Criques de Gramat: French Potato Pancakes
This post began innocently enough: what could be bad about potato pancakes with ham and cheese, via Southwest France? Then, being me, I began poking around in my cookbooks for a little historical background, only to have the entire enormous subject known as “Southwest France And The Potato” nearly engulf me….
Fresh Borlotti Beans
Excuse the quiet over here. Just before Prince stunned the world, John fell ill, necessitating some quality time at the hospital, where we impressed the nurses with our lifting technique. He is home now, rapidly recovering, almost his usual self. As you might imagine, recent events left little time or energy for…
Vietnamese Chicken Curry
Discuss kitchen equipment with passionate cooks and witness attachment to the most unlikely objects. Laurie Colwin had her cracked Meissen plate, which held any number of solo eggplant concoctions (see “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant”, Home Cooking). Amanda Hesser has her bone-handled forks. (Cooking for Mr. Latte, The Best Food Writing,…
Salmon Burgers
Let us agree that “salmon” and “burger” do not belong in the same sentence. So what gives? Well, “salmon slider” sounds like a remnant dance of the disco era. “Salmon patties” like something requiring cleanup. Then again, “salmon slide”….now that could be worked into a Pretenders song parody, or discussion…
Soups Without Recipes
There is nothing like soup. It is by its nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup from cans. Laurie Colwin, “Soup”, Home Cooking Even we are exhorted to hoard every leftover scrap of food to craft innovative meals in a thrifty cycle of…
Artichoke Caponata
It is weird to admit you miss people you’ve never met, but I do. That chef Judy Rodgers no longer walks the earth frequently pains me. Fortunately, she left us with a single, perfect work, the Zuni Café Cookbook. The Zuni Café Cookbook, together with Paula Wolfert’s The Cooking Of…
Deviled Eggs: notes, technique, and a recipe
Chances are you can hardboil an egg. But tell me, how are you at peeling that egg? Until recently, hardboiled eggs Chez IK looked like they’d won first place at the local tractor pull. Enter Gabrielle Hamilton, she of the dictatorial Prune Cookbook. Spend any time with this highly idiosyncratic…
Easy Scallion Kimchee
Loyal readers–thank you, by the way, how amazing to even write those words–may have noted my fondness for fiery foods, a preference John doesn’t entirely share. Moderately spicy foods are okay with him, but when I dig into the Chinese hot mustard, peppers scoring off the Scoville charts, and dishes…
Lemon Cake With Crackly Lemon Sugar Topping
The great thing about this cake are all things you don’t need to make it: fancy equipment, fancy ingredients, baking ability. All that, plus it’s delicious and keeps really well, provided you don’t wolf it down in one sitting. This recipe comes courtesy of Diana Henry’s Plenty, written in 2010, well…
Sinkless Salad (Dinner Chicken Salad)
The Insufficient Kitchen’s 70th post is occasioned by increasing insufficiency after the sink quit late Tuesday afternoon. Our plumber promised to appear Thursday morning. Alas, he called needing to postpone until Friday morning. Confident of my amateur plumbing skills, he talked me under the sink, coaching in the art of garbage disposal maintainance: “Just crank…
