How To Cook Like Your Grandmother
A Guide to Cooking with Real Food the Way Your Grandma Used to
I'm pretty sure my grandmother never ate nachos, much less made them. And I'd be willing to bet she never saw a whole mango. But this recipe hits all the important points: it's all from scratch, with fresh ingredients, and it tastes at least as good as it looks. As I said in the mango salsa recipe, this dish was inspired by the Leftover Queen's Royal Foodie Joust for May 2008. Next time I make it, it'll just be because it's so darn good. … [Read more...]
Unless you live in the southwestern U.S. -- or even farther south, but for an English-language blog "southwestern U.S." is a pretty safe bet -- then it's unlikely your grandmother ever made mango salsa. For one thing, salsa didn't really take off in the U.S. until the 1970s. For another, annual mango consumption in the U.S. was 0.05 pounds per person in 1970 vs. 2.01 pounds per person in 2004. So it's statistically unlikely that your grandmother ever made mango salsa. But to me "cooking … [Read more...]
If you're reading this, you've probably already decided that cooking with animal fat is not the worst thing you can do. So I won't bother going into an explanation of how trans fat from hydrogenated vegetable oil is the real killer. But I will point out that there are several people who will explain it all in great detail. So, now you're interested in how to do it. If you don't already have some frier-ready tallow, rendering your own is cheap and (fairly) easy. … [Read more...]
I won't say this is exactly like the sauce at either Outback Steakhouse or Burger King. Why would I, they're both chain restaurants? That's not setting the bar very high. This is better than either of those, and made with better ingredients. (Funny how those two things always seem to show up together.) This is based on a Russian dressing recipe. In fact it's exactly the Russian dressing recipe, except with added horseradish. You can also check out the recipe for onion rings. The recipes for … [Read more...]
Part of cooking from scratch is knowing just how "from scratch" it needs to be to feel good about what you're making. The other part is knowing where to buy the parts you're not going to make for yourself. This time it was getting a pizza crust from Alesci's and doing the sauce from scratch. … [Read more...]
