So this is the terrible truth about the workday: you spend all of it working. As a result, you burn up precious and limited energy and enthusiasm that might have otherwise been spent on preparing a fancy dinner. It’s not a question of physical fatigue, but of mental or psychic weariness. You get home, you stare at your mocking pantry and you just deflate. You say, “I got nothin’.”

Perhaps you have a spouse or partner or an uncharacteristically committed roommate? Good for you, but that’s hardly a guarantee of timely home cooking. Sometimes they’re running on empty themselves. Makes for a tragic situation.

The thing is, you can’t go to Applebee’s every night. A better option is to have a repertoire of reliable recipes - something a step or two above open, heat, and eat - that are tested and ready. You don’t have to think. All you have to do is cook. You take thinking out of a situation, and all manner of things become possible.

So two such standbys from the past week:

Cornish hen prepared according to the roasted apricot-ginger glazed game hen recipe from Fine Cooking (please search, as their search results can’t be reliably permalinked), except that I exchange a simple basting with bottled orange glaze for the fancier apricot-ginger route. Paired that with Israeli - slash - pearl couscous prepared with butter (salted, for taste) and chicken broth (low-sodium, for control) and diagonally-sliced asparagus sauteed in unsalted butter with a dash of kosher salt and ground black pepper until just tender, then served with grated parmesan cheese. That asparagus recipe is straight outta Fine Cooking as well, but you have to subscribe to either the magazine or the website to get it. You can ballpark it, though, right?

And:

Inside-out cheeseburgers - twin thin patties that sandwich a blend of hard and semi-hard cheese, in this case white cheddar and parmesan; crimp the edges; four minutes each side makes it medium-well - and zucchini slices and chopped rosemary sauteed in garlic-flavored olive oil, which is precisely as tasty as it sounds. How lucky for you that both recipes are available in full, for free, online - the burger recipe from Eating Well, and the zucchini recipe from Domino.

Well, that’s two days out of the work week covered. The other three you can handle yourself, I’ll bet.

• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Secret sauce, continued
• Take-out at The Pitted Olive
• Pearls of great price
• Doing the Dutch

I’ve been pretty pleased (if I say so myself) with my dinner-making diligence over the past few days. Spicy meatballs with a fragrant diced tomato-based sauce (fresh breadcrumbs, cumin, cayenne, cinnamon, cilantro, basil), fettuccine with chicken and goat cheese (substituted whole wheat capellini), and other entrees I can’t quite recall just now. The end of last week found me flagging, however, and ready for a professional to handle the cooking. M suggested that we try take-out at The Pitted Olive, which has quickly become one of our favorite sit-down restaurants. The Pitted Olive is also a deli and market and boasts a full to-go menu.

So. What to eat?

My first and most important question upon calling the restaurant involved an item not on the take-out menu. I was rewarded with a positive reply: yes, garlic frites were available to go. Their garlic & parmesan dusted fries are utterly addicting.

Moving on. M chose the Classic Meat Lasagna and the Pitted Olive Greek salad minus the olives. I opted for the Market Bacon Sirloin Burger with bleu cheese, medium rare, side of potato salad, and mixed greens with creamy balsamic. The whole thing came to a long drive (well, three and a half miles, but that’s long when it’s during rush hour and you’re hungry), a solid bag o’ food, and a $40 tab.

Worth it? Oh, yeah. I had planned on getting two orders of frites but only got one; good choice! They are quite filling. Everything was delicious. I’m not really a salad guy, but that creamy balsamic was luscious. Homemade? Dunno. Hope so. M remarked favorably on her salad as well, and enjoyed the lasagna. The burger was all I could ask, flavorful and huge. The potato salad - garlic in there somewhere? Very tasty. We were stuffed and happy when all was done.

So big props to The Pitted Olive. Check it out sometime. Parking is at a premium out front (and don’t park at the adjacent businesses if you don’t enjoy having your vehicle towed to East Jesus). Park on the street and enjoy your meal.

Note: Apologies to those who clicked on the links to the meatball and fettuccine recipes only to be confronted by the main Taunton Press website. Taunton publishes Fine Cooking, whence came those recipes, and apparently search links don’t last long there. You should be able to Google those dishes and find the recipes, however. If not, let me know and I’ll just send them to you.

• Mangosteen?
• Meals for the work week
• Secret sauce, continued
• Secret sauce
• Snickers

To pick up where we left off last week: Having forsworn bottled barbecue sauce, it was incumbent on me to find a promising recipe and actually cook it up. A few days ago, I dug a pack of St. Louis cut pork spareribs (differing from other cuts in that the brisket bones/rib tips have been removed; well-marbled, lots of meat between the bones, easy to cook; the origin of the name is a mystery) out of the freezer, and knew that I would need to have a sauce ready when they thawed.

When in doubt, turn to trusted sources. In this case, that meant my copy of Stephen Raichlen’s How to Grill and his recipe for Basic Barbecue Sauce. Prudence dictated that I prepare the sauce as directed, and wait until later to experiment, but I disregarded that. Even with a formula from a respected guide in hand, some petulant part of me wouldn’t let me follow the directions without variation. I wanted to put some kind of personal stamp on the concoction. The Third Important Thing About Barbecue Sauce, learned just last week, still resonated with me:

Say that there is a “secret” ingredient in it, then tell no one, even upon threat of bodily injury.

And so I combined my ingredients, including my secret ingredient, and cooked it down.

Long before the sauce had thickened, I knew I had a success on my hands. Sweet yet smoky, deliberately not tangy (not a vinegar lover) but instead infused with a salt-slash-savour imparted by my secret ingredient. This will sound like beginner’s braggadocio, but I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a bottled sauce as good as the stuff I made. Behold - my creation:

Immediately upon completion of the sauce, I put it to work with the spareribs. I had intended to grill out with the Weber, but the day was so windy that I opted for oven-simmered ribs.

Beforehand, I cut the ribs into two sections so they would easily fit a 13-inch long glass baking dish. I coated both sides of the both portions with my homemade barbecue rub (based on Raichlen’s basic but tasty recipe) then lightly covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge.

I set the oven to 300° F. Low and slow cooking was the plan.

I poured all of the sauce (alas!) into the baking dish. I put the rib portions in the dish, turning them to coat both sides, placing the meaty side of the slabs down in the sauce. I then tightly covered the dish with foil and put the pan in the oven. After an hour, I turned the slab-lets over, recovered them in foil, let them go for another hour.

I next removed the foil altogether, turned the ribs again and let them cook further for fifteen minutes uncovered. Then I turned them again - meaty side up - to cook uncovered for another fifteen minutes uncovered.

So: two and a half hours altogether, and it could have gone a bit longer. The meat was tender - not quite falling off the bone, but tender enough and delicious, full of flavor. The sauce complemented the pork wonderfully, if I say so myself.

And now I have to make some more. This won’t be a chore. I’m looking forward to using this with chicken, and to trying a variation or two on the sauce. Now that I have a base from which to work, the prospect is a pleasure.

.

.

Oh. Some (few) of you may be interested in the actual recipe I used, including my secret ingredient. Well, jeez, if I divulged that, it wouldn’t be very secret, now would it?

Just kidding. I’m a kidder. Here ’tis (annotated where it varies from the original Raichlen recipe):

1 1/2 cups ketchup
1/2 cup hoisin sauce (secret ingredient!)
1/4 cup cider vinegar (none used)
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard (not yellow)
1 tablespoon Tabasco Sweet & Spicy sauce (not regular Tabasco)
1 tablespoon of your favorite barbecue rub (as mentioned above, Raichlen’s Basic Barbecue Rub)
2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

As Raichlen says, combine and bring to boil in non-reactive sauce pan. Reduce heat to medium and gently simmer “until dark, thick, and richly flavored, 10 to 15 minutes.” You don’t really need to be told to put the sauce in a clean jar, do you? Nah.

• Secret sauce
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Doing the Dutch
• Meals for the work week
• Cat, fish, recipe

So there I was, again, in the condiment and sauces aisle at the supermarket, undecided. Row upon row of brightly labeled bottles stared back at me, their contents rich and ruddy brown and tempting. And - again - I turned away, empty-handed.

I’m no food snob. I don’t know enough to be quite so high-falutin’. And yet, I have been unable to bring myself to purchase a bottle of ready-made barbecue sauce for months now. This wasn’t always the case. Back in the day, I was quite happy to use Country Bob Edson’s All-Purpose Sauce for all my barbeque needs. That was long ago, however, and far away. Now…well, I seem to feel the way this foodie does:

I learned three important things about barbecue sauce:

1. Never buy bottled sauce.
2. If you do, lie and say it was homemade.
3. Say that there is a “secret” ingredient in it, then tell no one, even upon threat of bodily injury.

The drawback is that preparing homemade sauce is a pain in the ass. I don’t often have cause to use it, but when I do I need to have it ready-to-hand, and that means making it up in advance. You see? A pain.

Another problem: what kind of sauce do I actually want? Sweet? Smoky? A bit of a vinegary tang? You’d think you could have two of the three qualities, right? The Web is replete with recipes from enthusiastic cooks, but which to employ?

Not terribly long ago, I made up a sauce based on a recipe offered up by grill guru Steven Raichlen - with a Coca-Cola base, no less. It was…okay. Not bad, but not wow, either. I was left to wonder if I possessed the necessary spirit of experimentation. I’m still wondering.

Well, I need to decide soon, because the BBQ months are upon us. Time to consider this vital topic in earnest.

• Secret sauce, continued
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Meals for the work week
• Toolin’ up in the kitchen
• And now, for a change of pace…

Until yesterday, my kitchen lacked a Dutch oven, and I was sad. They looked so glossily beautiful in photos in cooking magazines, and chefs using them always seemed a little too smug and satisfied with life. The technique of braising is prized and praised in Cooksville and while a Dutch oven is not necessarily required in order to braise, its suitability for the purpose put it squarely in the WANT category. But Dutch ovens are spendy, and I just couldn’t pull the trigger on the purchase. Fortunately, big-box retailer Target had a sale this week that placed a shiny red Cuisinart Dutch oven within fiscal reach, and my wife brought it home to me.

My precious…

Where were we? Oh, right, I neded a recipe. I chose “Braised Guinness Stout Short Ribs” from NPR’s “Kitchen Window.” Thus speaketh contributor Howard Yoon:

This is my adaptation of a basic short-ribs dish, but with Guinness beer as the liquid instead of wine or stock. The tomato paste provides the acidity, while the Guinness adds a pleasing malty taste to the meal. Serve this with a side of steel-cut oatmeal and a pint of Guinness, and you have the perfect, cold-weather Irish meal.

I gathered the required ingredients…

…and largely followed Yoon’s instructions, except that I used only three and a half pounds of short ribs instead of the five to six pounds that he calls for. Seriously, the amount I used would have been quite enough for four people and I’m not sure I could even fit five or six pounds of ribs plus veggies in my five-quart pot.

Fast-forward past the prep, the browning of the ribs and the sauteing of the vegetables (using the same Dutch oven, which I love), combining all and allowing it to sit in a 300 oven for just shy of the full two hours recommended. The ribs were not quite fall-off-the-bone tender, but they were in the neighborhood. The recipe didn’t call for salting (or peppering) the ribs before searing, which I wish I had done. I added salt and pepper to the veggie mixture before adding Guinesss, tomato paste, and ribs, but it wasn’t quite enough and didn’t impart enough saltiness to the meat. Finally, I thought there was not enough tomato paste aciidity to balance out the “baseness” of the Guinness, even though the tomato aroma during cooking was both detectable and delightful. I would certainly recommend doubling the amount of tomato paste called for, and will try using wine instead of stout next time around.

Still, I enjoyed it (as did M), partly for the heartiness of the dish, and partly because, well, it was my very first braise. I served it with Israeli couscous, which was delicious with the broth. Indeed, I liked the dish so much that I had it (sans couscous) for breakfast this morning.

I already have a new short rib recipe in mind.

• Secret sauce, continued
• Cat, fish, recipe
• Meals for the work week
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• And now, for a change of pace…

Behold, the latest pound and a half of pork loin that has volunteered to undergo transformation by conductive heat in my oven, all in the cause of my finally cooking a pork roast that is (one) not dry, and (two) not insufficiently flavored. Such were the outcomes the first couple of times I tried roasting a hunk of pig. The first time, I foolishly allowed the loin to reach a target temperature of 165° Fahrenheit (and while still in the oven, no less) forgetting that the meat would continue to cook (and, given the circumstances, overcook) while sitting innocuously on my counter. Blorg.

The second time around, I tried getting by with a mere hour of marinating. Not sure what I was thinking. As you might imagine, not much flavor penetration took place.

In addition, I’ve not been entirely pleased with my selection of marinades/glazes. The flavor hasn’t been bold enough to really influence the pork (when it’s been given time enough to try, that is).

Also - and this is strange for me - I haven’t used enough salt.

So. We’re doing things differently with the latest porcine volunteer. First, better preparation. Next, a decent length of marinating time. Finally, proper monitoring of temperature.

What we have so far for this third attempt ( in addition to a 1.5 to 2 lb. pork loin roast*):

• 12 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 6 tablespoons fresh oregano, leaves only, chopped
• 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp freshly-ground pepper

All ingredients into the food processor or blender (except the pork, of course); puree the mixture, which should come out looking a muddy mess with green bits in it. Use a spatula to coat the pork loin with some of the mixture. If your pork loin is bound by strings but split down the middle, try to work some of the marinade into that split. Place the pork loin into a zippable plastic bag, pour the rest of the marinade in there and seal it up as free of air as you can (as in the image above). Put it the fridge and let it sit overnight; turn it once during that time.

____________________

Now that’s what I’ve done so far. Here’s what I plan to do late afternoon tomorrow:

Remove the pork-in-a bag a half-hour before I intend to stick it in the oven. Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit. Take the pork loin out of the plastic bag and put it in a shallow roasting pan. Roast it, uncovered until an instant-read thermometer registers 155° Fahrenheit, a good ten degrees short of Big Brother’s usual recommendation. Remove the pork loin from the oven and place it on a rack above a plate so that the meat can rest without sitting in a growing pool of its own juices. Tent loosely with foil and allow to sit for ten minutes.

While the pork is roasting in the oven, I suspect I’ll do something with carrots. But carrots aren’t the big issue. It’s all about the pork tomorrow.

____________________

Update: So this is what happened.

Remove the pork-in-a bag a half-hour before I intend to stick it in the oven. Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit.

Check - except that (1) I set the oven to 400° Fahrenheit instead of 350, (2) I placed a cast-iron skillet in the oven to get it good and hot, and (3) after transferring the skillet to the stovetop (oven mitt!) and setting the flame under it to medium-high, immediately placing the pork loin in the hot oven, I seared the pork loin on four sides, just shy of 2 minutes per side. Then into the oven for…longer than I had expected. I thought that with the searing, I could get away with roasting the pork loin for as little as 30 minutes. Not so, as the thermometer revealed that the loin’s core was a cool ninety degrees. Roasting time was more like an hour and fifteen minutes to get the pork loin up to 155° Fahrenheit. Out of the oven then and onto a rack over a plate, and under tended foil for ten minutes.

I apologize for not having remembered to take a picture of the finished product. By the time the food was done, getting down to eating was the only thing on my mind.

Oh, the pork loin itself? Beautifully crusty-brown outside, juicy inside, and tender. The marinade did its work; the oregano, garlic, and balsamic vinegar imparted a tasty blend of flavors, combined with seared Maillard reaction goodness. Again, not as salty as I had expected, which turned out to be a good thing, I think. M and I judged this roast a success.

• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Secret sauce, continued
• Steak and butter!
• Marinating chicken breasts
• Meals for the work week

One night a while back, at the Turkish/Mediterranean restaurant Aya Sofia, I found myself marveling over a kind of pasta I’d never had before. Or was it a grain? Whatever it was, it was delicious. Creamy texture, rich flavor. I may have moaned in pleasure, and my wife may have laughed in response. I asked the server what it was I’d just inhaled and learned a new term: pearl couscous. See also: Israeli couscous.

A couple of days later, I turned to my friend and mentor, the Internet, and grew wise.

Following in the tradition of pasta shaped and/or marketed like grains (think Italian orzo and rice), Israeli couscous is technically not related to the staple carbohydrate of the Mahgreb called couscous. Invented in the 1950s by the Tel Aviv-based firm Osem, Israeli couscous is extruded (like ordinary pasta) and toasted to dry (like Jewish farfel). The result, when cooked, is a chewy, buttery carbohydrate that is shaped more like pearls of tapioca than actual couscous, and that has, over the years, become a staple in Israel. To make matters more confusing, traditional African couscous is often mistakenly referred to as a grain. In fact, it is a method of treating durum semolina (the same wheat used to make pasta), that produces small granules, which are then steamed several times and fluffed.

We’ve had it three times now, starting with a variation of this fine recipe and moving on to a couple of homemade concoctions, all of them delicious. Chicken stock is your friend when it comes to Israeli couscous. So is butter (mmmm).

• And now, for a change of pace…
• Meals for the work week
• Secret sauce, continued
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Secret sauce

Lean beef cuts like sirloin may be where it’s at these days with the diet mavens - and I take the point - but I must confess a weakness for well-marbled ribeye.

So I took two ribeye steaks, each about an inch thick, covered them with a sheet of plastic wrap and left them on the counter to gradually warm to room temperature. Put a cast iron skillet in a 500° oven to get good and hot. Set an oven mitt in plain sight so I wouldn’t forget it, because , you know, I’m just like that.

Cut up a couple of servings of broccoli florets, rinsed them, set them up in a veggie steamer in a covered pot containing a half-inch of water.

Made up a new batch of grillmaster Steven Raichlen’s Java Rub recipe, which follows (not sure if this recipe from Raichlen’s handy How to Grill is the same formulation as his marketed “Java Rub”).

6 tablespoons ground coffee
2 tbsp coarse or kosher salt
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp paprika
2 teaspoons ground pepper
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Mixed all in a bowl; used my hand rather than a whisk or fork, which was really helpful in breaking up those pesky lumps of brown sugar.

Used my spiffy oil sprayer to lightly coat the steaks with extra-virgin olive oil, then coated both sides of the steaks with the Java Rub. Followed Alton Brown’s advice in I’m Just Here for the Food, v.2.0 about really massaging the rub into the meat, then waiting a few minutes while the salt in the rub brought the liquid within to the surface. Then I applied more rub, worked it once more into the steaks, let them sit a bit.

In a small saucepan, I combined the following and set the burner to low:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp water

Kept an eye on the saucepan, stirring every so often. Once it’s was all mixed and starting to bubble, I turned off the heat. (After cooling for a while, this mixture develops a taut skin. Just stir it away and don’t think about it.)

I put on the oven mitt and removed the hot cast iron skillet, placing it over medium-high heat on the stovetop. I put the steaks in the skillet and let them sit for ninety seconds, then turned them with tongs and let them sit once more for ninety seconds. (This is longer than the thirty seconds per side that Brown suggests in his Pan Seared Rib Eye recipe, but it’s my kitchen.)

I then turned off the burner under the skillet, made sure I was still wearing the oven mitt, and put the skillet back into the 500° oven. I set the timer for two minutes.

I then started the burner under the pot with the broccoli, medium heat.

When the oven timer went off, I used my hand-with-the-oven-mitt to pull out the skillet. I turned the steaks with the tongs, then set the skillet back into the oven for another two minutes. When time had elapsed, I shut the oven off, withdrew the skillet from the oven, and transferred the steaks to a plate. I “tented the steaks loosely with foil” (always loved that phrase) to let them sit for two minutes.

The broccoli was done by now, so I removed it from the steamer and divided it between two small bowls. I spooned the warm four-part sauce over the broccoli. I transferred the steaks to serving plates. Then, along with my wife, I ate dinner.

Verdict: success. I was highly pleased with the steaks - the vigorous application of the rub really made a difference. The ribeyes were tender and rich with flavor. Confession: I was going to leave a large leftover portion of my steak for tomorrow, but that intention quickly went by the boards.

I wonder if the actual rubbing-in of the rub assists in breaking down fibers in the meat? If I were a real cook, I would know.

Update: A fair number of ribeye-recipe hunters have found this page, so I thought I should add a pic of what the finished product looks like:

Yeah, that’s good eatin’. The small glass pan in back contains the above-mentioned broccoli sauce.

Another update: Give the ribeyes a chance to warm up from cold death; take them out of the fridge twenty minutes or so before you start cooking them.

Also: When you let them rest after removing them from the oven, don’t let them just sit in a pool of their own juices. Put a rack over the plate, or line up a bunch of skewers or chopsticks or such on the plate and then put the steaks on those. Then tent with foil.

• Secret sauce, continued
• And now, for a change of pace…
• Cat, fish, recipe
• Meals for the work week
• Doing the Dutch

As I’m kind of shy and diffident when it comes to cooking - quick to remind people that I’m no creative cook, a mere babe in the woods without a clearly written recipe - it usually takes a lot of time and fretting before I can bring myself to purchase kitchen equipment. For example, I waited a long time after having ruined one cast iron skillet before finally acquiring another (that’s a story yet to be recounted here). Fortunately, my supportive wife constantly reminds me that I’m good enough, smart enough, and deserving of proper tools.

A few months back, I had made soft whimpering noises about how great it would be to have a oil atomizer, something with which I could lightly spray olive oil rather relying on my heavy hand and a tablespoon. During the holiday season, M found herself in possession of a gift card from Crate & Barrel. M loves her some Crate & Barrel, and when she announced that it was time to burn up the card, I assumed we’d be picking up some stylish knick-knack or other. But instead, and to my delight, M said something along the lines of “Let’s go get that oil sprayer thingie.”

As it turned out, we spent all of the card’s value (plus a tad more) on the sprayer and two other tools.

The oil aerosol stands tall and ready for use. As most of you already know and the rest can guess, the clear cap is attached to a tube that acts as a plunger/pressurizer. You open the sprayer, fill it with extra-virginy goodness (or any other kind of oil), close the sprayer and use the cap to build up pressure inside. Then you’re set to spray. I use it to spritz food directly and to apply a trace of oil to a pan when a light touch is desired.

The two-stage knife sharpener on the left has two crossed carbide blades to set the blade’s edge, and two ceramic rods with which to finish the edge. No, I’d never heard of “setting” or “finishing” knife edges before. There’s also a component for sharpening scissors.

The star of the show, however, is the Microplane grater/zester. Greatly have I desired one of these gizmos. Just holding it makes me feel like a real chef. Romano and parmesan cheese shavings are light and fluffy as clouds with this thing, and I can get lemon zest without grating down to the rind as I often did using a cheese grater.

Just looking at these tools makes me happy.

• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Meals for the work week
• Secret sauce
• And now, for a change of pace…
• Cat, fish, recipe

I did something last night that I’d never done before: I took a skinless, boneless chicken breast half and sliced it lengthwise, not quite all the way through, on the thin edge of the breast. Then I opened it like a paperback book.

I was very excited.

The recipe, “Pampered Chicken,” came from The EatingWell Diabetes Cookbook. No, I’m not diabetic - and thanks for asking - but my father was and my brother is and so it’s on my mind a lot, though perhaps not so much as it should be. Anyway, the recipe’s approach is a pretty common one: you slice open the breast and insert something yummy (in this case, cheese). Fold the breast shut, dip it (egg white), coat it (dry breadcrumbs, chopped parsley, grated Parmesan, kosher salt, pepper), brown one side in a hot ovenproof skillet, turn it and move the skillet immediately to a hot oven for about twenty minutes. Oh, yes, friend. It was good. But not uncommon…outside of my own kitchen, that is.

Millions of cooks enjoy making stuffed chicken recipes, after all, and they think nothing of preparing them. I’ve always been reluctant to try it, though. I vaguely recall making a chicken Kiev dish once or twice ages ago, but have usually thought such dishes either too fancy or perhaps too daunting for my culinary skill set, which I consider awfully limited.

To tell the truth, I’m kind of a lumbering oaf in the kitchen. Messy, slow, not terribly organized. If you say “mise en place” to me, I’d probably say “Gesundheit” in response. More problematically, my grasp of cooking fundamentals - an understanding of the concepts that allow cooks to look at a pile of foodstuffs, recognize how they might come together, and so produce a meal without guidance - is not the strongest. As a result, I rely heavily on recipes and the saints who provide them. (My approach to blog design is much the same.)

On the positive side, I’m at least a well-intentioned oaf. That’s my single best quality when it comes to cooking. That is, I can bring myself, fitfully, to try new things…assuming that they call within the outer ranges of my comfort zone.

Also: I actually like cooking (as opposed to simply liking food). This came as kind of a surprise to me.

This year, this brand new year, I hope to expand that comfort zone by developing new skills in the kitchen. It’s an actual resolution (I’m among the credulous who still put stock in the New Year’s ritual). I found myself encouraged by animated French mice, of all things; Ratatouille gave me a culinary charge I hadn’t felt since the first time I saw Big Night. And though I pride myself on being resistant to most reality shows, I was glued to the television for the recent rebroadcasts of the Food Network’s two lightly-scripted contests. Kinda silly, I know, but you take inspiration where you find it, yes?

Damn. I’m hungry now.

• Meals for the work week
• Take-out at The Pitted Olive
• And now, for a change of pace…
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Cat, fish, recipe