I grew up with chicken booyah. While my family didn't make it, just about everyone else's did. Of unconfirmed Belgian origin, you'll find it in the peninsula of Wisconsin that juts into Lake Michigan and the surrounding area where a concentration of Belgians settled. The easiest way to explain booyah is like this: quarter a couple of stewing chickens and simmer them in a large pot until the meat falls off the bones and the bones break open releasing the marrow and you have at least a gallon of stock.
Read MoreMary Cooks: Easy Chicken Taco Meat
Tonight, with my counterpart skim-coating the new ceiling in our bathroom, I was provided with another opportunity to try my luck in the kitchen. Regular readers know that the results of my cooking do indeed appear to depend on luck - sometimes good, sometimes bad, but generally indifferent. But tonight I had one of my rare successes, and this time luck had nothing to do with it.
Read MoreWeekday Coq au Vin
What I love most about winter is my counterpart invariably pulls out Le Gastronomique for a little old school comfort food. This week, he tried his had at that old classic Coq au Vin. As the name implies, this is basically chicken in a wine sauce. And it is a very old recipe with some accounts tracing it back to Julius Caesar in Gaul. A variant of the dish first appeared in print in 1864. Then, about 100 years later, Julia Child brought it to the U.S. in her seminal cookbook and featured it often on her cooking show.
Read MoreAll About the Gravy
Thanksgiving is about 10 days away, so it's time to get serious about cooking again. The nice thing about Thanksgiving is that it is really all about the meal - that opulent turkey dinner that most of us only muster this one day of the year. And because that turkey is really the cornerstone of the day, you want to bring your A game.
Read MoreFirst Pumpkin of the Season in About 30 Minutes
We first started seeing fresh pumpkin for sale at the beginning of the month when we were in Wisconsin. At the time, we thought little of it - they have a different growing season than we do here in Maryland, and this seemed about the right time for the squash in that part of the country. But, when we were out procuring food items this weekend and saw them all over the place out here, we rejoiced, for pumpkin season has arrived in Maryland. We stopped by Hopkins Produce on Route 155 and picked up a couple of small but attractive pumpkins and created our first pumpkin meal of what will hopefully be a plentiful season.
Read MorePerfect Pesto
We were both driving home from our separate jobs in our separate cars when we both heard the same story on NPR and both had the same thoughts about dinner tonight. With the abundance of fresh basil this time of year and the rising cost of pine nuts, on this evening's program they featured a recipe for Pistachio Pesto . It was presented by the author of an Italian cookbook, and even though we disagreed with her about basil (she says it's sweet when it's really a bitter) and olive oil (she says it's fruity when it's actually nutty), we trusted her on the whole pistachio as a substitute for pine nuts thing.
Read MoreSunday Chicken and Dumplings
Maybe it was the beautiful weather we've been having lately. Maybe it was the complete cleaning we did on the kitchen yesterday. Maybe it was because I got up early and made a pie. For whatever reason. tonight I was treated to a proper Sunday dinner of chicken and dumplings.
Read MoreFreedom Pheasant
On my birthday, I usually get some variety of game, so it only makes sense that on our nation's birthday, this also holds true. And, since it is July, it's going to be grilled.
Read MoreJerked Pheasant
What I like best about my current life is all the people from other countries I've met. My counterpart and I have met people from all over the world. The cultural exchange is really an amazing experience sometimes. We recently had lunch with a former colleague from the Islands who gave us a wonderful explanation of Jerk. It turns out it's easier than you think, but it's all about technique.
Read MoreMoroccan Chicken with Pomegranate Glazed Carrots
My counterpart returned from Pittsburgh, and things have more or less returned to normal. Except that he is now telecommuting to Pittsburgh from the den. Which means until the weather is consistently nice for grilling, dinner will usually be something quick, like hot dogs or mac and cheese. This provides me with an opportunity to continue cooking. So long as he is open to experimentation.
Read MoreMary Cooks: Poussin with Pomegranate Sauce
Someone once said that a man's reach should exceed his grasp. This was me in the kitchen tonight. With my counterpart away on business for a second week, I thought about what it was I really wanted to eat for dinner tonight. As we still have a surplus of small game bird from D'Artagnan , I decided that one little poussin wouldn't go missing and rolled up my sleeves to actually cook something.
Read MoreThe VacMaster VP112 and Preparing for Spring
This weekend was a weekend to take care of things. As the seasons change, so does the kitchen. Casseroles and roasts and pastas make way for lighter fare. In our case, we invariably migrate to the quick and easy protein of Mexican food similar to what my counterpart was exposed to as he came of age in Escondido and San Marcos. This always serves us well as the longer, warmer days pull us out into the yard to make further inroads into the holly and creeper and roses gone to seed that surround our home.
Read MoreHow to Debone a Whole Chicken
There are many culinary techniques that have been lost to the common household cook over time. One such technique is deboning a whole chicken. And by that I mean removing the skeleton of the chicken while it is still whole. The benefits of this are 1) you have now turned your chicken carcass into a roast, and 2) once you remove the bones, you can fill in those spaces with dressing.
Read MoreBirthday Dinner: Ballotine of Pheasant
Birthdays are special - any seven-year-old can tell you that. My birthday in particular is extra-special. And even though it is still a couple of days away, my extra-special birthday dinner was today.
A while back, a new cooking technique gained some attention - the Modernist technique. It gained attention for the $300 cookbook full of breath-taking photographs of culinary daring-do. A few years have gone by, and now there is a marketplace for the home gourmand who wants to try their hand at this.
Read MoreDuck Roulade
My counterpart has been binding meat for about a year now and is getting fairly good at it. For this Sunday's dinner, he decided to try a specific meat-binding technique - the Roulade.
A roulade is a French dish in which a flat piece of meat is rolled around a filling and then bound and roasted. We had just received a shipment of duck from D'Artagnan so we decided on one of their Moulard duck breasts for tonight's meal.
Read More2012: The Year in Review
This past year has been one of growth: for me personally, for this blog, and for me and my counterpart culinarily speaking. The year started off with the acquisition of a new camera and a commitment from me to this blogging endeavor - to improve the quality of the content and to attempt to find a voice.
Read MoreSurprise Chicken Thighs
Sometimes I get caught off guard, and I am completely unprepared for what comes out of the kitchen. Sometimes I really have no idea what is going on in there. Tonight was one of those occasions. When my counterpart asked what I thought of chicken and mushrooms over pasta (with a little leftover lamb to round out the two chicken thighs in the house), I assumed I would be getting a fairly workaday dinner - tasty, to be sure, but nothing extravagant. Well, that is never a safe bet at my house.
Read MoreNothing as Pleasant as Pheasant
This afternoon my counterpart asked me why I was fascinated with small game birds. He then proceeded to answer this question by preparing roast pheasant for our annual pre-Christmas dinner. This has become a tradition of ours over the years. The day or two before Christmas are hectic and harried, filled with forgotten tasks and last-minute cleaning. You need more than cookies to get through. How much better we are at these preparations when we feel well loved and appreciated. And nothing does this quite as well as a special quiet dinner between me and my spouse.
Read MoreForcemeat Quiche, or What to Do with Your Leftover Gizzards
According to Le Gastronomique, forcemeat is "a seasoned mixture of raw and cooked ingredients, chopped or minced (ground)... Forcemeats are the basis for several pates, meat pies, terrines, and ballottines..." etc. etc. Faced with a Sunday all to himself while I was working a software deployment, my counterpart found inspiration in the concept of forcemeat and decided to prepare a quiche.
Read MoreWhat to Do With a Dozen Guinea Fowl Legs
When I purchased the Game Bird Fun Pack from D'Artagnan, I was so excited that I failed to notice an important detail regarding the 5 lbs of guinea fowl. At the time of purchase, I thought I was getting a 5 lb bird. What I actually got was a 5 lb bag of legs. My counterpart looked at them and said "What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"
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