Archives for 2008

Corned Beef and Cabbage

March 17, 2008 (Updated March 23, 2014) by
Beef, Dinner ,

Corned beef isn't really a traditional Irish meal, it's more of an Irish-American one. I don't care about authenticity, I just care about having three days' worth of leftover Reuben fixings in the fridge. This is a great meal for feeding a whole bunch of people without spending a bunch of time in the kitchen. You can cure your own corned beef with a week of lead time, but you can also find a nice fresh brisket at your local butcher. That's what I did here. (See the next post for what to do … [Read more...]

How To Core a Cabbage

March 17, 2008 (Updated March 23, 2014) by
Technique

Cutting the core out of a cabbage is pretty easy. But you can also make it hard on yourself by trying to do it the same way you'd cut the stem out of a tomato. Cabbages are too big and too firm to do that. Here's the easy way. … [Read more...]

How To Make Pasta

March 11, 2008 (Updated March 24, 2014) by
Pasta, Technique ,

(If you think you've seen this before, you're right. It's been updated with a couple more photos.) Making fresh pasta is like renovating the kitchen before selling your house: it always pays off. And like renovating the kitchen, it takes a little work to get to the payoff. The upside is that once you've learned the technique it's so easy to do you'll keep finding excuses to make it again. The simplest version is a basic egg pasta. This is what you'll get in Italian restaurants ... and the … [Read more...]

Pan-fried Chicken in Butter

March 10, 2008 (Updated March 23, 2014) by
Dinner, Fowl , ,

I've been described as something of a "skin freak" when it comes to chicken and turkey. So it always catches me by surprise when someone says that they prefer skinless chicken breasts. Not as a dietary issue -- which is misguided anyway -- but they actually don't like the skin. Baffling. That doesn't mean I can't still do a fabulous skinless chicken breast. Oh, sure, it's cooked in butter. But as long as it's skinless, people seem to be happy. I can work with that. … [Read more...]

Home-made Croûtons

March 3, 2008 (Updated March 24, 2014) by
Bread, Salad ,

When I was growing up, the croûtons you got in a box or bag at the grocery store were tiny little cubes, about the size of dice. Only restaurants had those big "fancy" croûtons. Seeing a marketing opportunity, the manufacturers switched to a large size, which is all you can find in the grocery store now. The problem is that store-bought croûtons have always been pretty crunchy. This wasn't a problem when they were small, but the big ones are getting so they aren't even good on salad any more. … [Read more...]

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