Covid 19
I know, I promised a recipe, only to fall off the face of the earth. See below. John’s caregiver gave us both covid. Fortunately, John recently had a booster, so he was only mildly ill. Me? Not mildly ill. We are okay now, but the post was a summer…
Cheap Steak (flap steak in a Port Marinade)
“Cheap” is a relative term, of course. At a time when the cost of living is soaring, and the price of food along with it, steak isn’t featuring in many diets. While porterhouse and prime rib are off the menu for the forseeable future, flap steak, a cut resembling skirt…
Green Beans with Mushrooms
Green beans with mushrooms is an easygoing, undemanding dish. Anyone searching for dazzling summertime fare is advised to look elsewhere. I mean, I suppose one could fancy things up with expensive mushrooms or cold-pressed olive oil, but that would lose the point, which is simplicity. Nobody needs some fancypants dish…
Spicy Oven Roasted Fries
Spicy Oven Roasted Fries began as Batata Harra, a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More. I’ve prepared Batata Harra a few times, and it is delicious. I strayed from the original for reasons both personal and environmental. Springtime in a world gone mad. Ottolenghi and Company live and cook in…
Amanda’s Chocolate Cookies
Amanda’s Chocolate Cookies comes from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking For Mr. Latte, where it is called Chocolate Chunk-Pecan-Coconut Cookies. As I have changed the recipe a great deal, removing the both the pecans and the coconut shreds, I have altered the name accordingly. The result is a hefty chocolate chip cookie,…
Chicken with Zucchini and Water Chestnuts
Chicken with zucchini and water chestnuts is a departure from the usual chez IK. It’s not a stir-fry in the classic sense of high heat, fast cooking. Instead, the heat is turned down, and the wok gets a lid. New table? New cups? Nope. The above is dollhouse furniture. I…
April is the Cruelest Month
So, hi. Sorry for the long absence. It was unplanned, unwanted, and just…well…let me explain. For some time my trusty Mac hasn’t been all that trusty. As in, taking five minutes or so to boot up only to crash, the photo app not working at all. Long story short, the…
Laurie Colwin’s Boiled Beef
Last week, between bouts of doomscrolling, I remembered Laurie Colwin’s essay about boiled beef. The best boiled beef I ever ate was at the Ukrainian Restaurant at the Ukrainian National Home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I would gladly go out in a violent storm and walk over…
Spinach and Potato Saute
Before I began blogging, I bought a how-to book: blogging for luddites. It covered all the basics: posting regularly, how to shoot pictures for a blog (the thing I feared most, believe it or not), SEO, advertising, newsletters. I didn’t follow most of the author’s advice, but found the book…
Chopped Liver
There’s the old joke that goes four Jews, five opinions, and this is especially true where food is concerned. So it is with some trepidation that I offer a recipe for chopped liver. I consulted about a dozen books before settling on the chopped liver recipe in Anthony Bourdain’s Appetites….