Deviled Eggs: notes, technique, and a recipe
Chances are you can hardboil an egg. But tell me, how are you at peeling that egg? Until recently, hardboiled eggs Chez IK looked like they’d won first place at the local tractor pull. Enter Gabrielle Hamilton, she of the dictatorial Prune Cookbook. Spend any time with this highly idiosyncratic…
Easy Scallion Kimchee
Loyal readers–thank you, by the way, how amazing to even write those words–may have noted my fondness for fiery foods, a preference John doesn’t entirely share. Moderately spicy foods are okay with him, but when I dig into the Chinese hot mustard, peppers scoring off the Scoville charts, and dishes…
Lemon Cake With Crackly Lemon Sugar Topping
The great thing about this cake are all things you don’t need to make it: fancy equipment, fancy ingredients, baking ability. All that, plus it’s delicious and keeps really well, provided you don’t wolf it down in one sitting. This recipe comes courtesy of Diana Henry’s Plenty, written in 2010, well…
Sinkless Salad (Dinner Chicken Salad)
The Insufficient Kitchen’s 70th post is occasioned by increasing insufficiency after the sink quit late Tuesday afternoon. Our plumber promised to appear Thursday morning. Alas, he called needing to postpone until Friday morning. Confident of my amateur plumbing skills, he talked me under the sink, coaching in the art of garbage disposal maintainance: “Just crank…
Plain Roast Duck
“Every once in a while, even the most sensible person gets a craving for roast duck.” Laurie Colwin, “The Duck Dilemma.” As I crave duck almost continually, I either lack sense (entirely possible) or was French in a past life (a preferable interpretation). People–and by people, I should specify Americans–tie…
Back-in-the-Pot-Pork
My community college photography classmates would have decimated the shot below. After slowly feeding my ego through the wood-chipper for using color film, a choice signaling rank amateurism, the group would have settled in for a nice long discourse about compositional elements. Meaning ninety minutes on the blue rubber band. Fortunately, none…
While we wait for the next post…
We here at the IK are peering out the window, where El Niño, conspicuously absent last month, has reappeared with a vengeance. We’re also working on a long-overdue book review for our editor at PopMatters.com, where you may read our review of Bee Wilson’s excellent First Bite. While there is indeed food…
Corned Beef Brisket After Jane Grigson
Before discussing today’s recipe, it is only fair to touch on the last post, wherein I ranted and raved about my failed attempt to enroll in an identity theft protection program. This was occasioned by the hacking of my former employer’s antiquated computer system. Alas, attempts to protect my identity…
Roast Chicken with Radishes and Parsley Sauce
Yesterday I, along with hundreds of others, learned details of my identity and bank account were hacked courtesy of my former employer’s antiquated computer system. They have retained an identity theft protection agency, ostensibly to rescue me–and everyone else–when somebody in Russia or China or wherever this happened tries buying a…
Surreality and Spanish Tortilla
The past month featured both of us being told by surgeons that our new, annoying ailments required surgery except our respective weird diseases–which caused the ailments requiring surgical intervention–meant surgery was too risky to attempt. We should, therefore, watch, wait, and, it is assumed, worsen. The above two sentences required…
