Primal meat

It takes a certain amount of guts, if you'll excuse me, to publish a book about meat in January, when the typical cookbook features words like "lean," "slim," and "salad". But on the other hand, it *is* the dead of winter.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and it wants meat, preferably on the bone with some… read more

In praise of red fermented bean curd

Did you know, EYB friends, that EYB is good not only for cataloging your gazillion recipes, but also for helping you create entirely new ones?  That's what happened to me today. I was trying to come up with a Chinese spare rib recipe--something with a roast pork bun flavor, on a spare rib, but not deep-fried the way they would… read more

The Kaiser roll quandary

I love baking in midwinter, don't you?  The heat of the oven, the smell of yeast, the golden brown perfection of baked goods...did I mention the heat of the oven? I got a kaiser roll stamp for Christmas, and I'm trying to find a good kaiser roll recipe.  Not a big, shiny, bulky one that you might want to heap… read more

The first cookbooks of the year

Well, the holiday rush of cookbooks is past and the publishers are looking ahead to spring.  This week the mail held the galleys of spring--April cookbooks in their raw, pre-edited state.  I don't test recipes from galleys or advance proofs--if there's mistakes, they might be corrected in the final copy, and I don't want to base my judgment on an… read more

The January 2nd diet

Happy New Year, everybody! Mine started inauspiciously.  5 minutes to midnight found me with a throbbing Class A headache, passing up a hoarded bottle of Veuve Cliquot for some sparkling non-alcoholic cider.  It's not that I'd overdone it so much on New Year's Eve.  I think it was the preceding week of cookies and chocolate and fried foods and odd… read more
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