Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

When i first saw this i kept thinking... Madhur Jeffrey... obscene amount of cilantro... haven't i seen this on dinner tonight before? But in fact it was a different Madhur Jeffrey recipe with lots of cilantro that i had made a whille back. The last one was great, can't wait to try this one.

at brunch, definitely eggs benedict. Just had some today!

At a seafood restaurant, new england clam chowder.

Italian joint? Fettucini Bolognese.

Sushi? Gotta have eel. And i'm all "OMG" for omokase.

French? Whatever exotic proteins i'd never cook at home- frogs, snails, rabbit, etc.

and of course, at any pizza place worth its mozzarella, you have to try the plain first- that's the gold standard.

Methinks the salsa purists doth protest too much. Let's review some facts:

1. Jarred salsa and the homemade fresh kind don't taste anything alike, that's true. I happen to like both flavors. sometimes i want one, sometimes i want the other.

2. you can make a homemade version that resembles (and even surpasses) the texture and flavor of jarred, but i've only achieved this by the application of time and heat. IE, cooking. Sometimes i don't want to cook. When I get home and there's a baseball game on, i just want a snack that involves opening a jar and a bag of chips (and a beer). So spare me the sanctimony. You go spend 25 minutes making salsa in the kitchen when it's a tie game in the 6th inning. I'll be on the couch. Oh and while your'e at it, can you fry me up some fresh tortilla chips too?

3. There are some truly fine jarred salsas out there. Xoctil, DJ Jardines and Newman's own are some of my favorites. I have given Frontera every chance, but i find it to be too thin and saucy, lacking those nice chunks you want in a salsa. I want to like Green Mountain Gringo, but I also find that to be too watery. And finally, while i want to DISlike Tostitos salsa, i cannot find fault with it. It actually tastes pretty good to me.

how is this different from the angry whopper?

I have long disliked Zimmern and this show, but i'm developing a newfound respect for him.

i want to know what happened to the lost dinner tonight of 4/21! How about a "dessert tonight" to make up for it tomorrow?

Odd, i just tried re-creating a "lost" recipe last night. It wasn't a family recipe, actually a pasta dish that the mother of my best friend made one summer when i was visiting him up on cape cod 15 years ago. All i remembered was that it looked like plain pasta with olive oil and a few bits of cooked tomato tossed in, but it was rich and flavorful as all hell, and she said something about anchovies.

So with those little shards of memory, I went at it- i chopped up seven cloves of garlic and a tin of anchovies, sauteed them in a healthy 1/4 cup of olive oil, then added a can of drained, chopped san marzano tomatoes to the sautee pan... meanwhile, i cooked the pasta in nice salty water, saved a cup of the starchy water, drained noodles, mixed sauce and pasta, added maybe 1/2 a cup of the starchy water, and finished it all with a softball-sized pile of freshly microplaned parmesan.

OHMYGODSOGOOD.

as for keeping food hot for extended periods of time, this is just a thought, but what about getting some river stones and putting them in the oven at like 400-450 degrees? then when the temp in the cooler starts to drop, just swap in in a fresh stone or two from time to time?

My girlfriend calls her show "Semi Whore-made with Sandra Lee"

Not sure if this is just an issue with Macs or Safari, but i really wish the quizzes were designed in a way that the entire page didn't have to refresh after each answer, forcing me to have to scroll back down to the next question.

when i had a full time job in NYC, my workday didn't end until 6pm at the earliest. say on a good day i'd only work 30 mins of overtime. then, time to hit the gym. that means i'm leaving brooklyn at 8. if i have to stop at whole foods, i'm probably not even home until 9:15 or 9:30. I would try to have dinner on the table not later than 11pm, just in time for the Daily Show!

also is there another word besides "foodie" that means the same thing? the word "foodie" sounds frivolous and childish, and there's nothing at all frivolous or childish about showing enthusiasm and reverence for fantastic ingredients and cuisine.