Tag Archives: how to cook everything

Bummer

As I mentioned last night, we’re planning to have dinner out and about tonight, so today wasn’t looking good to be a “recipe” day. However, when I realized Bill forgot his sandwich stuff today, I realized today would be a good day to make sandwich bread.

Normally, I make “this”:http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Amish-White-Bread/Detail.aspx bread when I want to make bread, especially for sandwiches. It’s a touch on the sweet side, but basically works. I’d imagine you could drop the sugar quite a bit and still get great bread.

So, I started contemplating bread when I realized that one of my cookbooks HAS to have a good sandwich bread recipe, right?

Well, maybe. But after asking on Twitter, I got one vote for “nothing good in Joy of Cooking” and one vote for “Make my mother’s bread recipe” (which I didn’t have).… Continue reading →

[51] Beer-Glazed Black Beans with Bacon (and Tomatoes!)

How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

Oh man, oh man! I’m so far behind on getting recipes up, and I’m not quite sure how that happened. Still, it’s an exciting time for me. We knocked out seven recipes last week (including this one and the previous post), and are on target to knock out another seven or eight this week. And that’s including having punked out and had pizza last night, our attending a game night Thursday, and our being off to a birthday celebration Saturday.

Woo! Of course, that means I better get a crackin’ on posting these old recipes, eh? Well, here’s the starter.

My hint for this recipe is to be careful with your chili/chile powder.

h2. Ingredients

4 – 8 oz bacon, cut into cubes or small pieces
1 onion, chopped

1 tbsp minced garlic (I just used about 3 big cloves.)… Continue reading →

[50] Cooked Beans, the Quick Soak Way

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

Hooray! We’ve managed 50 recipes so far. I know we really could have been chugging along at a better pace, given when we started, but I’m still pretty pleased with 50 recipes. If nothing else, it means we’re still both dedicated to making this work.

Plus, it’s been a lot of fun.

So last night was one of those wonderful nights where we managed several recipes at once. In that case, it was three. It was looking like it’d just be two, but I realized I had never made dried beans before, and wanted to give it a go. Plus, this way, once the power goes out for three days this upcoming winter, we can eat the canned beans we have. It’s like we’re survivalists! We have canned food and a manual can opener.… Continue reading →

[48] Mashed Potatoes

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

What is roast chicken without some sort of delicious Solanaceae accompaniment? It is nothing. NOTHING, I say!

Furthermore, woe betide you if you pick the wrong member of the Solanaceae family. I mean, aside from some members being highly toxic, some having psychoactive effects (some doing both…), many would just be weird. I mean, I suppose I could imagine some folks feeling an urge to smoke after a good roast chicken, but that’s really Solanaceae after the roast chicken, not with.

So, we’ve narrowed down our Solanaceae choices to, “consumables”. I’m going to go a bit further and narrow it to “edibles”. Hell, let’s go a step further and narrow it to “major food crops”. So, we’re lookin’ at eggplants, tomatoes, and potatoes. Any one of those things is delicious, I have to admit.… Continue reading →

[47] Simplest Roast Chicken 1.0

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

So, by now it’s beginning to look like this challenge was actually “cook our way through ’How to Cook Everything, Revised’”, I know. But it isn’t, I promise. I’m actually getting a little irked, in all honesty, that this cookbook is the one I keep pulling out. They’re not all up on this site yet, but I have 42 other cookbooks to cook from! Still, it’s amazing the recipes that are lacking. My “Complete Italian”:http://metacookbook.com/permalink/complete-book-of-italian-cooking.html cookbook? I totally expected it to have a Pasta Carbonara recipe, and it didn’t. So, Bittman it was.

With all of that said, I didn’t even hesitate to pull out How to Cook Everything when I wanted to roast a chicken. The yellow, original version is how I learned to make a “knock your socks off” roast chicken.… Continue reading →