Concentrate

All right, here’s a challenge.  How do you take a pot of shrimp and pasta, perfectly prepared to delight you and dinner guests, then pour in five cups of stock, and avert disaster?  Not just that, but bring it instead to triumph, much better than what originally was intended?  Quite a baffler.  Is there a solution?  There…

My Pie, That’s Why

Doesn’t everybody love baby spinach, pineapple and mushrooms on their pizza?  Seriously?  Why not?  Weirdos. The beauty of Cast Iron Pan Pizzas, though, as dreamt in the January & February 2020 Cook’s Illustrated, is that each pizza is customizable for each person at the table.  In the great deep-dish/thin-crust debate, these pan pizzas definitely side…

For Real This Time

Not too long ago, a preparation of shrimp and orzo, a pasta somewhat reminiscent of rice, was featured on these pages.  Satisfying, surely, but it was merely wheat acting.  Enough of the imposture.  This time we get the real deal, no looks-like.  Honest-to-goodness rice, simmered with tomatoes and parmesan cheese until the whole sauce is…

Two for One

Really, it’s a marvel of applications.  Create one creamy, savory garlic-butter sauce flecked with chopped cilantro, and use it for both parts of today’s meal, the shrimp and the baguette.  Use the same grill even to cook both.  One sauce, two creations – Shrimp Scampi and Garlic Bread.  What a bang for that particular buck!…

Handmade, No Machine

Imagine, first time making pasta, no machine in sight, nor an Italian grandmother.  Guess what happens next.  Watch as hilarity unfolds?  Maybe, but not from the countertop, thanks to a nice recipe for Ravioli featured in Cook’s Illustrated‘s May/June 2019 issue. Specifically, today’s entry is Chicken-Spinach Ravioli, as the magazine’s ricotta-based filling didn’t inspire culinary…

Master of Disguise

Before you is risotto.  Looks about right, especially with the shrimp.  Smells good too, as there’s a faint trace of lemony freshness.  Risotto is made with rice, right?  Maybe it is, usually, but in this case, the grain of choice is a pasta, orzo.  The pasta even looks like rice, it’s cooked al dente, just…

Inside-Out

Or, more specifically, today serves up a frittata, which is, essentially, an omelette with the filling still on the outside, waiting to be folded.  Of course, doubling over this creation probably wouldn’t be good idea, or even physically possible, loaded as it is with all sorts of substantive goodies, from artichoke hearts, to mini bell…

Orrie’s Tasty Problem

Once again, a favorite source, the Nero Wolfe canon, yields a tantalizing food mention that not only stokes the reader’s appetite, but which burnishes also the author’s fine cooking credentials. Rex Stout was a serious gourmet and, so inspired, he often kept a well-appointed table close to his mysteries’ pulse. In Death of a Doxy,…

It Began Here

Gliding through the millennia, we find ancient Romans enjoying savillum, a dessert that’s wended its way to us as cheesecake.  No less a personage than Senator and historian Marcus Porcius Cato (better known as Cato the Elder) provided instructions, 160 BC, in his De Agri Cultura: Make a savillum thus: Mix 1/2 libra (*1) of…

Great, Now They’ll Never Leave

A real danger when serving party guests arancini, rice rolled with crab, lemon juice and sour cream, then fried.  One bite brings addiction and an obsession with getting more.  Just like that. Arancini are something like hush puppies, except lighter and much more flavorful, thanks to the lemon juice and the wonderful crab distributed generously…