01 Mar 2013 6 Comments
in Food, Humor, Pork, Recipes Tags: beef short rib, Chinese cooking, Don Schnieder, five spice, guanciale, Japanese cooking, jowl, Matthew Tekulsky, monkfish liver, Pork
The other night I was drinking wine and eating monkfish liver with my culinary soulmate, Donnie, and lamenting about when odds-and-ends meat cuts become trendy and then are suddenly expensive.
Pork pops
Take the case of the aforementioned monkfish liver. It used to be the rare non-Japanese person who would try this odd delicacy at the sushi bar, and I could buy a whole softball-sized liver at the Japanese market for a few bucks. More
08 Feb 2013 18 Comments
in Food, Pork, Recipes, Video Tags: Austria, Austrian cooking, Café Pruckel, Danube, Mozart, spaetzle, Vienna, Wien, Wienerschnitzel
I spent a long, cold portion of a winter in Vienna once.
What I was doing there is a long story all it’s own, but like many such stories, it had to do with a girl. That didn’t work out as planned, and I spent much of my time there on my own, exploring the city — stumbling on former residences of Beethoven around every corner, searching out the Grove of the Immortals — Brahams, Schubert, Strauss, Beethoven — in the Central Cemetery, visiting the homes of Mozart and Dr. Freud, staring at the sparkling canvases of Klimt at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, taking in Richard Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier” at the famed State Opera House and a performance of the Vienna Boys Choir at the Imperial Chapel. More
25 Jan 2013 17 Comments
in Cooking Tips, Pork Tags: beurre manié, Bolognese, cooking, food, gravy, grocery shopping, Korean short ribs, risotto, tips
During my adventures in the kitchen, I discover various tips and shortcuts — usually by accident — that make my cooking easier or more effective. I could probably do a whole blog just on handy cooking tips, except that’s not really my thing and I’m sure someone else is already doing a good job of it.
Applewood smoked bacon from the clearance aisle
For now, here are some recent epiphanies that I hope will benefit your cooking, too!
Flavor & the Passing of Time
I was preparing an Italian roasted green pepper salad the other day when I was reminded of a simple truth in cooking. That often, when ingredients are allowed to sit idly integrating together, the flavors meld and the sum is greater than the individual components. More
22 Jan 2013 3 Comments
in Beverages, Food, Humor, On the Road, Pork Tags: Fisker, food, Iberico bellota pork, La Quercia, Lindsay Buckingham, Malibu, Nobu Matsuhisa, salmon, sashimi, Steve McQueen
Hot on the heels of the coldest weekend of the Southern California winter (see Jimmy Kimmel’s segment on just how cold it got), came the warmest weekend of the Southern California winter. So we were pleased and more than ready when we got the invitation to go stay with our friends, Nadine and Andrew, at their family’s beach house in Malibu.
Immy digging in the sand, Malibu
I like writing blog posts about our weekends at the Steve McQueen beach house, not so much because I’m enamored with Steve McQueen — he was undeniably cool, but so were lots of other guys. It’s because we usually eat lots of good food and imbibe good drinks. More
04 Jan 2013 21 Comments
in Food, Pork Tags: caviar, fois gras, Kobe beef, langoustine, matsutake, New Year's Eve, pork belly, salmon, Topanga
Another year come and gone. And with it, another of my New Year’s Eve dinners — a tradition that’s been going on for as long as I can remember.
Each year I push myself a little further, and this may have been the best meal yet. Even the strange inspiration to accent vodka-cured ivory salmon and caviar with a black licorice reduction was delicious. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 