*Top Cooking

In Iceland, in a cabin on a snowy horse farm half an hour outside a tiny 350-person town on the day after Christmas. The two restaurants in the area were closed. As was the only grocery store we could find. A gas station beckoned– we took it as a challenge. This collection of tins/boxes: Became spaghetti with peas, sardines, tuna, fried onions, and the salmon rub spice pack Alaska Airlines had inexplicably given me as I disembarked and which I’d been carrying ever since. Not bad, actually. With a candle lit with an emergency firestarter and flint (we didn’t have matches) surrounded by bits of lava from the beach. ...

For a 4th of July BBQ, a successful experiment making cotton candy flavored with tarragon, peach, corn, and smoked tea: For a while, hannah and I had been kicking around the idea of “savory cotton candy” (or at least, sweet but flavored with something beyond vanilla). What would that even be like? With a 4th of July BBQ approaching, this seemed like the now-or-never time to actually try it. Some searching found a few bulletin board discussions about how you might do it, but only one set of photographic evidence… and that came with no description of how. ...

A few weeks ago I had friends over for some Japanese food (sushi rolls, as well as various dishes focused on a few simple ingredients, inspired by Japanese Farm Food). Boiled Edamame with Hickory-smoked Salt (from The Meadow) Smashed Cucumber Pickles: Japanese cucumbers roughly crushed with a dowel and torn into irregular chunks, mixed with a whole stalk of sliced green garlic, sea salt, and a little ginger, and sealed in a ziploc bag in the fridge for two hours before dinner. Really good– one of my favorite new kinds of pickle. ...

I made a moist, tasty roast chicken for 4 tonight. Tip of the hat to ei-nyung for the recipe and low-temperature tips (I added fennel, as I tend to do): I picked up a local, pastured chicken, peppered and salted it (about 2 tsp sea salt), put it in a Dutch oven, and surrounded it with 8 cloves of garlic, two minced shallots, minced carrots, rosemary, bay leaves, and a sliced bulb of fennel. ...

It was a rough day overall, but a pork shoulder braised in milk and taken in the direction of carnitas turned out very well: It started with five pounds of bone-in pork shoulder from Olivier’s butchery (at their recommendation, a cut with plenty of fat and even the skin left on one side), coated in salt and pepper, then browned in a little oil at medium-high heat on each side in a dutch oven on the stovetop. ...

I’d eaten Tartiflette (potatoes and cheese, baked– it sounds simple but it’s so much more) twice– many years ago in Southeastern France, and a year ago in Tavern de la Fermette in Southern Belgium (photo above). Both times it was a tastebud shock-and-awe (in a rich “I’m taking a month off my life” way). Today I was having a few friends over to taste some Belgian beers, and was inspired to try to make it. I think it turned out really well. ...

Feisty, pinchy Dungeness Crab from the ocean to the kitchen in a few hours. Now that’s some delicious, sweet crustacean. Take live, actively-thrashing-around crabs (one source: Fair Share CSF) and drop one or two over boiling water in a large steamer. 12 minutes for a pair of 1 1/3lb crabs seemed ideal . Briefly plunge them into cold water, then clean out the guts: break off the apron, remove the carapace and most green-black guts, scrape out the rest of the guts by hand, and remove the spongy crescent-shaped gills and the mandibles. Finally, break it in half and rinse off any remaining bits of guts. Hat tip to canida for a good set of crab cleaning photos at Instructables, and the tip to use the crab toe as a pick. Why have I never thought of that? ...

Last weekend I had friends over for a nice dinner: a delicious whole leg of lamb (from a local farm, slaughtered and butchered by a friend just a few days before), a salad of wild arugula + homemade ricotta + roasted yellow nectarines, roasted eggplant with dry-farmed tomatoes and preserved lemon, and a platter of five kinds of figs. This is the story of the food: The lamb was from Amador Grazers (all grass fed, no antibiotics or growth hormones). If you’re not squeamish about such things, you can see a photo of my friend slaughtering and butchering it here. ...

I should really turn my food-splurge impulses into cooking more often. I bought the most exciting version of everything I wanted without thinking about price (a BN Ranch grass-fed sirloin steak, local padrone peppers, blackberries, a nectarine, olives, a shallot)… and the total came to about $17. Not cheap, but inexpensive for a “special splurge on dinner”.

For a camping trip with a few friends, I decreed “no burgers, no sausages”, and a very loose theme of “Korean BBQ”. I don’t think I’d ever cooked Korean food before, but the general idea of marinated, grilled, thin-sliced meat and lots of banchan (side dishes, most of which could be made ahead of time) seemed feasible for camping, and a break from the ordinary. I bought a nice large marbled ribeye steak and sliced it thinly against the grain (following an online suggestion to pre-freeze it for an hour to aid with slicing thin helped): ...

I have mixed luck with soup, but this weekend I made the best lentil soup I’ve had. And no, that’s not intended to be damning-with-faint-lentil-praise – it was delicious. I used The New Best Recipe for initial inspiration (their key insight being sweating the lentils first), but also made some changes: I cut two strips of bacon into pieces and cooked them until done but not crispy. I sauteed two minced shallots in the bacon fat (with the bacon still in) a few minutes until translucent, added 3 cloves of crushed garlic, 2 bay leaves, a crushed dried nora pepper from Tierra Farms, and about 1tsp of whole cardamom seed, turmeric, and cayenne powder, a little black pepper, and sauteed/toasted that for a few minutes. ...

The CSA box this week was potatoes, onions, celery root, beets, sprouts, and kiwis, so continuing my CSA-inspired-dinner-with-one-or-more-friends Tuesdays: Shepherd’s Pie! Potatoes and celery root diced and boiled until soft, mashed with some butter, salt and white pepper and some cheese. Diced onions, garlic, and golden beets (since I had no carrots or celery) sauteed until soft, then ground lamb and some spices added to them, and a little red wine. The potatoes layered on top of the meat in the same cast iron skillet, topped with grated cheddar, and broiled in the oven a few minutes to brown the top. Pea shoots and broccoli on the side (with a sesame oil & sriracha sauce– nothing to do with the rest of the meal) I’ve always been a sucker for shepherd’s pie, and this was a very simple version, but it turned out especially well. The bits of diced beet were a nice touch. ...

CSA Week Two, a recent trip to City Beer, and a friend visiting from Boston inspired another little dinner party: Deviled eggs (perhaps the best variant I’ve made: hard boiled eggs, the yolks mashed with quite a bit of olive oil (and no mayo!) and a little mustard, salt, and pepper, sprinkled with smoked paprika, and topped with crispy-fried capers, a crowning touch inspired by this printer & piemaker post). ...

Quite a day at work, so treating myself to: steak ( Five Dot Ranch ribeye w/ salt and pepper, seared on each side in a cast iron skillet on the stovetop, then cooked in the oven in the same skillet at 500F to the hairy edge of medium-rare), padrone peppers fried in olive oil, kale and spinach (lightly steamed), some good tomatoes ( Happy Boy dry-farmed, sweet), and a special Russian River Damnation-Ale-aged-with-oak-chips. Yes. ...

I’ve probably made bagels 25-30 times at this point, and have reached a point where they turn out surprisingly well– not the best I’ve had in New York, but better then any bagel I can buy locally. Here’s my standard recipe, based on trying a few variants (I’ve even made two different recipes and done blind taste tests with friends). It’s very similar to the one in The New Best Recipe. ...