Have I told you all Miss T has become the baker in the family? (Goldie is the butcher. Bun Bun is the candlestick maker. Rub a dub dub.) She’ll randomly decide something needs to be created in the kitchen and then either go searching for a recipe or create one herself. We were treated last week to salted caramel shortbread cookies. They’re small discs of perfection and can brighten any day. They lit up my whole week. Miss T can thank Betty Crocker for the inspiration. I thank them … [Read more...]
Thursdays in the kitchen with Jo: oven-baked barbecue ribs
Two weeks ago, I made a perfect Sunday dinner. I know this because those sitting around the table said so. It was time for ribs and time for a new slow-cooked, easy recipe. Instead of a crockpot version, however, this meal calls for the oven. It didn’t make a lot of sense considering the blistering heat we’ve been experiencing here lately, but I was in the mood for ribs, dammit! Long racks of ribs! This recipe comes courtesy of some nice woman at Food.com. I cut down on some of the hot … [Read more...]
Thursdays in the kitchen with Jo: Slow Cooker Bacon Jam (with Condi and Paul)
To Condi Rice: thank you for your thoughtful, well written speech. While I don’t agree with everything you said, I appreciate you talking to us as if we were informed and mature. You didn’t condescend nor whine. Your emphasis on education, and our responsibility to fix it, cannot be overstated; conveying the sense that both parties share our country’s failures in this area was a welcome change. Sorry about the lipstick on your teeth. To Paul Ryan: you annoyingly boyish, lying hypocrite … [Read more...]
Thursdays in the kitchen with Joe (the Trader): chili-lime chicken burgers
When I look at my phone periodically throughout the day, the screen is undoubtedly on Instagram. Bun Bun and Miss T don’t have phones but want desperately to know the latest and greatest about their friends, so they use mine. This morning, the message I saw was from a soccer friend telling her followers that she was off to camp for a month and would be out of touch. Damn those Jews! I thought. I am so envious of them - friends who themselves spent their summers at camp making lifelong … [Read more...]
Thursdays in the kitchen with Jo: Chicken Scarpariello
While living in New York, I waited a table or two (thousand). I was fortunate enough to work at restaurants with amazing chefs and learned how to cook, in large part, from them. Louie Lanza made Chicken Scarpariello for the ‘specials’ board back in 1989, at Coastal Restaurant on Amsterdam, and I thought it was one of the best dishes I’d ever eaten. In all the years since then, I’ve never once seen it on a menu again. Don’t know why I thought of the dish this week but I did. I scoured the … [Read more...]
A Friday recipe: the pepper and egg sandwich
It was the early 1980s. I was back visiting from New York and my friend Jeff invited me out on his parents’ boat for a loooooong day of sailing out to the Channel Islands. His mom, Rose, is pure Italian, raised in Boston’s North End. In other words, if you aren’t eating in front of her, what’s wrong with you? That day on the 30-foot Catalina, it was difficult to grasp where one meal ended and another began, but I was game to try anything she brought up from the cabin below. It all looked … [Read more...]