Category Archives: Cooking

Here you’ll find everything about cooking that isn’t actually a recipe. Tips, techniques, gripes, whatever.

Last look at the 2019 Saratoga Wine & Food Festival

Last weekend’s “Forest Magic” dinner and Grand Tasting were sold out and everybody supporting SPAC through the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival seemed to be having a grand time. In every way it felt like an elevated experience from previous … Continue reading

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Our five most popular recipes of 2019

September is the anniversary of this blog, and every year we report the most popular posts during the previous 12 months. We checked the non-recipe posts a couple weeks back; here are the five most popular recipes of 2019. Let’s … Continue reading

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Hacking Trader Joe’s Cheese Bites

Trader Joe’s Cheese Bites and similar products are taking the world by storm. They were one of the top trends we identified at the recent Fancy Food Show in NYC. And what’s not to love? They’re delicious, full of protein … Continue reading

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Recipe: Garlic Comfit

I bought one of those big bags of peeled garlic and it was getting long in the tooth, so I made Garlic Comfit. The cloves retain their garlic-ness for use in cooked dishes, and I now have some nice flavored … Continue reading

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Food for Thought: Indian Instant Pot Cookbook

[6/23. See important UPDATE at the end of this post. Please read before you cook from this book!] Our extended family includes a two-career couple with two small children and, as you might expect, they are very strapped for time. They … Continue reading

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Why we love haiga rice

Haiga rice is the equivalent of high-extraction wheat flour: it has the husk (bran) removed while retaining the germ. As a result, it is more nutritious and also (in our opinion) tastier. We’ve started using it as our go-to when … Continue reading

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Our pickled tripe experiment, Part 3 (conclusion)

The July 4 plan to drive to Ephrata, PA for more of the magnificent King’s Meats pickled tripe fell through, leaving us with no option but to make it in our own kitchen. Here’s how the final chapter in our … Continue reading

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In pursuit of perfect pickled tripe

Our recent freezer shaming brought urgency to a long-delayed project: creating a pickled tripe in aspic to match the manna experienced in Pennsylvania’s Amish country in the summer of 2017. We had visited the Green Dragon Friday market in Ephrata, … Continue reading

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How to win your crawfish boil

Live crawfish season runs from roughly March through June, putting the Memorial Day weekend at its epicenter. This makes the holiday an ideal time for a crawfish boil in which the mudbugs are cooked in a salty, peppery broth along … Continue reading

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Freezer hoarding

My blogger friend Daniel B revealed something remarkable: he has 40 chicken carcasses in his freezer. Talk about freezer hoarding! These are supermarket rotisserie chickens which have been mostly plucked clean of their meat but with some scraps and connective … Continue reading

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