Ants Climbing a Tree is the fanciful name of a Chinese noodle dish in which bits of cooked pork scattered over dark noodles supposedly look like ants on tree branches. I don’t really see that, but it makes a good story, and the name made quite an impression on my 6 year old granddaughter. This Read More …
This mild and flavorful Thai curry is normally made with either beef or chicken. It gets its name from an association with Muslims (massaman or matsaman) due to the unusual spices (for Thailand) included in the spice paste. The first time I had massaman curry I was very surprised to find large chunks of potatoes Read More …
In St. Louis, pork butts are commonly cut into steaks and grilled. In the rest of the country, this is not common, although we were able to get the butcher at Kroger to do this for us. If pork butt steaks are unavailable, the alternatives are to cut a boneless pork butt into steaks, or Read More …
We had a zillion blueberries around the house after some blueberry picking, so Carol suggested I make blueberry ice cream. Here is the result, which was adapted from a recipe for cherry ice cream in The Ultimate Ice Cream Book. The key step to this is to properly make the custard base. ¾ cup Read More …
Since we have quite a lot of blueberries in the house right now, Carol asked me to make a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfast. This version is adapted from Mary Meade’s Country Cookbook, which is a good source for standard mid-20th century Midwestern cuisine, since the author was the longtime food editor of Read More …
I have three times made baklava on camping trips, mainly to show that it is possible to make something while camping that most people would think is impossible. The second and third times were at summer camp as part of the Scoutmmaster cook-offs. A year ago, I made baklava at Camp Powhatan as my entry Read More …
After making a batch of Tasso a few days ago, I was looking for a dish to use it in and hit on jambalaya, the Cajun dish of meat, vegetables, and rice. In the true spirit of jambalaya, I used what I had on hand, which were bags of frozen chicken wings and shrimp in Read More …
Tasso is a spiced and smoked ham which is used as an ingredient in a number of Cajun dishes, such as jambalaya. When I bought a pork butt for carnitas, I found that that butts were all about 8 lbs. even though I only wanted 4 lbs. for the carnitas. I ended up Read More …
One of the most celebrated dishes in Houston was the green sauce at Ninfa’s, a Tex-Mex restaurant chain, now largely gone. (Ninfa Laurenzo died in 2001). I made a batch yesterday to go with the Sous-vide Carnitas , using an adaptation of the recipe in Robb Walsh’s excellent The Tex-Mex Cookbook. This recipe makes a Read More …
After reading all the buzz about Instant Pots, I bought one on sale almost a year ago, and it sat in the box in my study while I finally got up the nerve to try to figure out all its controls. My initial use of the Instant Pot was to make Smothered Country Ribs, which Read More …