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A 30 MINUTE MEAL… NOT ON PURPOSE

I’ve always disliked the notion that there are magical quick fixes. That the kitchen and the time you spend there caring for your ingredients is actually just time spent waiting for the right work-around. Put that crap in a box or a jar or a cookbook, put some famous face on it and call it progress. Call it a shortcut. ...

NEXT TIME ON OKRA

I’ve gotta admit, I’m not as experimental as I’d like to be in the cooking department. Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s the all-too-real time limits that occur when failure means dinner doesn’t hit the table right in the narrow window after work and before bedtime, bath, mandatory book reading, ...

O COPPA! MY COPPA!

About 6 months ago I wrote something cute about struggling over waiting a couple weeks for some meat to cure. Six months later it’s ready. And I know what it means to wait. Looking back at those early, fidgeting days, I believe I’ve come to understand the technical term for my condition: being an impatient tit. The ...

A SLIGHTLY OVERCOMPLICATED LOVE SONG: TO DEVILED EGGS

In my experience, there’s the things that are really, really good. And then there are the things that everybody likes. They aren’t the same things. The things that are really, really good tend to threaten or question the general way of things, and being as people like things the way they are, they tend not to like the ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #10: PIECE OF MASTERFUL CRAFT OR THE GREATEST PRACTICAL JOKE OF THE 16TH CENTURY INVOLVING A CHICKEN?

If there’s one thing that I know to be true, it’s that the Italians taught the French how to cook. It’s true, just ask any Italian. When Caterina de’ Medici married Henry II, she departed Italy with her best cooks and delivered the gift of Florentine cuisine to the heretofore uninitiated. But after this month’s ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #4: THE PIGANATOR HAS LANDED

For Charcutepalooza challenge #4 we confronted hot smoking, and I got to spend some time with an old friend, my New Braunfels style vertical smoker. When my wife gave it to me as birthday present years ago, I can’t imagine she realized the Faustian bargain she had entered into. Sure she enjoys the quality eats with ...