What’s the Bigoli Deal?

20 Nov 2012 8 Comments

by scolgin in Food, Humor, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , ,

Oftentimes when I have a specific ingredient I want to cook, I’ll have a vague recollection of a wonderful dish I had once, read about or made myself that uses said ingredient. And then I’ll set out — sometimes successfully, sometimes not — to remember what it was and find it.

Venetian bigoli in salsa

That was what was happening on a lazy Sunday afternoon as I contemplated what I was going to make for dinner. I felt like Italian, and moving jars, bags and boxes around in the pantry, I discovered a forgotten bag of whole wheat spaghetti. More

The Drizzle that Makes All the Difference

14 Sep 2012 6 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , ,

There are a lot of great drizzles in the world.

A drizzle of honey over thick Greek yogurt.

A drizzle of chocolate atop an old-fashioned buttermilk donut.

A cold drizzle on a gray Parisian day that causes you to duck into a cozy bistro for a bowl of soup and a long afternoon with a bottle of wine.

But for my money, the greatest drizzle of them all, the drizzle that makes all the difference, is the drizzle of a good, fruity olive oil over a plate of pasta.

This is one of the simplest and most important cooking tips among the many I will bestow upon you here. More

Little Silver Fishies

20 Feb 2012 8 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sardines are not a fence sitter’s fish. Like anchovies, people tend to either love them or hate them. But in the hater’s camp, I usually find folks who have only encountered small tins of the tightly packed, long-deceased fish. And I aim to convert them with the revelation that is a fresh sardine.

Most people have never seen a fresh sardine, with its sleek profile and pearlescent silver and blue skin. A favorite food of large baleen whales, sardines are one of the most abundant fish in the sea, swimming in massive shoals numbering in the millions. More

All You Knead is Love

27 Dec 2011 1 Comment

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I recall when I worked in pizza joints as a pimply kid, big beachballs of pizza dough churning in cavernous steel bowls beneath a massive metal Popeye arm. Industrial mixers made quick work of enough flour, yeast and water for 100 pies. But if you’re a home cook, why deprive yourself of the meditative pleasure of kneading?

Fresh savory rustic bread, just out of the oven

I sometimes see TV chefs mixing their dough in a Cuisinart. While this works perfectly well, your dough will never have that intangible mojo the best food has — the love that comes from a human hand. More

Lighten Up

18 Nov 2011 8 Comments

by scolgin in Observations, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

There are a lot of overly serious food blogs out there. What’s there to be so serious about? I hope people are laughing as they read my food blog.

I find “foodies” in general to be an overly serious lot. They make unfunny jokes about agrobusiness or sourcing free-range capon as they sit around trading cooking tips, sampling Asian tapas and sipping lychee soju martinis. I get antsy when people refer to me as a foodie. It feels like I’ve got some kind of ugly condition and people are whispering about me. I imagine them picturing me waiting in line at the latest food truck, and then Tweeting about it when I get home.

Yoga students and starlets tend to be overly serious about food, too — except in an opposite way from foodies. Rather than looking for the newest obscure Italian salumi, they spend their time scouring menus and ingredients lists, ever vigilant for things like butter and salt. Their lives become more about what NOT to eat, and how much fun is that?

Mario Batali, Julia Child and Colonel Sanders ala The Simpsons

I saw a recent episode of “The Simpsons” where Marge, Bart and Lisa become foodies and launch their own food blog. It was very funny. More

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