In her “Master Cook” column in the February 2007 issue of Food & Wine, Paula Wolfert calls this last step in a recipe for Provencal pork stew the “garnish.” I have no idea why the editors decided to place this label on what essentially is the separate sauteeing of mushrooms, which are then added [...]
Entries from February 2007
Cooking With Pig: Act II
February 27th, 2007 · 5 Comments · Uncategorized
Say hello to a Berkshire pig, one of many heritage breeds people are seeking out for that old-fashioned fattiness and flavor that is typically missing from the average supermarket pork. In case you’ve been asleep for the last 35 years, pork has become a commodity product, raised literally cheek-by-jowl on huge, stinking factory farms [...]
Cooking With Pig: Act I
February 26th, 2007 · No Comments · Uncategorized
No, this is not a picture of an earthenware bong, but rather a daubieres, which is French for a strange, pot-bellied cooking vessel with a narrow top primarily used for cooking certain stews known in the Provencal lingo as daubes. That would make this one of several items that I did not possess for this [...]
Someone From Grocery Team to Customer Service, Please!
February 24th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
I am not afraid to use the Customer Service desk at Whole Foods. In fact, I’ve spent a good deal of time at the Customer Service desk. So if you are at Whole Foods and hear over the loudspeaker, “Someone from the grocery team to Customer Service to assist a customer,” that’s probably because I [...]
Tags: bulk foods·grains·Whole Foods
Best of the Pig
February 23rd, 2007 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
Some of you are probably convinced I spend half my days gazing into the meat display at Whole Foods. Well, you would be wrong. We don’t have that much meat in our diet. In fact, there are so many scraps and leftovers from our catering work that we hardly do any grocery shopping at all [...]
Tags: corn bread·pork·soup
Simple Tools, Nature vs. Culture
February 21st, 2007 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
Sometimes simple tools are the best, and I find that the simpler they are, the more I use them. Usually, I’d rather mash something up in my molcajete than go through the trouble of heaving my cuisinart out of its place in the kitchen cabinet, then disassembling it and cleaning all the parts, only to [...]
The Accidental Coq au Vin
February 20th, 2007 · No Comments · Uncategorized
I did not begin the week intending to make a coq au vin. But as so often happens, things kept pointing me in that direction. First, it was our turn to receive the chicken from the farm subscription we share with my sister and her husband. So there sat the bird the last several [...]
Composting with Style
February 19th, 2007 · No Comments · Uncategorized
As a sign of her everlasting love, my wife recently returned from a trip to the local World Market with what looked like a miniature trash can. It is metal, white and quite decorative, with the heft of a coffee can and a snugly fitting lid with handle. It can only be one thing: Our [...]
O Winter, thy touch is harsh!
February 18th, 2007 · No Comments · Uncategorized
Last year I erected a plastic “tunnel” in my front-yard vegetable garden to protect my plants from the winter freeze. I bought some galvanized metal electrical conduit, bent it into a series of hoops and covered it with plastic sheeting. (This was before I learned you can basically do the same thing much more easily [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
