Posts by JonK

Splurge night for us: I marinated lamb steaks with an herb, garlic, lemon and olive oil paste and, taking advantage of a bit of unseasonally warm weather for us in the northeast, grilled 'em rare. As sides we had pan roasted lemon...

I once was a food writer, so I have a shelf full of reference books that I used to consult. Among the "ingredient" books, I like Howard Hillman's "The Cook's Book", arranged alphabetically by ingredient. It also has a copy of the...

We been using a slow cooker for decades--but only for those things that it can do well. Throw out any cookbook that suggests true baking or other silliness in the slow cooker. These proliferated when slow cookers first hit the market...

We've been brining our duck or goose for years now, though we tend to use Alton Brown's two-step methods for cooking it (see his recipe for Mighty Duck), which is a simplified version of Julia Child's three-step...

Thanks, KY. I am using white basmati in these recipes, for which 1-3/4 cups water to 1 cup rice and 17 to 20 minutes works just fine when flying solo. I usually let it rest for five minutes and fluff. And I do the saute before hand....

In recipes where I saute a significant amount of veggies in oil, then add uncooked rice (stir to coat), water (or broth), bring to a boil, cover and simmer, I very often find that the rice is not plumped and tender in...

I really do like truffle oil as an ingredient, but I have found an extremely wide range of quality, from stuff whose truffle kinship was evident only from the label, to oils that richly tasted of this pricey fungus. I like...

I never much liked catfish when I used to catch it as a boy in Illinois. As others have noted, the river stuff could often have a "muddy" flavor. But I really enjoy the farm-raised catfish I can now buy at the market.   My...

I'm with the "slow cook in oil" (preferably EVO) camp, but I usually add just a little bit of fresh, pressed garlic at the end. It adds lively upper note to the flavors. A bit of red pepper flakes is a nice addition if you...

Eggplant. Yeah, eggplant.   For some reason, we often end the season with a great abundance of eggplant, even though we love the stuff and prepare it many different ways. The solution is to smoke the eggplant and freeze the...