From the monthly archives:

April 2010

Simple is as Simple Does

April 29, 2010

“Boy you simple!”
She yelled it often.  I was a simple minded, stupid, head in the clouds, simpleton according to Mrs. Nesbit.  Maybe I wasn’t the greatest Fourth Grade student.  I spent a lot of time  day dreaming, pencils turned airplanes while chalk clicked out a lesson plan.  But the stories I tell my teacher friends [...]

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Curry For People Who Care

April 28, 2010

After hosting a chilly evening roof top curry dinner I recently asked a friend how many other people have cooked Indian for them.  The answer?
None
Really?
Really.
Not one?
Not a single one.
I was stumped — I’ve been making curry for years now.  A family Christmas dinner featured at least 10 Indian dishes, home-made breads and my own pickles, [...]

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Chowdah Head

April 27, 2010

One measure of a meal for me is the amount of time a dish sticks with you.  Not in the way garlic conjures pungent ghosts for hours on end, but the way food memories persist well after you’ve done the dishes and sent guests home.  I made Jerk chicken for a buddy maybe 4 [...]

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What Happened to Local?

April 21, 2010

Everyone’s abuzz with Lobster Rolls coming to DC, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve become a curmudgeon.  Don’t get me wrong I fucking love seafood salad on a buttered bun, maybe better than the beautiful crab cakes I grew up on, but a recent stop over in New Hampshire makes me think the [...]

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Poop

April 19, 2010

Competition is touching off fierce debates. What is real civet coffee, anyway? Does the civet’s choice of beans make the coffee? Or is it the beans’ journey through the animal’s digestive tract? Can the aroma, fragrance and taste of beans from the droppings of a caged civet ever be as tasty as those from its [...]

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Eatin’ on the Cheap

April 12, 2010

It’s got to be six years ago that my friend and I found ourselves in a cab bound for Virginia after a long night in the District. We were so bombed I spent the next day in the same work clothes learning — for sure this time — I wasn’t in college anymore. Our [...]

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Time and Space

April 8, 2010

Mushrooms — just like some people — need time and space to achieve greatness. Composed of 80 – 90 % water, they’ll cry their eyes out in a crowded pan, weeping excess moisture and preventing a perfect sear. The next time you have to use mushrooms in any recipe try cooking them on [...]

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Weekend Away…

April 7, 2010

My past weekend in DUMBO makes me feel like ships passing in the night with this blog.  I only wish the circumstances of my trip had been as sweet, but my family always seems to find the light in things and I ended up having a pretty nice time.
There were test recipes from the [...]

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Sunday Traditions

April 6, 2010

Sometimes I really dig repetition.  I find rhythm soothing and like the familiarity of things that occur with some regularity.  It’s not that I want to go to the same bar every day or eat the same things again and again, it’s more of creating little traditions out of the seemingly mundane.  Think Thanksgiving [...]

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