39 Degrees and a Pot of Chili
The first cold morning of the season, and a pot of chili.
Journal
Notes from the kitchen that are not recipes: what went wrong, what changed, and why.
You Owe Yourself This One
Cooking is not a talent and it is not a chore you were assigned. It is a relationship with one of the few universal facts of being alive, and it is worth having on your own terms.
Nobody Praises What You Left Out
Every instinct we have about improving something is additive. The better move is usually to take something away, and that is the hardest skill in cooking.
Learn the Rules, Then Break Them
Why I write down grams and temperatures on a site that keeps telling you to taste it and decide for yourself.
Italian Is the Other One
Fish is one of the foods people order rather than make. Pasta is the other, and it's the stranger case, because it's flour and eggs.
Make the Fish
Fish is one of the things people reserve for restaurants, and it shouldn't be. It's fresher at home, it's faster than almost anything else, and the fishmonger is the best part.
Make the dessert
We skip it because the meal already feels like enough work. It's the course people remember, and it's the easiest one to get right.
More Than You Think
A rainy day, a thin pantry, and a pot of soup.
Take eggs seriously
Eggs are the cheapest way I know to get better at cooking. Humble, ubiquitous, and a real test.
The first one
I shot and edited the first brew video for this site. It was fun, it was hard, and it was stranger than I expected.