Category: Cook

Almost summer: bacon sausages, focaccia, and cabbage (cooling off) on the Weber for the first time this year.

Much chopping ensued.

Without the benefit of long trips to remind me to deal with ingredients lurking in the freezer, declared this week to be Tip-the-Freezer week. Tonight: pot pie with fresh pea pods, next in line for the wok. I previously prepared the pie filling in the wok

Tonight I’m making one-pot comfort food: chicken and brown rice. I rarely stray from these three types of rice when cooking: sushi, Arborio, and short-grain brown.

This weekend I’m cooking with ingredients I’ve never used before. Today: Thai eggplant. Tomorrow: oxtail.

Picked up gai lan, Chinese broccoli, from an Asian supermarket. My new favorite vegetable has a stronger, slightly more bitter taste than regular broccoli. We stir-fry the stalks for a while, then add the rest. We might include garlic, fresh ginger, sugar, shoyu, and fish sauce.

Today: The Arrival of the Reamer. It replaces a chipped glass juicer left behind by a roommate in 1976.

Satisfied a craving for comfort food on a snowy day: made a somewhat rustic meatloaf with my new, favorite, secret ingredient: Asian fish sauce. The glaze is not-so-secret: all-American ketchup.

I baked a big pot pie, he cleaned up, more pot pie for dinner on Tuesday.