I like to cook. I like to eat. It’s a grand arrangement.
I am a self-taught cook, with faint memories of working in kitchens, and an unhealthy obsession with cooking shows on Youtube (and a few on FoodTV).
I keep a food diary, which I use like an engineering and learning log. I plan out menus, track techniques and cuisines I want to learn more about, and I tweak recipes that I’m developing.
My dad only knew how to cook a few dishes, but he was proud of each one. He loved making boxed mac and cheese. It was usually the blue generic box, and not brand named KD (Kraft Dinner for anyone not from Canada). Dad would start by heating a few tablespoons of margarine in a tiny, janky aluminium pot, stirring in the cheese powder, adding in some fresh milk. He cooked the noodles in a larger copper-bottom pot, draining it, and then adding back his special sauce. ...
I remember an old cast aluminium pot, handed down from my grandparents. It was pockmarked, with a patina of polymerized oils in the depressions. It once served as a pressure cooker that exploded in my grandmother’s kitchen, so it no longer had a lid. The handle was loose and the bolt seized, making it a death trap when loaded with a hot sauce. This pot was mostly used for my mom’s frugal spaghetti sauce, which was a simple combination of beef, puréd tomatoes, and just a hint of oregano, salt, and pepper. ...
I regularly stay at a corporate apartment with a nice little kitchen that has only stainless steel pots and pans. Normally having real pans is a good thing, but when travelling I don’t usually bring oil or butter with me, and I don’t want to buy more oil than I need as I hate to throw out food (or pack it with me). And while stainless pans are inert and last forever, they’re a bit picky until they’re at the right temperature (and properly lubricated). ...
Pork loin was on sale this week, packaged in half loins (roughly 3.5kg). I picked one up and split it into four roasts. Pork loin is usually cut into chops or brined and smoked (as back bacon, or Canadian bacon). It’s a fairly lean cut, but when cut right will have some marbling and a fat cap. It makes great ground pork, if you include the fat cap. I ground ¼ of the loin, seasoning and brining it overnight. I tested a small portion of it, and decided to run it through the mixer with the paddle attachment to soften it up a bit (to get the texture right). I formed it into balls and paties, and froze them. ...
Today’s dinner was inspired by a social media photo from my morning feed. Today I’m working with ingredients I have on hand, which includes lemongrass, pork sirloin tip, and a boatload of veg. Pork and mushrooms 500-750g of pork sirloin, thinly sliced and halved (3-4mm x 2cm x 2cm or so) 2-3 cups of mushrooms, sliced (shiitakes in this case) 3-4 stalks of lemongrass super finely sliced (on the bias) 1-2 tablespoons cane sugar (or any sugar you have) garlic, shallots finely minced 2 tablespoons soy sauce, mirin, rice wine (wine vinegar, or lime can sub) 1 tablespoons fish sauce 1-2 tablespoons corn starch 1 teaspoon Accent (MSG) 1 teaspoon baking soda salt/pepper to taste Toss pork and mushrooms with ingredients and set aside in the fridge to marinate for up to a few hours. ...
I love food. I love the eating of, shopping for, designing menus around, and above all else, preparation of meals, especially for those closest to me. Cookery is a universe of systemizing the making of food, and to me at least it is a lot like software design and development. In the art of making food there are tactical skills that are important and enjoyable to hone. There are strategic planning and execution skills that take years to master. Cookery even has a holistic way of thinking about how food and food production works that feels a lot like ontology and architecture. The universe of cookery has the equivalent of principles and ideals, and a wide variety of ways to approach it that draws from a rich lineage of implicit chemistry, human history, and social structure. In short, many things about food fascinates me. ...
Today we were craving stir fry so I decided to practice the basic method two ways: lemongrass pork and sweet ginger/garlic pork. We had a sirloin tip pork roast on hand, which is best cooked using a fast method as it’s lean and tender. This method doesn’t include deep frying the pork, so is much lighter than standard take out. Lemongrass pork 500g pork, silverskin removed, cubed 5-6 stalks of washed lemongrass, very thinly sliced on the bias half a head of garlic crushed and sliced 1 shallot finely sliced 1 teaspoon baking soda 1-2 tablespoons corn starch 1 tbsp soy sauce, mirin, and rice wine (or rice wine vinegar, or lime juice) salt/pepper to taste 1 cup of green onion, sliced on the bias (in largish chunks) 3-4 cups of veg (onion, celery, peppers, cut on the bias in largish bite size pieces) Note: this also works well with tofu (press dry, otherwise treat the same). ...
I reworked my flexible Thai curry recipe into something that I can make in less than an hour (recipe here). I also made it friendly to vegetarians, as it works so well with tofu and mushrooms. The biggest change is to bring the method closer to authentic, removing some of the French techniques I used in previous versions. I also recommend using a good commercial curry paste to save on time, or to make a larger batch of fresh paste and freeze it in ice cube trays. We have a large number of stores catering to Asian cuisines in our area, so I usually prefer to use fresh or preserved curry pastes. ...
There are a few ways to make pizza sauce, depending on how lazy you are. Our favourite sauce is cooked down from good tomatoes for a moderate amount of time, and my fastest sauce comes from a tin of crushed tomatoes or sauce (thickened with paste). For pizza sauce, better tomatoes make a difference, as cheaper ones are less sweet and flavourful. This is loosely based on Serious Eat’s New York Style pizza sauce, and one I’ve made for more than 20 years now. ...
Adapted from my traditional and very knead-y pizza dough, which we discovered by accident that one time when we somehow left it in a cupboard for a few days. It turns out we weren’t the first ones to figure this out, and it’s a fantastic way of making doughs in general. Many recipes use weights for ingredients ... this one does not. It is a super lazy dough that can take as little as 10 minutes if you work at it. It also produces one of the nicest pizza and focaccia doughs I’ve ever made. ...