with a popular UK cooking show, Simply Indian, on home-style cooking. One of my sister’s food-savvy friends had tried out the recipes and raved about [...]

Challah

Two nights ago I brought a couple of homemade loaves of challah to some friends’ house for Shabbat dinner, which was also the last night of Chanukah. Their mother, a fairly well-known kosher caterer, was there and my jaw dropped when she said she’d never learned how to make this classic bread. Challah looks beautiful once it’s baked even if you’re not a champion braider (I’m definitely not), but it’s not such a big deal.

Impatient for Orange Peels

The standard recipe for candied orange peels takes over 2 hours. My inner child is whining. Following up from my microwaved kumquat marmalade experiment, which worked beautifully, I decided I could probably do something similar to candy orange peels. The result is not perfect by professional confectioners’ standards, but it was done in 15 minutes from peeling oranges to dredging-and-drying, and the taste is not bad, not bad at all.

Lentil Stew with…Pineapple?

You’d think the rule for making pineapple work in something savory would be that the other main item has to be pretty salty to stand up to all that acidic tropical sweetness. But that’s not the only way to deal with it. This Lebanese lentil and vegetable stew takes advantage of pineapple’s tang while mellowing out its jarring sweetness, and it contains no salt at all.

Microwave tricks: Pasta You Don’t Have to Babysit

I started cooking pasta in a microwave when my daughter was a toddler. I couldn’t leave a pot boiling away on the stove to go and chase her. Even though my daughter is now kitchen-savvy, it worked so well I’ve never been tempted to go back. You can cook standard dried or frozen pasta very well in a microwave, with only a few minutes of actual cooking time and almost no need to stay close by. You can cook rice too–and we’re not talking Minute Rice, either. Basmati rice, the queen of difficult rices, cooks perfectly in a microwave.

Jazzing up Creamed Spinach

Standard creamed spinach, the old Norman Rockwell American standby, is one of the easier and frankly quicker side dishes to put together. But gawd, is it bland. Of course, I grew up wondering “If there’s no garlic, is it really food?” Here are a couple of possibilities from non-British cuisines that taste satisfying without relying on heavy cream or butter, and they can be done either on the stove or in a microwave.

Thanksgiving Vegetariots, or, How Can You Have Any Pudding If You Won’t Eat the Meat?

The idea of vegetarians at the Thanksgiving table seems to throw everyone from newspaper food columnists to my mother-in-law and even Top Chef contestants way off their game, even in California. The world’s cuisines are full of good vegetarian protein dishes, and some of them are pretty easy to make on the fly. So maybe it’s time to feed the people and stop worrying about who eats turkey and who doesn’t.

Adventures with Cheese

A French marketing expert once announced the difference between French and American attitudes towards cheese based on his research: “In America,” he declared, “Cheese is dead. I can assure you of that.” Cheese was ok as long as the cheese was processed, uniform, free of visible mold, refrigerated, odor-free, pasteurized and–most important–wrapped in plastic so nothing could possibly escape. Otherwise, he said–you could hardly miss the sneer–Americans considered cheese unsafe. They–we–were culturally afraid of it. In France, he maintained, “Cheese is alive.” The French focus groups brought out words like culture, flavor (something the Americans forgot), and the names of many, many specific types of regional cheeses that were their personal favorites. I really do have a thing for cheese (damn my cholesterol-packin’ genes), but good artisan-type cheeses are often pretty expensive–$15 and up per pound–and the more affordable varieties of things like brie or gorgonzola usually lack something in the way of flavor. For the last couple of years I’ve been playing around with the idea of taking an inexpensive fresh cheese and culturing it further to get to something approaching the aged artisanal cheeses. Starting with a fresh cheese means you skip the clabbering and pressing and pot washing, and you don’t need your own cave out in the countryside, just a fridge, some plastic sandwich bags, and a handy Trader Joe’s or the like. Here, the cheater’s guide to a make-your-own goat cheese brie or bleu/brie combination.

Another Reason to Make Your Own Salad Dressings

Make your own salad dressings or you could be dousing your lettuce with a lot of salt and some mighty strange ingredients.