The Great Big Food Post For Food People

So what was I going to write about? Oh yeah, food. Kitchen stuff. Recipes. My great passion in life these days (after you guys, of course.)

To be honest, while I love to eat, I do not actually like to cook all that much. I mean, I like to cook more than I like to take the garbage can down to the road and more than I like to pick up all the puzzle pieces but less than I like sitting in the bathtub with a glass of wine.

Nor I am a particularly good cook. I know people who can look into the refrigerator and emerge with a divine clafouti (the last of the capers, the rind of a brie, a few olives- mon dieu it's amazing) but I am not one of them. I follow recipes with a grim determination and it is only after I have made the same thing over and over again for five years that I am able to start playing with it.

Still, despite my limitations, it would be hard for me to have spent as much time at anything as I have dedicated to making lunches and dinners and not emerge with a few ideas. As a lazy glutton I always try to make something that tastes as good as possible with the minimum amount of effort.

So, just in time for the holidays I offer the following thoughts (with gadget tips!):

ON RECIPES:

For the most part I get recipes from cooking magazines. Fine Cooking is far and away the best one out there. The title makes it sound like it would be too haute for actual cuisine but in truth it is a very accessible, very good magazine. It could make an excellent gift, now that I think about it. I also get Bon Appetit and Cook's Illustrated, both of which have their moments. I can go months in a row with nothing appealing to me in either and then zing! they come up with a few things that work. Oh, and I have been receiving Food and Wine for some unknown reason. Have publishers just started sending out subscriptions at random (maybe they tell advertisers that they have a circulation in the millions and nobody bothers to notice that 200,000 copies are mailed every month to S. Claus, North Pole)? You would think, knowing my proclivities, that Food and Wine would be right up my alley but... I don't know. All of the recipes are a little over the top and I can never find the specific wines (Linda, I AM getting back to you, I swear) they mention. I am not much of a cookbook person, largely because I haven't found one that moved me since The Joy of Cooking. I am open to suggestions, though.

Oh, and in order to actually use the magazine recipes I have a system. A highly organized system that makes life happy and rich and melodious, as all organized things do.

First, I have a binder. The binder is divided into sensible categories like Entree- Beef or Side Dishes.

Then I have four plastic magazine holders that live in the kitchen cupboard next to the binder.

When Bon Appetit and Food and Wine arrive I sit down in front of a nice Timberwolves game and wield my mini box-cutter with alacrity. If a recipe sounds good I slice it out and tape it onto a piece of notebook paper, whereupon it gets put into the binder.

I cannot bring myself to cut up Cook's or Fine, so I just use a little sticky note on recipes that look good to me. Marked issues then get put into one of the magazine racks. If I knew you better I would confess that the sticky notes are colored-coded by food type, but I do not know you that well. So consider it unconfessed.

I start making my grocery list every week by flipping through the binder and the magazines, choosing (more or less) one seafood, one beef, one chicken, one pasta and one freebie. For some reason five planned meals always manages to cover the whole week around here. I know and love people who find the idea of planning a week's worth of meals appalling but for me the thought of revisiting the issue day after day... ugh.

It is a poorly kept secret in the family that I am more or less obsessed with eating, so I get a lot of cooking presents. Some of these are a waste of space but some actually make my life easier and for that I salute them -

THE LITTLE THINGS I LOVE:

Cuisinart mini-prep- My old one emitted an unpleasant burning smell when used, but I did not replace it until last week when a spectacular series of occurrences resulted in its plastic lid being cloven in two. I looked at the wreckage and promptly put my hat on to go out and buy a new one.

Odd-sized measuring cups and spoons- Williams-Sonoma sells a set of measuring cups in 2/3, 3/4 and 2 cup sizes. Ditto spoons in weird sizes like 2 TB. In addition to these I have three sets of normal 1/4 to 1 cup measuring cups and four sets of measuring spoons. Then I have the classic Pyrex 1 cup, 2 cup, 4 cup and 8 cup measuring cups and I use all of them all the time.

Hand chopper- Zyliss makes a great hand chopper. I seem to only use it for garlic but even then I use it all the time. I like the way you get to whack it over and over again until the garlic is nicely minced.

Spoon rest: Mine is a ceramic cat. At some point various people noticed that I cook AND have an abnormal quantity of cats, thus a shopping tradition was born (note: cat spoon rest and cat coasters and cat trivets and cat mugs... Shoot me.) You wouldn't think a spoon rest could make someone happy but it does.

Microplane graters - Um, just because they are cool.

Knives - An extra chef's knife (or two) never comes amiss.

Lots of rubber spatulas - Steve bought me about a dozen in various sizes a few years ago. Very useful so I hope Patrick gives them back soon.

THE MEDIUM THING I LOVE:

12 inch Stainless Steel saute pan- For YEARS I wondered why I could never get anything to brown properly and then I discovered it was the damned nonstick pans I was using. Not that nonstick doesn't have its place but you really need at least one stainless pan. I have heard tell of the new Calphalon ONE which supposedly offers nonstick convenience with the ability to brown. Anybody used one? Are they good?

BIG THINGS I LOVE:

Whole lotta refrigeration: Somehow we wound up with two refrigerators and I have to admit (since I thought it was really really stupid originally) that it is actually very nice indeed. I mean, when it isn't winter here. Now we can just open the door and put things outside to stay cold. It's a little like being an Eskimo.

Whole lotta ovens: This house has two wall ovens and I use the second one more than I thought I would. As a corollary it also has a five-burner stove and you know what? That is just one burner too many. I would rather have four plus a griddle. I'm just saying is all.

KitchenAid Standing Mixer: Makes double-batches of chocolate chip cookies BY ITSELF. Enough said. My in-laws sent it for Christmas last year and it is why I love them. Sort of.

THREE REALLY QUICK DINNERS:

Spaghetti and meat sauce- I will post a link to my spaghetti sauce recipe. I make it about once every two months (actually, I use the same sauce for lasagne so I double the recipe as I go and wind up with about 10 containers to freeze) so I always have some sauce in the freezer. When I am in a hurry I use capellini (also known as angel hair pasta) because it cooks in half the time as spaghetti. Defrost the one, boil the other - voila.

Jambalaya - Zatarain makes a decent boxed Jambalaya mix. I add andouille sausage (keeps in the freezer forever) or sautéed shrimp or leftover chicken to the rice mix. While it is cooking I chop some green peppers and celery and toss it in to the pan after it is done but before it has rested. Meal in a bowl. Don't be sparing with the Tabasco.

Scrambled eggs - Or an omelet if you don't want to stir it. Add: tomatoes, peppers, celery, cheese, ham, onion, sun-dried tomatoes...

RANDOM THINGS:

Bread freezes really well. I buy interesting breads when I am at a bakery and store them for whenever.

Every so often I make double-batches of chocolate chip cookies (or rather, my standing mixer does) and scoop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto baking sheets. I freeze the dough and throw the frozen balls into Ziploc bags. When we want chocolate chip cookies we just bake 'em frozen adding about 5 minutes to the baking time. I have to admit this does not make for excellent cookies but even a bad chocolate chip cookie is pretty good.

I keep the spices I use most in a drawer next to the stove, face up.

Steve and I drink whole milk. I tried a lower-fat milk once, 20 years ago, and it tasted weird. I have never gone back.

I had Steve cut a panel out of a silverware drawer thing-y for me. You know those things you can buy at Target that keep the silverware separated in a drawer? I bought an extra one and with the slight modification by Steve, it nicely holds my measuring spoons, measuring cups and strange cooking implements (like the pizza cutter) in a drawer on the other side of the stove. 

I store my pot lids in the cabinet under the stove in an aluminum dish draining rack (any day now I am going to send this winning tip into Cook's Illustrated and get my free year's subscription- so don't steal it or I will not get my name in the front with its own black-and-white drawing and I will be pissed.)

I used to make 13x9" lasagnes but we got sick of eating it before we were close to finished with the whole thing. Then it occurred to me to make two 9x9" pans instead. I bake one the day I make it and freeze the other, unbaked. I have since extended this to other things, like enchiladas and everything casserole-y. 

There you go. Four years of my life distilled for your viewing pleasure. If you are not a food person (which makes you weird in my book, but it takes all kinds I suppose) then there is no way you have made it this far in the post. Which means it is just us Normals left and I can ask, do you have anything to suggest for me? Something you did that was just so goddamned clever you are dying to tell someone who will care?

Well, lay it on us.

Tomorrow: How to schedule an IVF cycle from 800 miles away and other stories

Comments

[Crystal]

Well, someone already stole my cookbook hints: CI's Quick Recipe, and anything and everything by Bittman (I want to marry him, er, if he weren't happily married, and I weren't happily married). He's changed my cooking style forever, for the better. I like Rachel Ray too, but what I like about Bittman above all others, is he teaches you to cook quickly by taste, not by recipe. It's revolutionary. Really.

And it suits me well anyway, because there's not a recipe I don't bastardize anyway. And in spite of my overly-large cookbook collection, I rarely use a recipe. Basically, I cook Asian, European, Latin, or American, or any of the above, with wine. A little wine helps anything along. At this point, if cooking takes long enough to justify reading a recipe, I give.

[Vaughn]

I'm another of those love to eat, hate to cook type of people. But my new goal is to become someone who cooks and meal plans so your post is timely.

When I do cook, I love to make something different and so I second the recommendation for epicurious.com.

You can put in what ingredients you have and it makes suggestions or you can put in something like "carrot cake" and have it spit out 35 different ones. And the best part is many recipies have rating from people who have tried them and any alterations they have made eg. too sweet, halved the cream cheese etc. Everything I have tried from there has had a high rating and has been delicious. It suggests recipes from many of the mags you listed so if you can't remember just where you saw it, it would also be a great resource.

[luolin]

De-lurking here because thinking about cooking is so much more appealing than what I am supposed to be working on.
To add to a previous comment: Bon Appetite recipes are on epicurious.com, but most of the recipes on Cooks Illustrated's website are subscriber only, even if you already subscribe to the magazine (it's the no advertisement thing, like Consumer Reports).

If we don't plan the meals a week at a time, we end up eating out all the time which we can't afford (when I was single, I ended up eating ice cream for dinner) because I just can't think of a meal and shop and cook after work.

[Juno]

I thought I was the only one with a notebook full of categorized recipies - although the system's fallen apart a bit in the last year, as I am only a fake organized person. I put my glued-on-colored-paper recipies in plastic sleeves in the notebook, though - to keep recipe goo off them.

And Joy is the best - it always has the answer to the question so basic no other cookbook bothers to index it. But I love cookbooks - they're like porn to me.

[chasmyn]

You are so incredibly organized - I love this post!!

[cursingmama]

MMMMM - Kevin Garnett. I was doing so good concentrating until you mentioned the Timberwolves...

[Laura B]

Love to read about cooking/food.
I don't own a crockpot but have always done all day/slow cooking in a huge glazed clay pot or cast iron dutch oven in my oven at 200 degrees. Or even in a roasting pan with foil cover. Works fine and no need to find storage space for yet another appliance.

I am so addicted to recipes that I want to try "someday" that I have been working on a database using main ingredients (i.e.,beef, arugula, feta) so that when I have a craving for the taste of some specific thing, or have limited items in the larder, I can find things by ingredient. It's slow going, but I think it will be a thing of beauty.

[Brooke Raymond]

ok, ok, ok. i am addicted to cooking and have been since i was a little girl. my husband had no idea what he was marrying into - his vice is computer stuff, mine is kitchen stuff.
things i cannot live without - my pro600 kitchenaid mixer. i just got it (after having grown up with my parents kitchenaid) and it has, yet again, made my life so much easier. i make bread pretty much every week now. i also cannot live without my le creuset dutch ovens and frying pans. they are the best when it comes to quality, even heating, browning, etc. etc. i can't believe that anyone hasn't mentioned those yet - my parents have used them for thirty plus years and so will i. you must still have some sort of a nonstick pans for certain purposes though.
tips - my favorite clean-up tip is after you have fried bacon, chicken, anything that sticks just a little and leaves a bit of a mess on the pan is to put a thin layer of water in the pan and put it back on the burner. wait until it boils for a few minutes and scrape up the yucky stuff easily. the water loosens it. i have several favoriite cooking tips, but i am not sure how explainable they are without demonstration so i will refrain. and as far as cookbooks go, i have a ton on my amazon wishlist, but i usually don't use recipes (i've cooked long enough to just throw stuff together) and if i do, i will just get it off of the internet or use family recipes. happy cooking everyone!

[Karin]

ooohhhh great post! :)
#1 www.penzeys.com for all spice needs including cocoas they even have spicey cocoa! Ok I really like that place but maybe you all know about it all ready...

#2 When making cheesecakes from scratch that call for lemon juice you can substitute the lemon juice with lemon tea or raspberry tea that you brew out of a cappucino steamer percolator thingy you know the ones that have the little cup that locks into place and it gets so hot it steams as it brews ? Im crazy I know but I dont have a pic of it lol but anyway i substitute the lemon juice with tea all the time and its SOO YUMMY!

#3 assorted scoop sizes with the little release handle thinger you push a lever/button thing and it scoops out whatever is in the scoop...those are SO handy! Especially if doing the cookie freezing things ;)

(im so not articulate today lol)

[Jen]

Mmmm....food...good ideas, lady! You're all making me hungry!

I too do the weekly recipe/grocery list thing (sadly, usually in church during the sermon, on the back of an offering card. What? I'm listening...just multitasking). I got into the habit from my mom, and I can't manage weekly meals any other way.

Here's my baking tip: You can do the same thing with scones that you do with chocolate chip cookies. They usually survive the trip fairly well.

Although I'm not so organized as you to have a binder, I do have an accordian file with tabs like "Chicken," and "Breakfast foods," into which I place all my loose recipes--ones I've printed from Epicurious, scribbled down on receipts, etc.

Also, a few years ago, my mom gave me a binder of her Christmas recipes (cookies, candies, Christmas breakfast casserole, etc.). I've added my own over the years, and it's really great to know where exactly they all are. It's also good to know that if (God forbid) anything happened to my mom, we'd know where all the recipes are buried.

I second the recommendations for Nigella, Epicurious, crock pots and loaf pans of lasagne. Ooh, and my husband and I love our lemon squeezer--a hand-held device which holds half a lemon or lime; you squeeze the handles together, and the juice flows through the holes. Handy, quick, and a bright, cheerful color.

[Danielle]

Maybe you've already used this trick but I'll share it anyway:

When Eric comes home to a quasi empty fridge, exhausted and totally devoid of any culinary imagination, he googles his seemingly useless ingredients and invariably finds a tasty recipe in a matter of seconds!

Danielle

[cathy b]

Mmmm, tasty food post! Out of lurking on your wonderful blog to add my stuff:

I do have a lot of cookbooks, joined a cookbook book club and always look through the remaindered ones at my fav bookstore. I like a lot of the better restaurant cookbooks or good magazine compilations. When I am planning, I'll stack a bunch of cookbooks on the table and flip through the indexes, comparing similar recipes from one to another. It has taught me a lot about how to improvise. I also write margin notes in my cookbooks--dates of when I made a recipe, the occasion if it was some special day, who I made it for, what subsitutions or additions I made, what to try differently next time, comments from family about a dish. These are becoming like little diaries. I have a fantasy of leaving them to a food-loving grandchild someday. I also do a lot of web searches, print some of those out and tuck into cookbooks near similar recipes.

I also love-love-love my Kitchendaid mixer. I am secretly lusting after the ice cream bowl attachment, but I will wait to buy it. I do not want it at $100--I want to wait until Kohls has it and buy it on a discount day. (The ice cream bowl is a bowl you store in your freezer that comes with a special dasher/mixer. Supposedly, you can make 2 qts of ice cream or sorbet in 20 minutes with it. It only fits on the pro-series, lever-lift mixers, not the tilt-top ones, though.)

Someone else said dutch ovens--oh yeah. I have several dutch ovens (one with the little feet for camping or barbequing), and 6 cast iron frying pans. No nonstick in the house--hate it. Cast iron is so easy to care for, impossible to ruin. My favorite dutch ovens both came from estate sales. One frying pan has been in my family 100 years. (Best on a gas stove, though.) My saucepans, stock and pasta pots are stainless.

Spices--I buy dried spices at an organic co-op, in small amounts, never as much as a whole jar, and keep them in the bags from the store. I write the date and what it is on the special extra-wide twist-ties the store has. Then I store these bags in little drawers in a small decorative wall-hung cupboard I bought at TJ Maxx. It is great not wasting a whole big/deep cupboard with spice jars, and all the little bags pack together nicely, no space waste. The drawers come all the way out so I pull them out and bring to the table when I'm working on a recipe. (I do sort by smelliness categories into the drawers--savory spices, cinnamony/cardamom family, hot spices, green leafy, etc.) Dried parsley I use a lot of, so I grow it every year and dry a big jar of it to last through winter. With fresh spices, there's a shelf by my kitchen sink with a fluorescent light above it, and I clip the ends of the spices and put them in bud vases there--it is a pretty little jungle, they stay fresh and crisp, basil and some others will even root and last for months.

[The Barrenness]

Nothing gets a conversation started like FOOD! Julia, I really enjoyed your posting. I'm an avid reader of Cook's Illustrated too. I even bought the 2004 bound edition. Now, I think I'll cut off the back covers of my 2004 issues and frame them in tasteful black frames. As far as gadgets, do you have one of those rubber cylinders for garlic (rubbing the skin off)? I like mine and it seems to keep my hands relatively un-garlicky smelling. And, yes, what would we do without our Kitchen-Aid mixers? Mine's gun metal gray--I love it! I'm in the process of buying all the attachments so I can streamline my kitchen.

I highly recommend "Wine & All That Jazz" for any wine lovers. It has a lot of gadgets and grape vine furniture for vinophiles. Very neat. I must not have bought anything from them because they stopped sending me the catalog. I'm pretty sure they have a website.

I commend you on the meal planning. I've tried, but have not succeeded. Someday.

[Meredith]

That was a good read. I am just working on my system for cooking and recording the results of whatever has been cooked. I should have a recipe box but that requires transferring information from the cookbook. Instead, I just write comments on the page. "Mere liked it enough but doesn't need to make it EVER again." Since I have been pregnant, I have been more particular and snobby about food than ever. I have bought at least seven cookbooks in these months and I continue to use the ones I grew up with. THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK & THE ENCHANTED BROCCOLI FOREST. It's all vegetarian but you can easily add meat when it catches your fancy. AND most things are not hard to prepare.

I recently added a recipe category to my blog. Only one recipe down.

Thanks again for the words.

Meredith

[JANET]

Hi,
Does anyone know how you would make or buy a crockpot divider? I have a Hamilton Beach Crock pot and do not wish to purchase a smaller one.
Thanks,
Janet