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An Intelligent Critique of Rachel Ray And The Food Network

Stephen Bainbridge is a well-regarded law professor and a blogger, who also takes food and wine pretty seriously. I am not enamored of his taste in wine, and he sometimes uses short cuts in his cooking that I wouldn’t, but he is undeniably a worthwhile read. Here are his thoughtful comments about Rachel Ray and [...]

This Guy Is Definitely A Chef

This is the blog of Michael Laiskonis, the pastry chef at Le Bernardin, a nice little fish joint on 51st St. in Manhattan. Aside from it being a very interesting blog, it is a wonderful example of what separates me and, probably most of you, from professional cooking. Laiskonis’s perspective is radically different. He approaches [...]

A Barbecuer’s Dilemma: Charcoal Or Gas?

I love to barbecue. There, I said it. For those of us who aren’t chefs, barbecuing is a perfectly acceptable cooking method, and one that is preferred for some things (no matter what the real chefs say). Like steak for instance. Oh, I can make a mean steak in my kitchen with my trusty cast-iron [...]

I Love My Cast-Iron Skillet

You can easily spend $200 on a skillet. And a set of pots and pans made from some weird copper alloy sandwiched between stainless steel with a hi-tech coating will set you back the price of a used car. Before you shoot me horrible e-mails and comments about how I don’t appreciate the technological advances [...]

Sibling Rivalry, And I Lost!

I am a better cook than my sister. I have better technique, a surer sense of the chemistry of food, a much better grasp of ingredients, and I am a man, and everyone knows that men make better cooks. Did I mention that I am a better cook than my sister? So how could she [...]

Lobster, Cooked Correctly (Nice And Simple)

An eight-pound lobster, boiled for 18 minutes, and then iced for about an hour. I had to use my old framing hammer to crack the claws. The legs were enough for a thirteen-year-old’s dinner! No butter, no mayonnaise, just a little fresh cocktail sauce for one of our guests. The meat was incredibly sweet and [...]

The Dumbing Down Of Cooking: Celebrity Chefs

Years ago the only chefs on TV were people like Julia Child, James Beard, and a few other professional chefs. Nowadays of course, there are what seem to be hundreds of people, cooking sometimes nasty looking stuff, on dozens of networks. There is even a network devoted entirely to food.  But the problem is that [...]

Ego, And Changing Recipes

I have worked on my barbecue dry-rub recipe for several years, and finally arrived at a mixture of the usual suspects (sugar, paprika, cayenne, and uh, some other stuff) that was pleasing to my palate and that of most of my guests. So what did I do? Screwed around with it! Pretty clever, huh? I [...]

Sliders!

If you don’t know what a slider is, please, just go away. This post is for real eaters, and besides, a life without sliders is a life not worth living.
Here is an interesting blog about…well, you’ll have to guess from the name. But the guy has obviously made a careful study of how to make [...]

Moules Frites

Ah, diet food! Well, not actually low in calories, but it is a relatively light meal, at least in comparison to a large bone-in rib steak. I went to the store with the expectation of returning with some large chunk of gilled (no, I have never tried whale) pelagic predator, otherwise known as tuna or [...]



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