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Monthly Archives: February 2011

Beets, Olive Oil, and Sea Salt

I just finished telling you why not to boil vegetables in my roast chard recipe. Now please enjoy this recipe for boiled beets. Wha? Everything I said in the linked post is true. Roast beats are delicious, and certainly more boldly flavored than these, but this recipe is about subtlety, texture, and letting some really great […]

Roast Chard

Heat does interesting things to food. The hotter, the more interesting. That isn’t always a good thing, seeing smoke roiling off of your focaccia can ruin your day. But very often people shy away from using high heat, when really they should give it a chance. So often people will steam or (gasp) boil vegetables, […]

Summertime Peach Shortcake in the Winter

Peach Shortcake is one of those wonderful late summer treats, cool, juicy slices of peach sort of drooling their sticky, sweet juices all over a great crunchy/soft short biscuit. Simple. Seasonal. Delicious. Of course, at the moment it is February and raining, but if I don’t get some sort of break from this winter, I’ll […]

Marrons aux Mont Blanc, aka Monte Bianco, aka Chestnut Meringue

My Uncle Hall is a great baker and pastry chef. He makes a living doing it and everything. But before he switched careers and started prostituting his skills to the masses, our family had him and the fruits of his labor all to ourselves. As a child, one of my favorites appeared every year late […]

Good Steak, Indoors

Go. Go read my post about Really Good Steak . Almost all of it applies to cooking great steak indoors too. If you don’t read that post, don’t blame me if you don’t understand why surface moisture is terrible for a good steak, you couldn’t tell a Maillard reaction from a Mallard, and why to cook […]

Really Good Steak, Over Fire

Almost everyone sucks at making steak. Misinformation abounds. Fiascos are the norm. The worst thing is that most people are too polite/kind/naive to do anything but praise whatever horror show lands on their plate. The good news is that making great steak is only a little more difficult than making bad steak, and you won’t […]

Dry Aged Beef at Home

Boo! Yes, very scary. For some reason dry aging beef has become this big scary ordeal, usually left to professionals and the insane. I am not a professional. But it is really so simple it is almost stupid. Oh. Please don’t sue me if it all goes horribly awry,  I don’t really know what I’m […]