I am a middle age guy who started cooking in the 60's out of a need to eat something better than college food service stuff. I grew up in a household with a cook, but both parents liked to participate on weekends and did a lot of entertaining and all the menu planning. Neither thought too much about it, but one brought a scientific bent to the process and the other just knew what she liked and how she wanted it done. Both read cookbooks and one subscribed to the Time/Life series of world cookbooks. These were quite exotic for the time; most of what we had eaten came from family recipes, "it's just done this way, that's why.." and several reliable books, like The Joy Of Cooking, Charleston Receipts and a few others.
College food revealed to me that I had been eating pretty well as a kid and I learned that if I wanted to continue to do so, I was going to have to learn how to do it. Julia Childs started on the television; I had friends who had spent time in Asia and learned the rudiments of stir-fry and basic prep. I started acquiring knives and cooking vessels - some of which I still use to great effect 45 years later.
Cooking has always been a creative outlet for me. I never thought about doing it as a profession because I was afraid it would stop being fun. It's still fun and though I cook a little less often and for fewer people, I still do it and try to keep learning new pieces. Most everything I do is shaded somewhat by the lowcountry style I grew up with.
I have written extensively about oyster roasts and the general ambience associated therewith, but a few days ago Laura and I decided to do one for Valentine's Day. We used to have an oyster party in NYC on Valentine's Day whereat we had raw oysters, drank champaign and consumed some side dishes like Virginia Ham and black bread with butter. It was a lot of fun. People got to eat their fill of raw oysters, something not many of them had ever had the opportunity to do....
Tonight we are having a few people over for the haggis. The haggis is premade and fully cooked so it only has to be gently brough up the temperature in a pot of water. Last year it was quite good, but somewhat surprising when pierced witgh the knife. It oozed out like highly seasoned lava and solidified into a kind of course pate'. It will be fine.
What kind of vegetable do you serve with a haggis? This year I have elected to go with buttered cabbage, boiled potatoes and bashed neeps. Seamus Muld...
The first time someone made forty clove chicken for me I was unimpressed. It was a valiant effort by a friend who didn't - and still doesn't - cook much, but I appreciated the effort. His recipe was true to the classic... "take and chicken and forty cloves of unpeeled garlic, put them in a roasting pan and seal it up. Roast it till done, remove, carve and serve with garlic cloves as garnish" I tried it a couple of times over the years as it seemed to have potential, but...
Someone asked me recently about fish cookery. Cooking fish is something that I don't do very well. I think it's a specific talent, like baking or pastry making and while I do cook fish from time to time, my repertoire is exceeding limited. It may be that the methods for cooking fish and the variety of fish are, indeed, limited. A cousin tells me that the best way to prepare fresh caught Trout or Sea Bass from the St. Pierre is to clean, season and immediately fry. I ...
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I want to say a few things about cooking deer. Deer is
generally – at least as far as I know in South Carolina – very clean and
organic, natural meat. It is also very dry meat and no matter what you do to
it, if you cook it beyond medium rare it is going to be somewhat tough and
dry. Even braising it isn’t going
to put fat and moisture where the animal didn’t have any to begin with.
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Not too long ago we received a couple of bunches of beets from our neighbor who joined a Friend of the Farmer group in Ardsley, NY. I am fond of beets, but mostly what I think of when presented with them is Harvard Beets from the old "Joy of Cooking". I like that dish very much, but it gets old and it uses sugar and my wife can't have sugar and on and on. I've read about and eaten raw beet salad and beets done all sorts of ways, but I wasn't feeling adventurous and...
HEY! Does anyone out there have a name for cabbage and potatoes? Just plain old cabbage and potatoes steamed together. I seem to remember something called Gallumphy or something like that..... It would be something from the Brits I would think.
I like to cook. It's how I relax and in many ways how I define myself. I am a serious amateur who likes good food and sharing it. Like many amateurs I collect things that go with what I like to do. Some of them are novelties and stay that way and some of them become indispensable. Black iron cookware is one of the things I now treasure. I didn't always and for a long time I didn't really understand it. It is heavy and the outside of old pans is often covered with scabby baked on f...
We saw the Julie and Julia movie the other night and I loved every single performance in it. It's a feat, I think, when someone makes a movie based on two barely mediocre books and the movie turns out to be way better than either of them and/or the effect of the two combined. I know it's just me, but I didn't finish either book. I started both of them, still have them, but only made it to about mid-way and decided "so what". Well, I just wanted to share that grump since ...
This morning I had some dealings with a bone in leg of venison. Usually the processor, Michael Cordray, takes the bone out because bonesless roasts take much less space in the freezer, but I had asked him to leave the bones in for one deer. I thought to smoke the leg to about 150 degrees on the BIG GREEN EGG and did so at 200 degrees. The venison - having next to no fat - was done to that temperature in about two and a half hours. The meat is flavorful and moist. I think I will use it for sandwi...
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