Do Try This At Home (in the kitchen)
Buffalo Chicken Balls--Great Balls ‘o Fire!
Written by Margaret MacArthurSecond question: Who’s throwing a Superbowl party or attending one? As I expected, about 70 per cent of you.
Can I begin the New Year with a rant? I have spared Village Chronicles readers my food tantrums, my personal bêtes noirs, my pacing and cursing, my fist shaking, my crying to the heavens against stupid food.
Some fellow addicts call this recipe “Jaymes’s Christmas Crack.” All of us scored this recipe from a “What Home Made Treats Will You be Giving for Christmas?” topic at http://www.egullet.org, the online presence of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters. (Disclosure: I’m Editorial Director at eG.)
Cooking can be downright magical, and I’m not just talking about the spell of the fragrance of a pan of caramelizing onions, one of the Seven Wonders of the kitchen.
I’m considering all those delights that rise: puff pastry, angel food cake, buttermilk biscuits, soufflés, and that perfect pan of homemade Parker House rolls.
This time next week you’ll be eating leftover turkey sandwiches, watching a lot of football, and hitting the after-Thanksgiving sales with your out-of- town guests.
I hope you have a couple of slices of pecan pie leftover. I know that I’ll have meditated about how many reasons I have to be thankful.
The kitchen can be a chamber of horrors, a minefield, a nest of bandits—a very dangerous place. I should know; but for a half teaspoon of luck, I’d be typing this with one finger instead of my typical two.
When I was a kid, I would have titled this article “Grossed Out By Sprouts.” Gee whiz, they seemed just one mark below liver on the “Mom, You Tryin’ to Kill Me?” scale.
Age brings wisdom: my mother stopped buying frozen brussel sprouts—nasty grayish blobs that they are—, and started cooking the real deal.
My Candidate for the World’s Greatest Hamburger
Written by Margaret McArthurMy gourmet mother was disdainful about my love for a burger; in fact, she seriously didn’t understand.
I suspect it was because she was a Canadian—in
I’m not talking about a classic ragu bolognese here, or a bottled jar of spaghetti sauce. This serves up like a stew (ragout in French), meaty and saucy.
In fact it would be good over pasta, but it suits a softer starch better—say polenta, rice, couscous, barley, mashed potatoes or grits. (I’d like a steaming side of polenta, myself.)
