Hand To Mouth

If I’m ever caught slacking at work, it’ll be because I wasn’t vigilant enough to cover my tracks as I scrolled through my favorite food websites.

I’m most likely to get pinched while reading the Dinner Tonight posts on Serious Eats. I tend to fixate on what I’m making for dinner in direct proportion to how hectic work’s gotten that day, and why I like DT so much is that it helps clear my head and focus on what really matters—you know, the evening meal. (I ascribe this to the fact that the featured recipes are always precise, contextual and simple to execute.)

So this past Monday, J and I made this DT recipe for poblano tacos. Missing the char of summer barbecues, I’d zeroed in on the description of the roasted poblanos as being “chocolatey” in flavor; a minute later I was clandestinely on the phone with J, who gets off work much earlier than me, dictating a grocery list to him in sotto voce. Read the rest of this entry »

Homemade strawberry jam is one of those things that, when you announce to friends that you’re planning to make some, elicits several comments that are — for my part — not so accurate. Most of these comments drop neatly into the category “Time and Hands,” as in “look who’s got too much on theirs,” and it’s with that observation that I take issue. (With the runner-up, “That Sounds Rad,” I have no contentions. More toast?)

Truthfully, I haven’t had much time these days. To spend hours on a Saturday afternoon gently skimming froth from a saucepan growing gummier by the minute would be impossible for me. That’s why this recipe is such a find: within half an hour, with minimal effort, you have jarfuls of deeply satisfying, garnet-colored jam. As a spread, it’s tailor-made for toast, cookies, cakes and — as was the case with my mother — gifting to the neighbors.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite new reads is à la carte. From the tidy precision of Peter Hertzmann’s writing to the Art Nouveau flourishes in the site design, two things are breathtakingly clear:  à la carte is a monument not only to a man’s deep love for French food, but also to his painstaking commitment to documenting the things he discovers. Baked apple pudding with fresh thyme, shrimp with an egg poached in tarragon vinegar and salmon in a chervil marinade with fava beans are a few of the recipes I can’t wait to try.

From poultry.baytril.com

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the title.

Our blog’s name “Hand to Mouth”, has meant that occasionally (actually, quite often) we see people who used … interesting search terms to arrive at our site (let your imaginations run wild). We joke that the modern era of attention deficit disorder renders them easily distracted in their search for smut; in other words, the lure of cilantro lime-hummus diverts them from their path.

But back to food - I’m going to make coq au vin this weekend, but I never know exactly what kind of wine to use. Buy the wrong red, and you get yourself some bright purple chicken. Some say a burgundy, others say côtes du rhône. Nigel Slater advocates using the remnants of red wine leftover in people’s glasses. I actually think this would be really good. Last time I made it I used a nice medium-priced beaujolais (at the advice of Mr. Slater) and was pleased with the results. But the point of this post is to ask, dear readers, what wine do you think I should use? Have you had terrible experiences with any wines?

And also, does serving red wine with coq au vin seem like overkill to anyone but me? And yet - what else should be served?

The first time I made this dish was maybe the second culinary shindig I ever did with N. We were living in Seoul at the time, and our palettes were craving the buttery, dry wine- and thyme-laden taste of French food. It’s a nice memory. I also like to say I once got lucky when I cooked this dish for a boy - but perhaps that’s an entirely different entry altogether.

Anyways, I usually use a variation of this recipe. Do let me know your thoughts!

From abcteach.com

Yellowtail’s been on sale at my beloved grocery store, but I haven’t yet dropped that skittish feeling I get when I cook with fish. Growing up, I never ate any beasts of the sea. Now, like Donny from The Big Lebowski, I always feel out of my element around them—frantically triple-checking recipes, making sure everything is exactly so.

But lo—I might have a new dish to settle my cowardly hash.

Delicious Coma is the spin-off food blog of a young woman named Anjali, who taught in Japan via the JET Program and maintains the blog Giant Jeans Parlor. It’s full of cheerfully rendered explanations about Japanese food, including this post about buri, or mature yellowtail. Giant Jeans Parlor also once posted (Anjali’s since left Japan) a weekly Friday feature on Japanese candy that left me homesick for my own days teaching English in Korea. Kollon! Morinaga Milk Caramels! Want want want.

Where was I? Oh yes. I can’t wait to try my hand at the yellowtail recipe.

I’ll keep you all posted.

I had plenty of time to browse the electronic food world this weekend, as my party pooper tendencies expanded and multiplied when I became ill on Friday and spent most of the weekend in bed with my laptop taking 3 hour naps. I did go the Ironmonger Row baths on Sunday, and after sweating in a hot room and plunging in a cold pool, sweating and plunging ad nauseum, I feel somewhat like a human being again today.

Right. To food! Over on the Times food section, it seems as if all the UK food-loving public is waiting with bated breath to see who will reign triumphant with the biggest pair of chef bollocks: Gordon Ramsey or Marco Pierre White. Seriously, it’s like they can’t put any other faces on the front page anymore. Although I have a fondness in my heart for Gordon Ramsey (the F-Word is a great show), I hate this aspect of the cooking world. I honestly read these articles just to become deliciously indignant as to the testosterone saturated state of the professional cooking industry. (cue GOB Bluth: COME ON!!!) It’s pretty fun in an angry kind of way.

I’ve been highly amused by the high-flying food high-jinx of Robyn (aka The Girl who Ate Everything)’s trip to Phoenix. There is something so delicious about updates coming in almost real-time. Since she is kept so busy making sure we all have lots to talk about on Serious Eats, I hope she has a most relaxing vacation.

Finally, the Guardian’s food section has a weekly baking master class authored by Dan Lepard that I’ve been enjoying. While I’ve never been a really big baker (although I did go through a phase in university where I baked pretzels with cumin on a weekly basis), this week’s recipe is for black bread – something that isn’t so easy to find here in London.

Until next time – 867-5309,

X B

For a cocktail of reasons, we’ve long wanted to post some shorter entries about various things that catch our eye: first, shorter entries make it easier for you, dear reader, to clandestinely read HtoM posts at work; second, shorter entries are easier for us to clandestinely scribble out at work; third, we’ve been wanting to have a few regular features on the site; fourth, as some of you more observant readers might discern from the phone number tag on this post, we love a spirited, civil discussion about food and all things food-related.

Assuming you made it through the above layover in Sentence Chunkytown, I’d like to present our first 555-4444:

[Tympany flare]

Blake Royer of The Paupered Chef has a lovely post about raw milk, including a touching mention of “the luxury of gulping down fresh, good milk” that the substance grants his girlfriend. This morning finds Pim Techamuanvivit luxuriating further in the pleasures of the raw (like “buttah“), with the added frisson that comes from knowing it’s milk from her own cow. A few days earlier, The New York Times and The Washington Post wondered respectively about the dangers and rewards of raw dairy products.

I think (and have always thought) that raw milk is the bee’s knees, especially since I live near this fine establishment.

What are your thoughts about the stuff?