#the rice has too much moisture for good roasting. but it's almost done

[no-one-hears-me]

texted my ex <3

[citrinekay]

I was thinking of a prompt where Holden doesn't eat when he's stressed out or exhausted; it's just the furthest thing from his mind. Bill notices one day and cooks him a well-balanced meal and makes him eat every bite. Holden is speechless because no one has ever been so thoughtful and kind toward him before.

This is so sweet 😭 I also relate to Holden in this aspect a lot because I tend to get very focused on what I’m doing (usually writing lol) and forget to eat for hours at a time. I love the concept of Bill thinking about this, and wanting to take care of him in the most basic, essential way possible. Thanks for the prompt!💕

By five-thirty, the BSU basement is deserted, and nearly everyone has gone home for the day. The single light at Holden’s desk casts muted, white light across the stacks of case files, and the crime scene photos arranged in a neat row at the top of his desk. He has two notebooks - one for victim observations, another for the preliminary profile - and both are filled with three pages of scribbled notes so far. 

They’d arrived back from a two-week long consult in Texas early this morning, and he’d been greeted with a stack of new requests that had accumulated during their absence. Keen on tackling the mountain before it grows any larger, he’d buried his head in profiles for the better part of the day, stopping once to eat some chips from the vending machine when the growling in his stomach became too incessant. Several hours later, the thought of eating has tapered off to a dull hum in the back of his mind. 

Holden is so engaged in the profile that he doesn’t hear Bill approach until a hand on his shoulder jolts him out of his pensive reverie. 

“Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Bill says as Holden leans back in his chair, clutching at his chest. 

“It’s okay.”

“You almost ready to leave?” Bill asks, shooting a pointed glance at his watch. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“I’m almost done with this.”

“Are they expecting it back tonight?”

“No.”

“Then it can wait ‘til tomorrow.” Bill says, giving Holden’s shoulder a nudge. “Come on.”

“I’m this close.” Holden says, pinching less than a half inch of space between his thumb and forefinger.

“You haven’t moved from this desk all day.” Bill says, gently taking Holden’s pen out of his hand and setting it aside. “Have you eaten?”

Holden starts to nod, and Bill casts him a stern frown. 

“Other than vending machine snacks?”

Holden purses his lips, gathering an irked glare. “No, but it’s fine. I’m not that hungry.”

Bill shakes his head, and silently begins putting all of the crime scene photos back in the folders. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Holden asks.

“Making you give yourself a break.” Bill says, snatching the two notebooks from in front of Holden and flipping them shut. 

“I wasn’t done with that.”

“Holden.” Bill says, firmly, “This is not up for debate.”

Holden narrows his eyes. “Are you seriously pulling rank on me?”

“I’m saying this as someone who cares about you, not your superior, but if you want to see it that way, sure.” 

Holden tries to hold onto his scowl as Bill tosses aside the folders, and pulls him up from his chair by his hands. 

“We just had a very long two weeks.” Bill says, his voice softening as their eyes meet. “You need to give yourself a minute to breathe every once in a while.” 

“Bill…” Holden says slowly, a coy smile creeping at the corner of his mouth. “Is this because we didn’t have time to have sex the whole time we were away?”

Bill sighs, his brow curling with an indignant frown. “No.”

“I’m horny, too, but we have a job to do.”

“Yeah, one you can’t do when you haven’t eaten all day. Now come on. I’m taking you home.”

Holden doesn’t protest again as Bill leads him out of the basement. As they walk across the parking lot to the car, the faint tremble in his knees and the ache in his stomach emerges from the hazy focus on work that he’d been clinging onto. He doesn’t want to admit that Bill is right, so he keeps his mouth shut as they speed down the highway towards home with his stomach growling the entire way. 

Once they get home, Holden strips out of his work clothes and tosses them in the hamper while Bill goes into the kitchen. In his pajamas, he shuffles down the hallway to where Bill is rifling through the refrigerator and pulling out ingredients. 

“We could just order out.” Holden says. 

“What? Pizza?” Bill says, glancing past the refrigerator door with a disapproving glance. “I don’t think so. You need real food.”

“It is real food. It’s just not very healthy.”

“Exactly.” 

Holden wanders further into the kitchen, scanning the items Bill has placed on the counter. 

“What are you making?”

“You’ll see.”

“Can I help you?”

“No.” Bill says, “Go get a shower and lay down. I’ll get you when it’s ready.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

Bill pushes the refrigerator door shut, and leans over to plant a kiss on Holden’s protesting lips. “Let me do this. Okay?”

Holden holds up a defeated hand. “Okay. Fine.”

He retreats from the kitchen, and goes to the bathroom to get a shower like Bill had suggested. As he stands under the hot spray of the water and feels the tension begin to unwind from his shoulders, a wave of exhaustion washes over him. Every time they go on consult, they spend so much time on the ground that they don’t get very much sleep. He’s almost used to it by now, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling the impact - like some kind of bad hangover - whenever they get back into their own timezone. 

By the time he finishes showering, a small whiff of the aromas wafting from the kitchen makes his mouth water and his empty stomach spasm with hunger. Tired and weak, he lays down on the couch, and lets his eyes slip shut. 

It feels like the space of a second, but when Bill nudges him awake, Holden realizes that a half hour has passed. 

“Come on.” Bill urges, dragging his docile limbs up from the couch, “Dinner’s ready.”

Holden leans into his arms, and rubs his hands over his face to dispel the haze of sleep. Stifling a yawn, he climbs up from the couch, and follows Bill into the kitchen. 

“Wow, this looks amazing.” He murmurs, as Bill sits him down at the table in front of his plate filled with bread chicken, Spanish rice, and roasted broccoli. 

Bill sits down next to him, and puts his arm across the back of Holden’s chair. “You wanna try to tell me again how you aren’t hungry?”

Holden casts him a limp smile as he picks up his fork and knife. The first bite of the chicken is juicy and savory, just enough salt against rosemary and thyme. A satisfied groan rises in the back of his throat as he chews and the flavor washes across his tongue and down into his empty stomach. 

“Good?” Bill asks, bemused. 

“So good.” Holden says, “When did you get to be such a good cook?”

“My mom taught me a few staples.” 

“Mmm.” Holden mumbles as he tucks a bite of rice and broccoli in his mouth. “I’m impressed.”

“But are you hungry?”

Holden shoots him a begrudging glance. “Yes. Starving, if you have to know.”

Bill chuckles softly, and rubs a hand over his back. “That’s what I thought.”

Holden continues eating, wrapped up in the satisfying sensation of the savory meal hitting his stomach. He’s halfway through his plate before he realizes that Bill isn’t eating, only sitting at Holden’s side watching every bite go into his mouth. 

“Aren’t you having some?” Holden asks, pausing to take a sip of water. 

“In a minute.”

Holden blushes as Bill’s gaze clings to him, observing his unreserved chewing with a crooked smirk and a pleased glint in his eyes. 

“Is this some new kink?” Holden murmurs, lowering his eyelashes. “Watching me eat?”

“No, I just want to see you taken care of. I have to do it since you won’t do it for yourself.”

Holden cheeks grow hotter, and he quickly tucks another piece of chicken in his mouth to rush past the sudden flash of vulnerability he feels under Bill’s scrutiny. They’ve exchanged raunchier words in the bedroom without him feeling this exposed; but no one has ever done something like this for him before - not just cooked him dinner, but made sure he ate every bite, and stuck to the task like it was some honor-bound duty. 

“What’s the matter?” Bill asks softly as Holden lowers his head and rubs a quick hand over his eyes. 

“Nothing.” Holden whispers, leaning over to hide his face in Bill’s shoulder. “Nothing. I just …. thank you. This tastes really good.”

“You’re welcome.” Bill says, curling his arm around Holden’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

Cradling Holden’s cheek in his other hand, he tilts his chin up into a soft kiss. His thumb strokes along Holden’s cheek and against the corner of his eye, smearing the faint remnants of moisture. 

“I had no idea my cooking was that good.” He murmurs.

“It is.” Holden says, nudging another kiss against the corner of Bill’s mouth. “I think I want to marry you, and let you cook for me every night.”

Bill’s soft chuckle rumbles from deep in his chest. “Is that right?”

“Yes. And maybe breakfast too.”

“If you’re lucky.” 

Holden smiles into another slow kiss before Bill pulls back, and waves a finger at his plate. 

“Okay, keep going.” He urges. “I want to see you eat every bite.”

“Yes, sir.” Holden murmurs, sitting up straighter to take up his fork and knife again. 

Bill’s hand absently rubs Holden’s shoulder as he finishes the rest of his food, and washes it down with a gulp of water. 

“Ah, I’m stuffed now.” Holden says, leaning back and stretching his belly. 

“Time for bed, I think.”  Bill says, smiling fondly as Holden stifles a yawn. He rises from his chair, and urges Holden to his feet. “Come on, I’ll tuck you in.”

As soon as Holden crawls into bed, his exhaustion immediately overcomes him. He collapses into the familiar warmth of the sheets with a contented sigh.

 Bill drags the covers over him, and sits down on the edge of the bed to nestle them under his chin. 

“Aren’t you coming?” Holden murmurs, sleepily. 

“In a bit.” Bill says, bending down to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Get some rest. You’ve earned it, okay?”

Holden nods, too tired to argue or agree. He’s already falling asleep by the time Bill turns off the bedside lamp, and drops one last kiss on his temple before sneaking toward the door. 

“Bill?” Holden whispers into the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Go to sleep.”

The door eases shut, and Holden sinks down against the pillow with a happy hum. He never sleeps well when they’re out of town on consult. His mind is always racing with details of the case and plans of action, and he thinks he’ll never get a good night’s sleep again. It isn’t until he’s home that his body and brain realize again that he’s safe and cared for, that he can drift off to dreams without worrying about someone else dying. This time, it took less than a day for that relief to flood his veins, and he knows it didn’t have anything to do with the dent he’d valiantly tried to put in his overflowing paperwork today. With dinner warming his belly, Holden quickly falls asleep feeling happier than he’s ever been.

[easyfoodnetwork]

If You Literally Never Cook, Start Here

Photo by Maciej Toporowicz, NYC / Getty

How to get started on your cooking journey, from frying eggs and saucing pasta to roasting chickens and making soup

So you’re really, really into food. You also have no idea how to cook it. I get it, I’ve been there. There are more of us than you might think: Younger Americans grew up in a system awash in convenience foods, while our parents were working longer and harder and had less and less time to cook. Then, when we became adults, time and money were scarcer still, and restaurants became the places we gathered with our friends.

When I taught myself to cook at home, I immediately discovered most recipes aren’t written for anxious beginners. Instead, they assume the cook is already competent and looking to level up or add another dish to their repertoire. The rewards and demands of social media virality have only supercharged recipes’ emphasis on novelty and visual beauty. As someone who now knows how to cook, I love reading about a hack for cooking short ribs or a surprising use for my rice cooker. But back when I barely knew how to boil water, recipes telling me which tweak or technique yielded ideal results made turning on the oven feel high stakes. All that emphasis on aspiration and perfection made it way too hard to get started.

I’ve been cooking at home for a decade now, and to be honest, I’m still pretty basic. I sometimes feel embarrassed that I haven’t moved on from roasting chickens and simmering beans, but right now, basic-ness isn’t a crutch — it’s useful. With that spirit in mind, I’ve put together a series of recipes, and notes on recipes, that get really, really basic. Think of it as a roadmap to kitchen competence, a few pages from the grammar manual of home cooking from the dialect I speak.

The most important thing about learning how to cook is to resist perfectionism, and redefine what a home cooked meal is. That was true before we were sheltering in place and limiting our grocery outings to the bare minimum, and now it’s essential. Chicken thighs roasted with salt and olive oil, alongside some root vegetables cooked in the same pan? Highlight of the week. Rice and an egg and maybe some kimchi from the back of your fridge? Delicious. Cheesy pasta? Hell yes. Beans on tortillas or over some toasted stale bread? Dinner once a week for me.

How to Read (and Pick) a Recipe

Every guide like this starts out with the same advice: Read the recipe all the way to the end before you start cooking anything. That’s because even if it feels like kind of a cop move to read and follow the recipe, actually doing so removes much of the stress you might associate with cooking — which often happens when the pan is searing hot and you realize you need soy sauce right that second. Read the ingredients list too! It tells a story, and all-too-often hides some of the prep, like chopping onions or grating cheese or even entire sub recipes (maybe skip anything with sub recipes). If there’s a term you don’t understand, Google it. Almost every mysterious recipe term has been clearly defined online now.

Do your best as a beginner to follow the recipe, but also give yourself permission to deviate if the current situation means you don’t have an ingredient or piece of equipment on hand. Every recipe not written during World War II or in spring 2020 assumes a certain American bourgeois abundance. There’s been a run on garlic? Your tomato sauce will lack some pleasure, but it will still be tomato sauce. Only a few things will utterly wreck a non-baked-good: burning it, undercooking it, over-salting it, or, in certain cases, depriving it of moisture. Under-salting will make things taste flat and disappointing, but you can still eat them. Oil plus salt plus fire is as basic as cooking gets, and if you have those things and something you can cook, you have a meal.

The internet is chock full of free recipes and advice, but the cooking internet stuffers from misinformation as much as any other. A good rule of thumb is to use recipes from publications with test kitchens and bloggers who have proven the test of time, though you may have to pay for those recipes. A few publications have also made serious investments in teaching the fundamentals (though all of them mix in somewhat fussier recipes with the true basics): the New York Times’ How to Cook; the Washington Post’s round-up of recipes and techniques; the LA Times’ ongoing recipe series How to Boil Water; Bon Appetit’s Basically vertical; and Serious Eats’ coronavirus cooking guide. (Your local paper really could use those subscriptions right now if it has a cooking section.)

If you’ve got the money, order a cookbook or two or ten. You don’t have Salt Fat Acid Heat? Buy or borrow Salt Fat Acid Heat. No cookbook explains better the whys and hows of cooking, and the fundamentals of technique, while being refreshingly empowering. Thanks to that book, I (mostly) salt my food appropriately, and in friends’ eyes I became a 50 percent better cook.

When to Cook

Assume it will take you sixty to ninety minutes to prepare and clean up after any meal that’s not scrambled eggs. I don’t care if the recipe says thirty minutes. You’re new to this, and some of us are just slower in the kitchen. Play some music, catch up on a podcast, and, if you’re not sheltering solo, make a roommate or loved one help. If you don’t want to spend an hour cooking, choose a recipe that takes a long time but requires little from you, like baked potatoes or a pot of beans, so you can get other things done.

Equally important is knowing when not to cook. More than half my social distancing meals are not meals I’ve cooked, but repurposing of leftovers I cooked previously. I wouldn’t try to cook three meals a day from scratch right now (or… ever?). Trick yourself into thinking something is a different meal by plopping an egg on it or putting it in a tortilla instead of over rice.

Assemble Your Tools and Stock Your Pantry

Need a definitive guide to stocking your pantry and refrigerator for a week or two of cooking from home? Eater has that for you right here.

Not sure where to buy groceries right now? Restaurants are turning into markets, and lots of farms are offering CSA boxes. Fresh produce and meat and eggs from small producers taste more like themselves and make simple meals tastier, and if you can afford to support small producers right now it’s a great way to help the entire food system.

And as far as tools go, head over here for some products that make your kitchen an easier place to cook.

What to Cook

Roast Vegetables

You know what you can do with any type of vegetable you wouldn’t eat raw, and some that you would? Toss it with olive oil and salt, drop it on a sheet pan, and roast it. The only important thing is not to crowd what you’re roasting, so every piece gets nice and crispy. I like to roast at 425. Don’t want to chop? Roast a potato or sweet potato whole.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Roast Any Vegetable”

New York Times: Melissa Clark’s “Roasted Vegetables”

Lucky Peach: Peter Meehan’s “Roasted Sweet Potatoes”

Stir Fry

Vegetables that don’t make sense for the oven, and even a few that do, are also great cooked super hot in a pan or wok. There’s all sorts of ways to saute, and stir-frying is one of the best for achieving flavor, both in terms of hitting the food with tons of heat and making the pan sauce part of the dish. This is also a simple way to use up ground meat and leftover rice (fried rice!).

LA Times: Genevieve Ko’s “The Easiest Way to Stir-Fry Vegetables”

Serious Eats: J. Kenji López-Alt’s “Wok Skills 101”

The Woks of Life: How to Make Stir-Fry the Right Way

Greens

You will never be disappointed to have a batch of cooked greens in the fridge. “Greens” is a broad category, ranging from chard to kale to dandelion to bok choi; they can be added to every type of meal for a shot of color and pleasant bitterness. There’s a few basic ways to cook them:

For leafy greens, Lukas Volger’s recipe for braised greens from his new book Start Simple is great and versatile.

If your pantry is a bit better stocked, try the Grandbaby Cakes recipes for collard and mustard greens.

This LA Times story on greens mania from 1986 (!) has a variety of braising options (time to bring back creamed kale?).

World’s Best Braised Cabbage from Taste is not lying.

If you don’t have time to cook the greens, try Toni-Tipton Martin’s recipe for wilting them.

Eggs

If you put an egg over roast vegetables or cooked greens, or drop it into soup, or plop it on top of rice, it becomes dinner. The two easiest ways to make the egg are to fry it up all crispy, or boil it until its yolk is still slightly soft. Cannelle et Vanille has an olive oil fried egg recipe from 2014, which likely helped kick off the trend. It’s a good one. The LA Times has two ways of looking at the ubiquitous jammy egg; Bon Appetit’s recipe calls for an ice water bath, which is super useful for quick peeling.

Rice

I rely on a rice maker; they can be pretty cheap and are usually easy to buy at grocery stores — at the moment I’m sure it’s much less predictable. If you can’t get a rice maker or don’t want one, it’s very possible to make rice on the stovetop. Also, rice in its creamy porridge form is another great platform for a meal or turning leftovers into a meal.

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “How to Make Rice”

Tasty: “How to Cook Perfect Rice Every Time” [Video]

Serious Eats: Shao Z’s “How to Make the Silkiest, Most Comforting Congee”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “Japanese Rice Porridge (Okayu)”

Beans

Cooking dried beans is maddeningly simple. The recipe can be as minimal as: Put the beans in a pot, glug a generous glug of fat on top, cover with water, add salt, and simmer for an hour or two. There’s a lot of tinkering and competing wisdom and differing culinary traditions behind this simple recipe, and it’s worth reading up. Warning: not all these recipes agree with each other. Pick one that works for you. Or keep cycling between them and cross referencing, because that’s what I do. I’m sure having a clay pot is great; I promise you don’t need one. Canned beans are always worth having around, and easy to doctor up.

Washington Post: Joe Yonan’s “Beans are good for the planet, for you and for your dinner table. Here’s how to cook them right.”

Rancho Gordo: “Cooking Basic Beans in the Rancho Gordo Manner”

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “Cannellini-Bean Pasta with Beurre Blanc”

Isabel Eats: Isabel Orozco-Moore’s “Easy Refied Beans”

Roast Chicken

Beautifully burnished birds have become fetish objects on restaurant menus, and wrangling a whole four- or five-pound carcass might feel like more trouble than it’s worth. But don’t let the $70 ‘for two’ chickens of the past fool you; a roast whole chicken is an economical leftovers machine much greater than any sum of chicken parts. There are perfect and less perfect ways to do it, but you don’t need a cast-iron pan or string for trussing or butter under the skin. You just need a chicken, some salt, and a hot, hot oven.

NY Times: Mark Bittman’s “Simplest Roast Chicken”

Epicurious: Thomas Keller’s “My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken”

Taste Cooking: JJ Goode’s “How to Roast a Chicken? The Answers Are Horrifying.”

Salt Fat Acid Heat: Samin Nosrat’s Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken

Can’t find whole chicken? Bone-in chicken thighs roast up even easier. Bonus: The chicken can be roasted in the same pan as hardier vegetables like potatoes or turnips.

Stock and Soup

Homemade stock is another dish that sounds intimidating but is dead simple and tastes so much better than canned. The only major investment is time. The recipes below call for a few more ingredients or using chicken wings (also great), if you can get them, but basic techniques here will work with whatever you have on hand, including only the picked-over husk of that chicken you roasted. Vegetarian stocks are easy to make with the root vegetables in your fridge or dried mushrooms. Pick up dried kombu, a type of seaweed, and bonito flakes at an Asian grocery store, and you can make dashi.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Homemade Chicken Stock”

Smitten Kitchen: Deb Perelman’s “Perfect, Uncluttered Chicken Stock”

China Sichuan: “Basic Chinese Chicken Stock”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “How to Make Dashi”

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Vegetable Stock”

101 Cookbooks: Heidi Swanson’s “10 Minute Instant Pot Mushroom Broth”

Now that you have stock, you have yet another way to use up that leftover chicken, beans, greens, rice, and whatever still needs cooking in your fridge. Clean-out-the-fridge soup is definitely a thing.

Pasta

There are many, many pasta recipes out there. The thing I wish someone had told me about pasta much sooner is how to sauce it. If you ever wondered why dumping some marinara sauce or butter on noodles always felt a little disappointing, it turns out there’s a very simple way to fix it! Toss the noodles hot in the sauce. Check out Serious Eats’ guide to saucing for more details.

Baking

I bought a box of brownie mix on a recent grocery store run, and I think you should too. That said, if you think baking from scratch will cheer you up, here’s a few ways to get started.

Taste Cooking: Odette Wiliams “A Cake to Snack On (and On and On)”

King Arthur Flour: “Chilling Cookie Dough”

Eater: Dayna Evans’ “Everyone’s Making Sourdough Now — Here’s How to Get Started”

Cook Safely

A word on kitchen safety: Much of it is common sense, but it’s good to brush up on. Here are the FDA guidelines, and here’s a good rundown on how to deal with all those sharp objects and open flames. That expert hand washing and disinfecting you’re doing will help you keep your kitchen and food safe, too. There is currently no evidence of foodborne transmission of the novel coronavirus; here’s how to grocery shop safely. If you are afraid of cooking meat, here’s how to conquer those fears.

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Photo by Maciej Toporowicz, NYC / Getty

How to get started on your cooking journey, from frying eggs and saucing pasta to roasting chickens and making soup

So you’re really, really into food. You also have no idea how to cook it. I get it, I’ve been there. There are more of us than you might think: Younger Americans grew up in a system awash in convenience foods, while our parents were working longer and harder and had less and less time to cook. Then, when we became adults, time and money were scarcer still, and restaurants became the places we gathered with our friends.

When I taught myself to cook at home, I immediately discovered most recipes aren’t written for anxious beginners. Instead, they assume the cook is already competent and looking to level up or add another dish to their repertoire. The rewards and demands of social media virality have only supercharged recipes’ emphasis on novelty and visual beauty. As someone who now knows how to cook, I love reading about a hack for cooking short ribs or a surprising use for my rice cooker. But back when I barely knew how to boil water, recipes telling me which tweak or technique yielded ideal results made turning on the oven feel high stakes. All that emphasis on aspiration and perfection made it way too hard to get started.

I’ve been cooking at home for a decade now, and to be honest, I’m still pretty basic. I sometimes feel embarrassed that I haven’t moved on from roasting chickens and simmering beans, but right now, basic-ness isn’t a crutch — it’s useful. With that spirit in mind, I’ve put together a series of recipes, and notes on recipes, that get really, really basic. Think of it as a roadmap to kitchen competence, a few pages from the grammar manual of home cooking from the dialect I speak.

The most important thing about learning how to cook is to resist perfectionism, and redefine what a home cooked meal is. That was true before we were sheltering in place and limiting our grocery outings to the bare minimum, and now it’s essential. Chicken thighs roasted with salt and olive oil, alongside some root vegetables cooked in the same pan? Highlight of the week. Rice and an egg and maybe some kimchi from the back of your fridge? Delicious. Cheesy pasta? Hell yes. Beans on tortillas or over some toasted stale bread? Dinner once a week for me.

How to Read (and Pick) a Recipe

Every guide like this starts out with the same advice: Read the recipe all the way to the end before you start cooking anything. That’s because even if it feels like kind of a cop move to read and follow the recipe, actually doing so removes much of the stress you might associate with cooking — which often happens when the pan is searing hot and you realize you need soy sauce right that second. Read the ingredients list too! It tells a story, and all-too-often hides some of the prep, like chopping onions or grating cheese or even entire sub recipes (maybe skip anything with sub recipes). If there’s a term you don’t understand, Google it. Almost every mysterious recipe term has been clearly defined online now.

Do your best as a beginner to follow the recipe, but also give yourself permission to deviate if the current situation means you don’t have an ingredient or piece of equipment on hand. Every recipe not written during World War II or in spring 2020 assumes a certain American bourgeois abundance. There’s been a run on garlic? Your tomato sauce will lack some pleasure, but it will still be tomato sauce. Only a few things will utterly wreck a non-baked-good: burning it, undercooking it, over-salting it, or, in certain cases, depriving it of moisture. Under-salting will make things taste flat and disappointing, but you can still eat them. Oil plus salt plus fire is as basic as cooking gets, and if you have those things and something you can cook, you have a meal.

The internet is chock full of free recipes and advice, but the cooking internet stuffers from misinformation as much as any other. A good rule of thumb is to use recipes from publications with test kitchens and bloggers who have proven the test of time, though you may have to pay for those recipes. A few publications have also made serious investments in teaching the fundamentals (though all of them mix in somewhat fussier recipes with the true basics): the New York Times’ How to Cook; the Washington Post’s round-up of recipes and techniques; the LA Times’ ongoing recipe series How to Boil Water; Bon Appetit’s Basically vertical; and Serious Eats’ coronavirus cooking guide. (Your local paper really could use those subscriptions right now if it has a cooking section.)

If you’ve got the money, order a cookbook or two or ten. You don’t have Salt Fat Acid Heat? Buy or borrow Salt Fat Acid Heat. No cookbook explains better the whys and hows of cooking, and the fundamentals of technique, while being refreshingly empowering. Thanks to that book, I (mostly) salt my food appropriately, and in friends’ eyes I became a 50 percent better cook.

When to Cook

Assume it will take you sixty to ninety minutes to prepare and clean up after any meal that’s not scrambled eggs. I don’t care if the recipe says thirty minutes. You’re new to this, and some of us are just slower in the kitchen. Play some music, catch up on a podcast, and, if you’re not sheltering solo, make a roommate or loved one help. If you don’t want to spend an hour cooking, choose a recipe that takes a long time but requires little from you, like baked potatoes or a pot of beans, so you can get other things done.

Equally important is knowing when not to cook. More than half my social distancing meals are not meals I’ve cooked, but repurposing of leftovers I cooked previously. I wouldn’t try to cook three meals a day from scratch right now (or… ever?). Trick yourself into thinking something is a different meal by plopping an egg on it or putting it in a tortilla instead of over rice.

Assemble Your Tools and Stock Your Pantry

Need a definitive guide to stocking your pantry and refrigerator for a week or two of cooking from home? Eater has that for you right here.

Not sure where to buy groceries right now? Restaurants are turning into markets, and lots of farms are offering CSA boxes. Fresh produce and meat and eggs from small producers taste more like themselves and make simple meals tastier, and if you can afford to support small producers right now it’s a great way to help the entire food system.

And as far as tools go, head over here for some products that make your kitchen an easier place to cook.

What to Cook

Roast Vegetables

You know what you can do with any type of vegetable you wouldn’t eat raw, and some that you would? Toss it with olive oil and salt, drop it on a sheet pan, and roast it. The only important thing is not to crowd what you’re roasting, so every piece gets nice and crispy. I like to roast at 425. Don’t want to chop? Roast a potato or sweet potato whole.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Roast Any Vegetable”

New York Times: Melissa Clark’s “Roasted Vegetables”

Lucky Peach: Peter Meehan’s “Roasted Sweet Potatoes”

Stir Fry

Vegetables that don’t make sense for the oven, and even a few that do, are also great cooked super hot in a pan or wok. There’s all sorts of ways to saute, and stir-frying is one of the best for achieving flavor, both in terms of hitting the food with tons of heat and making the pan sauce part of the dish. This is also a simple way to use up ground meat and leftover rice (fried rice!).

LA Times: Genevieve Ko’s “The Easiest Way to Stir-Fry Vegetables”

Serious Eats: J. Kenji López-Alt’s “Wok Skills 101”

The Woks of Life: How to Make Stir-Fry the Right Way

Greens

You will never be disappointed to have a batch of cooked greens in the fridge. “Greens” is a broad category, ranging from chard to kale to dandelion to bok choi; they can be added to every type of meal for a shot of color and pleasant bitterness. There’s a few basic ways to cook them:

For leafy greens, Lukas Volger’s recipe for braised greens from his new book Start Simple is great and versatile.

If your pantry is a bit better stocked, try the Grandbaby Cakes recipes for collard and mustard greens.

This LA Times story on greens mania from 1986 (!) has a variety of braising options (time to bring back creamed kale?).

World’s Best Braised Cabbage from Taste is not lying.

If you don’t have time to cook the greens, try Toni-Tipton Martin’s recipe for wilting them.

Eggs

If you put an egg over roast vegetables or cooked greens, or drop it into soup, or plop it on top of rice, it becomes dinner. The two easiest ways to make the egg are to fry it up all crispy, or boil it until its yolk is still slightly soft. Cannelle et Vanille has an olive oil fried egg recipe from 2014, which likely helped kick off the trend. It’s a good one. The LA Times has two ways of looking at the ubiquitous jammy egg; Bon Appetit’s recipe calls for an ice water bath, which is super useful for quick peeling.

Rice

I rely on a rice maker; they can be pretty cheap and are usually easy to buy at grocery stores — at the moment I’m sure it’s much less predictable. If you can’t get a rice maker or don’t want one, it’s very possible to make rice on the stovetop. Also, rice in its creamy porridge form is another great platform for a meal or turning leftovers into a meal.

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “How to Make Rice”

Tasty: “How to Cook Perfect Rice Every Time” [Video]

Serious Eats: Shao Z’s “How to Make the Silkiest, Most Comforting Congee”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “Japanese Rice Porridge (Okayu)”

Beans

Cooking dried beans is maddeningly simple. The recipe can be as minimal as: Put the beans in a pot, glug a generous glug of fat on top, cover with water, add salt, and simmer for an hour or two. There’s a lot of tinkering and competing wisdom and differing culinary traditions behind this simple recipe, and it’s worth reading up. Warning: not all these recipes agree with each other. Pick one that works for you. Or keep cycling between them and cross referencing, because that’s what I do. I’m sure having a clay pot is great; I promise you don’t need one. Canned beans are always worth having around, and easy to doctor up.

Washington Post: Joe Yonan’s “Beans are good for the planet, for you and for your dinner table. Here’s how to cook them right.”

Rancho Gordo: “Cooking Basic Beans in the Rancho Gordo Manner”

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “Cannellini-Bean Pasta with Beurre Blanc”

Isabel Eats: Isabel Orozco-Moore’s “Easy Refied Beans”

Roast Chicken

Beautifully burnished birds have become fetish objects on restaurant menus, and wrangling a whole four- or five-pound carcass might feel like more trouble than it’s worth. But don’t let the $70 ‘for two’ chickens of the past fool you; a roast whole chicken is an economical leftovers machine much greater than any sum of chicken parts. There are perfect and less perfect ways to do it, but you don’t need a cast-iron pan or string for trussing or butter under the skin. You just need a chicken, some salt, and a hot, hot oven.

NY Times: Mark Bittman’s “Simplest Roast Chicken”

Epicurious: Thomas Keller’s “My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken”

Taste Cooking: JJ Goode’s “How to Roast a Chicken? The Answers Are Horrifying.”

Salt Fat Acid Heat: Samin Nosrat’s Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken

Can’t find whole chicken? Bone-in chicken thighs roast up even easier. Bonus: The chicken can be roasted in the same pan as hardier vegetables like potatoes or turnips.

Stock and Soup

Homemade stock is another dish that sounds intimidating but is dead simple and tastes so much better than canned. The only major investment is time. The recipes below call for a few more ingredients or using chicken wings (also great), if you can get them, but basic techniques here will work with whatever you have on hand, including only the picked-over husk of that chicken you roasted. Vegetarian stocks are easy to make with the root vegetables in your fridge or dried mushrooms. Pick up dried kombu, a type of seaweed, and bonito flakes at an Asian grocery store, and you can make dashi.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Homemade Chicken Stock”

Smitten Kitchen: Deb Perelman’s “Perfect, Uncluttered Chicken Stock”

China Sichuan: “Basic Chinese Chicken Stock”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “How to Make Dashi”

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Vegetable Stock”

101 Cookbooks: Heidi Swanson’s “10 Minute Instant Pot Mushroom Broth”

Now that you have stock, you have yet another way to use up that leftover chicken, beans, greens, rice, and whatever still needs cooking in your fridge. Clean-out-the-fridge soup is definitely a thing.

Pasta

There are many, many pasta recipes out there. The thing I wish someone had told me about pasta much sooner is how to sauce it. If you ever wondered why dumping some marinara sauce or butter on noodles always felt a little disappointing, it turns out there’s a very simple way to fix it! Toss the noodles hot in the sauce. Check out Serious Eats’ guide to saucing for more details.

Baking

I bought a box of brownie mix on a recent grocery store run, and I think you should too. That said, if you think baking from scratch will cheer you up, here’s a few ways to get started.

Taste Cooking: Odette Wiliams “A Cake to Snack On (and On and On)”

King Arthur Flour: “Chilling Cookie Dough”

Eater: Dayna Evans’ “Everyone’s Making Sourdough Now — Here’s How to Get Started”

Cook Safely

A word on kitchen safety: Much of it is common sense, but it’s good to brush up on. Here are the FDA guidelines, and here’s a good rundown on how to deal with all those sharp objects and open flames. That expert hand washing and disinfecting you’re doing will help you keep your kitchen and food safe, too. There is currently no evidence of foodborne transmission of the novel coronavirus; here’s how to grocery shop safely. If you are afraid of cooking meat, here’s how to conquer those fears.

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[culinaryinquisitor-blog]

You Had Me at Step One: The Recipes We Can't Quit

New Post has been published on https://culinaryinquisitor.com/you-had-me-at-step-one-the-recipes-we-cant-quit/

You Had Me at Step One: The Recipes We Can't Quit

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[Photograph: Vicky Wasik, J. Kenji López-Alt]

What are your criteria for a Valentine’s Day crush? Exciting and obsession-worthy are good starts. But we look for other traits, too—tender and comforting is nice, and trustworthy, steadfast, and reliable are all musts. Ideally, they’ll also be eye-catching and captivating, they’ll stimulate your senses, and they’ll always, always leave you wanting more. And, of course, variety in texture is of paramount importance—and we’re definitely partial to a balance of sweet and salty, tart and herbal…

Oh, that’s an important distinction. We’re talking about our food crushes here, not human ones.

Romance with a real, beating-heart life form is all well and good, but a beloved recipe will let you have your cake and eat it, too—or your pie, or the eggplant parm of your dreams, whatever the case may be. Below, you’ll find the recipes that, for us, check all the above boxes and more. These are the dishes that we come back to time and again—the meals we gaze at lovingly, take countless pictures of, and can’t stop bragging about. You might say we’re too engrossed in our work, that maybe we should consider stepping out of the kitchen and tending to our relationships with friends and family. To that, we can only reply: These recipes would never say that about us.

Pressure Cooker Chicken With Chickpeas, Chorizo, and Tomatoes

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Whenever someone asks me what I make in my Instant Pot, I tell them about this recipe—it’s the first pressure cooker meal I ever made, and it’s super easy. Why? You simply throw in the ingredients and cook them on high pressure for 15 minutes, and dinner is ready. What’s more, most of the ingredients are things you likely already have in your pantry, like chickpeas, paprika, chicken stock, and diced tomatoes. Just pick up your chicken and chorizo, and you’ll be good to go. I really can’t say enough about how delicious this is—it’s spicy and salty, comforting and filling. It’s hearty, but the dash of sherry vinegar at the end gives it a wonderful brightness. I like to pour in some couscous at the last minute or prepare some rice on the side, then eat the leftovers all week long. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Get the recipe for Pressure Cooker Chicken With Chickpeas, Chorizo, and Tomatoes »

The Best Cherry Pie

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

When Stella first joined the Serious Eats team full time, among the first things we asked her to prioritize were classic fruit pies, like apple, cherry, and blueberry. She was not excited. “I don’t really like pie,” I remember her telling me, her slight Southern drawl dragging out the word “like” so as to more delicately deliver the bad news. “No kidding? That’s crazy…but you can make pie, right?” I shot back, the pushy New Yorker in me cutting to the point. “Sure, I can make pie.” I wasn’t too worried. With Stella’s talents, her pies weren’t going to be bad, that much was certain. So when she flew to New York to make and photograph her pies for publication, I looked forward to tasting them. Still, given her warning, I wasn’t expecting to take a bite and then have my eyes bulge from their sockets, a condition that I believe has caused a permanent change to my glasses prescription.

Stella’s pies, and her cherry pie in particular, are the greatest pies I have ever eaten anywhere in my entire life, full stop, period, the end. And I love pie, so that’s saying a lot. The fillings explode with fruit, and she’s dialed in her sugar and starch levels for pitch-perfect texture and flavor. And her crust! It’s the flakiest, the crispiest, the golden-est, the moisture-resistant-iest, the still-perfect-the-next-day-iest (yes, even the bottom crust, after it’s sat below the filling overnight). How a person who claims to not like pie could make the world’s best version, I’ll never know, but I’m eternally grateful. —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

Get the recipe for The Best Cherry Pie »

30-Minute Tuscan White Bean Soup

[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

I make a batch of this soup at least three times each winter. It’s incredibly easy (as all soups should be, in my opinion), and, in the words of Kenji, it has a great flavor-to-work ratio. The white beans give it the heft I want from a hearty winter soup, and the addition of a Parmesan rind to enrich the broth is a revelation. Pro tip: Take a hint from another one of Kenji’s soups and add some lemon zest to brighten it all up. —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Get the recipe for 30-Minute Tuscan White Bean Soup »

Perfect Prime Rib

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

My wife, Vicky, is the baker in the family, so if she were looking over my shoulder as I wrote this, I’m sure she would be extolling the virtues of one of Stella’s recipes, like her angel food cake. But she’s not here, so I’m going to give props to an oldie (and, if it’s dry-aged meat, moldy) Serious Eats recipe: Kenji’s unforgettable prime rib. It’s time-consuming, and the finished product is more than a little unwieldy, but damn, is it delicious. In my estimation, it might be beef’s Platonic ideal. Plus, if you make Kenji’s prime rib for a dinner party, it’ll make one hell of an entrance when you bring it to the table—your guests will be impressed before they take a single bite. Make sure to give the entire article a read, even if it isn’t till after you put the roast in the oven: It’s full of both useful and interesting beef-related tidbits and down-to-earth scientific intel. —Ed Levine, founder

Get the recipe for Perfect Prime Rib With Red Wine Jus »

One-Bowl, Overnight Cinnamon Rolls

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

My ultimate move for proving I’m a strong, independent woman—to my parents, to my friends, to my potential suitors—is pulling out an impressive recipe and executing it flawlessly. The key is for said impressive recipe to be deceptively easy. Enter Stella’s overnight cinnamon rolls. They truly require only one bowl and a stand mixer, and the rest is up to simple science. There’s not much more I can say about this recipe, except that it just works. The Greek yogurt incorporated into the dough gives the buns an almost Cinnabon-like quality—it keeps the dough super light and fluffy and produces the most amazing smell while they bake. It gets people hyped. I firmly believe there is no more special way to start the day than with one of these rolls. They turn an average Saturday into a memorable one. And on an already-special day—like when I made them for my family for Christmas Day—they’re just the icing on the, well, cinnamon bun. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media manager

Get the recipe for One-Bowl, Overnight Cinnamon Rolls »

Chicken Paprikash

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

In the depths of winter, when we’re craving something hearty and soul-warming but not overwhelmingly, tiringly rich, and neither a soup nor even a chili will do, my boyfriend and I can always agree on the merits of chicken paprikash. Kenji’s recipe takes more effort, but in just a bit more time than your run-of-the-mill paprikash recipe, it produces a silky, tangy, full-bodied stew punched up with plenty of good paprika, enriched with fish sauce and gelatin-enhanced stock, and brightened with yogurt, citrus, and grassy dill. If I have an extra half hour, a spare burner, and a few clear inches of counter space, I’ll boil up some shreds of homemade herb spaetzle and ladle the paprikash over it. On a leisurely late afternoon, over our two steaming bowls and another episode of some TV show we’ve watched a million times, nothing could be more comforting. —Marissa Chen, office manager

Get the recipe for Chicken Paprikash »

Vegan Garbanzos Con Espinacas y Jengibre (Spanish Chickpea and Spinach Stew With Ginger)

[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

There’s a reason Kenji calls this his favorite Serious Eats recipe. Okay—to be fair, I don’t know if he loves it for the same reasons I do, but I can come up with a few possibilities. Like some of my favorite people, it’s special because it doesn’t require a lot of poking or prodding or huge expenditures of effort to be good. It combines a handful of really unassuming and ordinary features—chickpeas, tomatoes, fresh spinach, ginger, paprika, vinegar—but they’re not quite ingredients you expect to see together, or not ingredients you’ve seen assembled in quite this way, and so they become exciting again. It doesn’t ask too much. Canned beans are okay; white wine vinegar works if you don’t have sherry. It plays happily with your vegan friends and converses easily with your health-nut family members. It’s simple enough that you can start it at the end of a long workday and have energy to spare when it’s done. When you sit down at the table with a bowl of it and a side of crusty bread, you’ll let out one of those little sighs that say, I’m at home, and everything’s okay. And that first bite, a mix of smoky from the paprika and earthy from the chickpeas and bright from the vinegar, will remind you that good and nourishing and easygoing, in food as in people, doesn’t have to mean boring. —Miranda Kaplan, editor

Get the recipe for Vegan Garbanzos Con Espinacas y Jengibre »

Sunny Lemon Bars

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I’m what you might call a reluctant baker—I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, my oven is tiny and unreliable, and even after completing culinary school, I continue to find cakes and breads deeply intimidating. Collectively, these factors have led me to worship Stella’s lemon bars. The buttery and rich shortbread-style crust takes just a few pulses with a food processor to make, and the custard is bright, vividly yellow, and tart enough to keep the sweetness from becoming cloying, a distracting feature in other lemon bars I’ve encountered. They require very little time in the oven, which means I don’t need to stress about them coming out under- or overdone. And, provided you have a good instant-read thermometer, they’re virtually impossible to mess up. The only thing that would frustrate me is the mountain of lemon carcasses left over, but Stella has a solution for those, too: Macerating them in sugar for several hours yields a sweet, lemony syrup, which you can mix right into some whipping cream to top the whole thing off. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor

Get the recipe for Sunny Lemon Bars »

Foolproof Pan Pizza

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Most Friday nights when I was growing up, you could find the Cline family at Pizza Hut. The four of us would pile into our wood-paneled station wagon and drive across town to the second-closest Pizza Hut (the nearest location lacked a license to sell beer). My brother and I would spend our time bouncing between the table, the cocktail-style Galaga/Ms. Pac-Man machine, and the jukebox, but eventually we’d settle down for some of Pizza Hut’s pan pizza.

I haven’t been to a Pizza Hut in years, but I make Kenji’s Foolproof Pan Pizza every few months. It’s more or less the perfect re-creation (of my memories) of Pizza Hut’s pan pizza—and it’s really hard to screw up. —Paul Cline, developer

Get the recipe for Foolproof Pan Pizza »

Light and Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

You know that feeling when someone you’ve cooked for graciously asks for the recipe, even though you both know that they’ll never try it at home—perhaps because it’s too hard, it requires special ingredients, or it calls for a six-hour-long rest in the refrigerator? Well, I’m a firm believer in the idea that you can change someone’s life with a short stack of great pancakes, and maybe some decent maple syrup. That’s why I love Kenji’s buttermilk pancake recipe. If you’re into food science, you can read all about glutenin and gliadin, the pair behind the magic of gluten, in his full article. But let’s say you’re not, and that it’s breakfast time, and you want to feed your family. For a little extra time and prep work (whipping egg whites, folding said whites), you can serve up some pancakes that are way better than the boxed stuff.

When someone asks for this pancake recipe, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll try it for themselves. Today it’s pancakes; tomorrow it’s prime rib (or, you know, waffles). —Sal Vaglica, equipment editor

Get the recipe for Light and Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes »

Double-Chocolate Cream Pie

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

For special occasions, I pretty much always make Stella’s double-chocolate cream pie. I wouldn’t call this an easy recipe, but Stella’s directions are clear and simple to follow. Go step by step, from the buttery crust to the Swiss meringue, and you won’t fail. This pie is a showstopper for a lot of reasons—the deep chocolate custard (made from dark chocolate and Dutch cocoa powder) is so rich, and the burnished meringue on top looks really professional. The first time I pulled it out of the oven, I couldn’t believe what I had achieved. If you’re looking to impress someone, especially someone who loves chocolate, this is the way to their heart. And mine—please make this for me. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Get the recipe for Double-Chocolate Cream Pie »

15-Minute Creamy Tomato Soup

[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

Once the temperature dips below 50°F, I go hard on soup. It’s warm, it’s filling, it’s usually pretty cheap, and the leftovers only improve with time. Plus, you can dip stuff like bread and grilled cheese sandwiches into it. ‘Nuff said. This year’s gray skies and cold snaps have had me reaching for easy comfort food, and Kenji’s 15-minute vegan tomato soup couldn’t be easier or more comforting. “15-minute” jumped out at me first, but it was the simple ingredient list that sealed the deal—I had practically everything I needed to get started. After just 15 minutes, I savored the tangy sweetness known to all good tomato soups, and none of the richness that cream usually brings to the game. So I felt just fine having two bowls of it (so much for leftovers). —Natalie Holt, video producer

Get the recipe for 15-Minute Creamy Tomato Soup »

Salisbury Steak

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

There are a lot of exceptional recipes on Serious Eats that I turn to again and again: Kenji’s perfect risotto, Stella’s cheddar biscuits, Daniel’s clams casino, and, more recently, Sohla’s cheesy bread.

But if I had to pick one recipe I love above all others, it would be Daniel’s Salisbury steak, since it embodies everything I love about our approach to recipe development. It isn’t expensive or fancy; it doesn’t really require any special ingredients (aside from liquid smoke, which is optional anyway); it isn’t particularly time-consuming or hard to make; and it is extremely good. I didn’t grow up eating this stuff at lunch counters or cafeterias or out of TV dinner trays, so there isn’t even any element of nostalgia for me—it’s just supremely tasty. And how could it not be? It’s basically a good meatball in patty form, topped with a rich mushroom sauce.

After making it more times than I care to count, I’ve realized that the recipe is also a prime example of the importance of technique, and of how paying attention to the little details can make a good dish great. Sure, you can choose not to mince the onions that go into the patties, and you can choose not to diligently slide the patties around in the pan so that their surfaces are nicely browned all around; it’s true that you can skimp on properly browning the mushrooms, or overshoot the final cooking temperature, or skip the smidgen of cider vinegar at the end. The Salisbury steak you eat will still be pretty tasty. But if you do cut the onions into a proper mince and check the meat mixture for seasoning, if you properly brown the meat and the mushrooms, and if you taste the final sauce and add vinegar bit by bit at the very end, what arrives at the table is the kind of meal only an accomplished cook could produce—and that accomplished cook is you. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Get the recipe for Salisbury Steak »

Italian-Style Eggplant Parmesan

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

I used to live my life believing that eggplant Parmesan was an abomination. I never understood why anyone would take the time to painstakingly put slices of eggplant through a careful three-stage breading procedure, only to drench them in tomato sauce and transform the once-crisp rounds into a soggy scourge on society. Daniel was working on the video for his Italian-style eggplant Parmesan when I first started at Serious Eats, and I knew I was home when I noticed there wasn’t a crumb in sight. Instead of using a heavy breading, this recipe starts with tender slices of eggplant at the peak of their season and fries them stark naked, like the day God made them. The eggplant slices swell with grassy olive oil, becoming creamy and rich, before they’re layered with mozzarella and a triple-threat tomato sauce. After eating half a pan of the stuff at the test kitchen, I went home and made a batch for dinner the very same night. This recipe continues to make frequent appearances in my kitchen, and has permanently changed my stance on eggplant Parmesan, while simultaneously quadrupling my olive oil consumption—because you gotta get in those macros, bro! —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor

Get the recipe for Italian-Style Eggplant Parmesan »

Pressure Cooker Beef Barley Soup

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Even before the pressure cooker variation came along, Daniel’s stovetop beef barley soup was my favorite recipe of 2016, and on regular rotation at home. I always feel so virtuous putting that many grains and vegetables into a dish, and the tender, melt-in-your-mouth chunks of beef make the dish rich and hearty enough to justify popping a bottle of red wine. It was always a Saturday-afternoon thing, a recipe I could have going in the background while I puttered around the house with other chores. But the pressure cooker version changed all that, slashing the recipe’s timeline in half and making it fast enough to throw together on a weeknight, too. —Stella Parks, pastry wizard

Get the recipe for Pressure Cooker Beef Barley Soup »

Charred Salsa Verde

[Photograph: J. Kenji López-Alt]

I discovered this recipe pretty late—just a few weeks ago—but it has very quickly become my go-to salsa recipe. If you can find tomatillos, the salsa is unbelievably easy to make: big, rough chops on the veggies; a quick stint under the broiler; a whir in the blender; and that’s it. Smoky, sweet, charred, peppery, and as fiery as you want to make it, the flavors are deliciously complex. And it only gets better when you’ve made it a few times and have gotten a feel for how much heat you want. (I may or may not have burned off all the taste buds on a loved one’s tongue the first time.) Try it with Kenji’s sous vide carnitas! —Tim Aikens, front-end developer

Get the recipe for Charred Salsa Verde »

BraveTart’s Quick and Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Everyone knows that freshly baked cookies are always better than the store-bought packages. We also know how disappointing it can be to try a recipe from a random search and end up with a sad, bready-tasting batch. However, since trying out Stella’s chocolate chip cookies, I’ve bookmarked the recipe, and baking them has become a weekly tradition. The recipe works perfectly well with mass-produced chocolate chips. My recommendation, though it’s going to take some self-control, is to bake only as much as you’ll devour within 24 hours, then freeze the remaining dough for another indulgent time. Be sure to read the full article, too—I love the historical nugget in which Stella explains how chocolate chips first came to supermarkets. —Vivian Kong, designer

Get the recipe for BraveTart’s Quick and Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies »

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[travelfoody]

Flight: AA759

Route: ATH-PHL

Equipment: Airbus A330-300

Cabin: Business Class

Seat: 3H

[Please see video above, if you prefer to watch a video review.]

After playing tour guide and visiting 4 cities in Europe in one week, it was time to head home. Our last stop in our European journey was Athens. We spent the day visiting The Acropolis and Syntagma Square, then spent the night at the Hilton Athens, which was a 20 minute walk from the Acropolis.

The morning of our departure, we took a taxi to Eleftherios Venizelos airport which took about half an hour. Upon arrival at the airport, we went straight to the American Airlines check-in counters. As is the norm nowadays for flights by US carriers going back to the US, there was a security check at the queue, in which an agent asks you a few questions about your trip. The interrogation security questions took about 2 minutes, and then they let you through to the check-in counters.

The check-in agent was nice and she gave us our lounge invitations for the Goldair Lounge. She also printed our boarding passes all the way to San Francisco. Sadly, one of our companions got the dreaded SSSS (Secondary Security Screening Selection) printed on their Boarding Pass, which meant they had to go through another set of security screening at the boarding gate on top of the regular security screening for all passengers – not fun.

There was quite a queue at security and exit immigration, as there were other flights leaving around the same time as ours. We then made our way to the Goldair Lounge, which is the newest lounge at ATH.

The lounge was on the small side, and was really basic on the food side. There were a few hot options, and they also had some cold sandwiches, and veggies in addition to the wine and booze bar.

We had a few bites, but eventually left as the lounge was getting full. We decided to walk around the terminal and picked up a few souvenirs instead.

About an hour before departure, we made our way to the gate area. There was a long queue to the gate as there were agents checking everyone’s boarding passes before they could get into the boarding area. When it was my turn, the agent looked at my passport and boarding pass, and waved me through. Sadly for one of my companions, they took her passport and directed her to secondary screening. They basically opened her bags and thoroughly went through all her things, while asking her questions and swabbing her stuff. The whole process took about 20 minutes per passenger. I’m not sure if they select people randomly, but I also saw 3 or 4 other people who were selected for secondary as well.

After that painful secondary screening, we all went to the gate agent and our boarding passes were scanned. We were greeted at the door by the purser and were asked to cross the galley and turn left to our seats.

I was seated in 3H, which is a window seat on the starboard side of the plane. The seats are the same what American has on their Airbus A330-200 planes, which I reviewed here.

Waiting at my seat was a plastic wrapped pillow and duvet, as well as a Cole Haan amenity kit. Upon settling down a flight attendant came by with a tray of pre-depature beverages. I had a choice of water, orange juice, or champagne and I opted for the latter.

Another flight attendant came to offer Bose noise canceling headphones, and newspapers.

Boarding was soon complete and the Captain came on the PA to announce our departure and our flight time of 10 hours to Philadelphia. The doors were closed and we soon pushed back from the gate.

The safety video then started playing.

During taxi, the flight attendant working our aisle came by to take our drink orders and confirmed our pre-ordered meal.

We soon approached the end of the runway and had a powerful takeoff roll. It was a clear day in Athens which made for some amazing views of the vicinity below.

The seatbelt sign was turned off about 15 minutes into the flight and the flight attendants started preparing for the meal service.

Service began with a hot towel, which I also used to give the area around my seat a quick wipe down.

Then the drink cart came and I ordered a glass of champagne, which was served with a ramekin of warm nuts.

Next the appetizer and salad tray was served. The appetizer was rose harissa hummus with some sides. It was delicious! The salad was a gem wedge salad with roasted squash, sesame seeds, and tahini dressing. I’m not really a salad person, but I liked it. A selection of warm bread was also offered, in which I chose the pretzel roll.

For the main dish, I pre-ordered the striploin steak. It was cooked to a perfect medium and was very tender! It was served with mashed potatoes, gravy, and steamed veggies – yum!

For dessert, I ordered the hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and nuts. I also ordered some baileys on the rocks for my digestif. How can you go wrong with some ice cream and baileys?

After the meal, a flight attendant came by to pass out bottled waters.

Then I went to the lavatory to freshen up. There are 3 lavatories in business class on the A330-300. There’s one in front of the cabin before the cockpit, and 2 lavatories on each side of the plane next to the galley, behind business class. The lavatory was on the small size and was very spartan, no lotion, face mist or moisturizer. All it really had was hand soap, in terms of toiletries.

After getting back to my seat, I converted my seat into a flat bed and slept for a good 4 hours.

I woke up and decided to browse through the IFE content. There was a good amount of movies, TV programs, music, and games available. There was also a very basic moving map to keep track of the flight progress. Unfortunately, the interface of this IFE system is slow and unresponsive unlike the Panasonic EX system that American has on their 777s. As usual, I just kept the moving map on.

Just like clockwork, about 90 minutes before landing, the second meal service started.

First the crew passed out hot towels.

Then the beverage cart rolled by, and I ordered a glass of orange juice.

Next came the food cart, we had a choice of BBQ beef toastie, or Japanese veggie rice bowl. I ended up choosing the BBQ toastie. The meal was served in one tray along with some fresh fruits, potato chips, and a chocolate pudding for dessert. Unfortunately, the BBQ was a bit too salty and the bread was hard as a rock. I ended up just eating the fruits and chocolate pudding and saved the chips for later.

45 minutes before landing, the Bose headsets were collected, and the crew started their preparations for landing.

I visited the lavatory one more time to freshen up. I initially went to the lav in front of the cabin, only to be yelled at by a flight attendant that the pilots needed to use the lavatory, so I went to the one of the lavatories in the back instead.

Soon the captain announced our initial descent into Philadelphia and the seatbelt signs came on shortly.

The approach was smooth and the visibility was good, which gave us a nice view of the city below.

The landing was a bit hard, but we made is safely. We taxied for a good 5 minutes, and soon parked at gate A17.

Immigration and customs were a breeze thanks to Global Entry.

We cleared transit security, then made our way to the Admirals Club. Sadly none of the admirals club in Philadelphia have any showers, which came as a big surprise considering this was an American hub.

The lounge had sweeping views of the tarmac, and it was relatively empty while we were there. They also had a selection of soups, some cheeses veggies, fruits, and unlimited coffee and cookies.

All in all, I thought this was an OK flight. The SSSS was a little harrowing for my companion, and being yelled at by the flight attendant while I was on my way to the lav was also semi-traumatic for me. Otherwise, the seat was very comfortable and I was able to sleep for few hours. The service was done in typical AA style, which was efficient but a little cold and impersonal. The food was kind of a mixed bag. The first meal service was very good and the food was actually tasty, while the pre-landing meal was almost inedible. The IFE offered a wide variety of content, but the screen clarity, and clunky interface was a bit of a let down. Of course these are all #firstworldproblems, and I consider myself very lucky to be able to travel, much more in business class. That being said, I give this flight a 6.5 out of 10.

  Review: American Airlines Business Class Airbus A330 Athens to Philadelphia Flight: AA759 Route: ATH-PHL Equipment: Airbus A330-300 Cabin: Business Class Seat: 3H After playing tour guide and visiting 4 cities in Europe in one week, it was time to head home.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Photo by Maciej Toporowicz, NYC / Getty How to get started on your cooking journey, from frying eggs and saucing pasta to roasting chickens and making soup So you’re really, really into food. You also have no idea how to cook it. I get it, I’ve been there. There are more of us than you might think: Younger Americans grew up in a system awash in convenience foods, while our parents were working longer and harder and had less and less time to cook. Then, when we became adults, time and money were scarcer still, and restaurants became the places we gathered with our friends. When I taught myself to cook at home, I immediately discovered most recipes aren’t written for anxious beginners. Instead, they assume the cook is already competent and looking to level up or add another dish to their repertoire. The rewards and demands of social media virality have only supercharged recipes’ emphasis on novelty and visual beauty. As someone who now knows how to cook, I love reading about a hack for cooking short ribs or a surprising use for my rice cooker. But back when I barely knew how to boil water, recipes telling me which tweak or technique yielded ideal results made turning on the oven feel high stakes. All that emphasis on aspiration and perfection made it way too hard to get started. I’ve been cooking at home for a decade now, and to be honest, I’m still pretty basic. I sometimes feel embarrassed that I haven’t moved on from roasting chickens and simmering beans, but right now, basic-ness isn’t a crutch — it’s useful. With that spirit in mind, I’ve put together a series of recipes, and notes on recipes, that get really, really basic. Think of it as a roadmap to kitchen competence, a few pages from the grammar manual of home cooking from the dialect I speak. The most important thing about learning how to cook is to resist perfectionism, and redefine what a home cooked meal is. That was true before we were sheltering in place and limiting our grocery outings to the bare minimum, and now it’s essential. Chicken thighs roasted with salt and olive oil, alongside some root vegetables cooked in the same pan? Highlight of the week. Rice and an egg and maybe some kimchi from the back of your fridge? Delicious. Cheesy pasta? Hell yes. Beans on tortillas or over some toasted stale bread? Dinner once a week for me. How to Read (and Pick) a Recipe Every guide like this starts out with the same advice: Read the recipe all the way to the end before you start cooking anything. That’s because even if it feels like kind of a cop move to read and follow the recipe, actually doing so removes much of the stress you might associate with cooking — which often happens when the pan is searing hot and you realize you need soy sauce right that second. Read the ingredients list too! It tells a story, and all-too-often hides some of the prep, like chopping onions or grating cheese or even entire sub recipes (maybe skip anything with sub recipes). If there’s a term you don’t understand, Google it. Almost every mysterious recipe term has been clearly defined online now. Do your best as a beginner to follow the recipe, but also give yourself permission to deviate if the current situation means you don’t have an ingredient or piece of equipment on hand. Every recipe not written during World War II or in spring 2020 assumes a certain American bourgeois abundance. There’s been a run on garlic? Your tomato sauce will lack some pleasure, but it will still be tomato sauce. Only a few things will utterly wreck a non-baked-good: burning it, undercooking it, over-salting it, or, in certain cases, depriving it of moisture. Under-salting will make things taste flat and disappointing, but you can still eat them. Oil plus salt plus fire is as basic as cooking gets, and if you have those things and something you can cook, you have a meal. The internet is chock full of free recipes and advice, but the cooking internet stuffers from misinformation as much as any other. A good rule of thumb is to use recipes from publications with test kitchens and bloggers who have proven the test of time, though you may have to pay for those recipes. A few publications have also made serious investments in teaching the fundamentals (though all of them mix in somewhat fussier recipes with the true basics): the New York Times’ How to Cook; the Washington Post’s round-up of recipes and techniques; the LA Times’ ongoing recipe series How to Boil Water; Bon Appetit’s Basically vertical; and Serious Eats’ coronavirus cooking guide. (Your local paper really could use those subscriptions right now if it has a cooking section.) If you’ve got the money, order a cookbook or two or ten. You don’t have Salt Fat Acid Heat? Buy or borrow Salt Fat Acid Heat. No cookbook explains better the whys and hows of cooking, and the fundamentals of technique, while being refreshingly empowering. Thanks to that book, I (mostly) salt my food appropriately, and in friends’ eyes I became a 50 percent better cook. When to Cook Assume it will take you sixty to ninety minutes to prepare and clean up after any meal that’s not scrambled eggs. I don’t care if the recipe says thirty minutes. You’re new to this, and some of us are just slower in the kitchen. Play some music, catch up on a podcast, and, if you’re not sheltering solo, make a roommate or loved one help. If you don’t want to spend an hour cooking, choose a recipe that takes a long time but requires little from you, like baked potatoes or a pot of beans, so you can get other things done. Equally important is knowing when not to cook. More than half my social distancing meals are not meals I’ve cooked, but repurposing of leftovers I cooked previously. I wouldn’t try to cook three meals a day from scratch right now (or… ever?). Trick yourself into thinking something is a different meal by plopping an egg on it or putting it in a tortilla instead of over rice. Assemble Your Tools and Stock Your Pantry Need a definitive guide to stocking your pantry and refrigerator for a week or two of cooking from home? Eater has that for you right here. Not sure where to buy groceries right now? Restaurants are turning into markets, and lots of farms are offering CSA boxes. Fresh produce and meat and eggs from small producers taste more like themselves and make simple meals tastier, and if you can afford to support small producers right now it’s a great way to help the entire food system. And as far as tools go, head over here for some products that make your kitchen an easier place to cook. What to Cook Roast Vegetables You know what you can do with any type of vegetable you wouldn’t eat raw, and some that you would? Toss it with olive oil and salt, drop it on a sheet pan, and roast it. The only important thing is not to crowd what you’re roasting, so every piece gets nice and crispy. I like to roast at 425. Don’t want to chop? Roast a potato or sweet potato whole. The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Roast Any Vegetable” New York Times: Melissa Clark’s “Roasted Vegetables” Lucky Peach: Peter Meehan’s “Roasted Sweet Potatoes” Stir Fry Vegetables that don’t make sense for the oven, and even a few that do, are also great cooked super hot in a pan or wok. There’s all sorts of ways to saute, and stir-frying is one of the best for achieving flavor, both in terms of hitting the food with tons of heat and making the pan sauce part of the dish. This is also a simple way to use up ground meat and leftover rice (fried rice!). LA Times: Genevieve Ko’s “The Easiest Way to Stir-Fry Vegetables” Serious Eats: J. Kenji López-Alt’s “Wok Skills 101” The Woks of Life: How to Make Stir-Fry the Right Way Greens You will never be disappointed to have a batch of cooked greens in the fridge. “Greens” is a broad category, ranging from chard to kale to dandelion to bok choi; they can be added to every type of meal for a shot of color and pleasant bitterness. There’s a few basic ways to cook them: For leafy greens, Lukas Volger’s recipe for braised greens from his new book Start Simple is great and versatile. If your pantry is a bit better stocked, try the Grandbaby Cakes recipes for collard and mustard greens. This LA Times story on greens mania from 1986 (!) has a variety of braising options (time to bring back creamed kale?). World’s Best Braised Cabbage from Taste is not lying. If you don’t have time to cook the greens, try Toni-Tipton Martin’s recipe for wilting them. Eggs If you put an egg over roast vegetables or cooked greens, or drop it into soup, or plop it on top of rice, it becomes dinner. The two easiest ways to make the egg are to fry it up all crispy, or boil it until its yolk is still slightly soft. Cannelle et Vanille has an olive oil fried egg recipe from 2014, which likely helped kick off the trend. It’s a good one. The LA Times has two ways of looking at the ubiquitous jammy egg; Bon Appetit’s recipe calls for an ice water bath, which is super useful for quick peeling. Rice I rely on a rice maker; they can be pretty cheap and are usually easy to buy at grocery stores — at the moment I’m sure it’s much less predictable. If you can’t get a rice maker or don’t want one, it’s very possible to make rice on the stovetop. Also, rice in its creamy porridge form is another great platform for a meal or turning leftovers into a meal. NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “How to Make Rice” Tasty: “How to Cook Perfect Rice Every Time” [Video] Serious Eats: Shao Z’s “How to Make the Silkiest, Most Comforting Congee” Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “Japanese Rice Porridge (Okayu)” Beans Cooking dried beans is maddeningly simple. The recipe can be as minimal as: Put the beans in a pot, glug a generous glug of fat on top, cover with water, add salt, and simmer for an hour or two. There’s a lot of tinkering and competing wisdom and differing culinary traditions behind this simple recipe, and it’s worth reading up. Warning: not all these recipes agree with each other. Pick one that works for you. Or keep cycling between them and cross referencing, because that’s what I do. I’m sure having a clay pot is great; I promise you don’t need one. Canned beans are always worth having around, and easy to doctor up. Washington Post: Joe Yonan’s “Beans are good for the planet, for you and for your dinner table. Here’s how to cook them right.” Rancho Gordo: “Cooking Basic Beans in the Rancho Gordo Manner” NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “Cannellini-Bean Pasta with Beurre Blanc” Isabel Eats: Isabel Orozco-Moore’s “Easy Refied Beans” Roast Chicken Beautifully burnished birds have become fetish objects on restaurant menus, and wrangling a whole four- or five-pound carcass might feel like more trouble than it’s worth. But don’t let the $70 ‘for two’ chickens of the past fool you; a roast whole chicken is an economical leftovers machine much greater than any sum of chicken parts. There are perfect and less perfect ways to do it, but you don’t need a cast-iron pan or string for trussing or butter under the skin. You just need a chicken, some salt, and a hot, hot oven. NY Times: Mark Bittman’s “Simplest Roast Chicken” Epicurious: Thomas Keller’s “My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken” Taste Cooking: JJ Goode’s “How to Roast a Chicken? The Answers Are Horrifying.” Salt Fat Acid Heat: Samin Nosrat’s Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken Can’t find whole chicken? Bone-in chicken thighs roast up even easier. Bonus: The chicken can be roasted in the same pan as hardier vegetables like potatoes or turnips. Stock and Soup Homemade stock is another dish that sounds intimidating but is dead simple and tastes so much better than canned. The only major investment is time. The recipes below call for a few more ingredients or using chicken wings (also great), if you can get them, but basic techniques here will work with whatever you have on hand, including only the picked-over husk of that chicken you roasted. Vegetarian stocks are easy to make with the root vegetables in your fridge or dried mushrooms. Pick up dried kombu, a type of seaweed, and bonito flakes at an Asian grocery store, and you can make dashi. The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Homemade Chicken Stock” Smitten Kitchen: Deb Perelman’s “Perfect, Uncluttered Chicken Stock” China Sichuan: “Basic Chinese Chicken Stock” Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “How to Make Dashi” The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Vegetable Stock” 101 Cookbooks: Heidi Swanson’s “10 Minute Instant Pot Mushroom Broth” Now that you have stock, you have yet another way to use up that leftover chicken, beans, greens, rice, and whatever still needs cooking in your fridge. Clean-out-the-fridge soup is definitely a thing. Pasta There are many, many pasta recipes out there. The thing I wish someone had told me about pasta much sooner is how to sauce it. If you ever wondered why dumping some marinara sauce or butter on noodles always felt a little disappointing, it turns out there’s a very simple way to fix it! Toss the noodles hot in the sauce. Check out Serious Eats’ guide to saucing for more details. Baking I bought a box of brownie mix on a recent grocery store run, and I think you should too. That said, if you think baking from scratch will cheer you up, here’s a few ways to get started. Taste Cooking: Odette Wiliams “A Cake to Snack On (and On and On)” King Arthur Flour: “Chilling Cookie Dough” Eater: Dayna Evans’ “Everyone’s Making Sourdough Now — Here’s How to Get Started” Cook Safely A word on kitchen safety: Much of it is common sense, but it’s good to brush up on. Here are the FDA guidelines, and here’s a good rundown on how to deal with all those sharp objects and open flames. That expert hand washing and disinfecting you’re doing will help you keep your kitchen and food safe, too. There is currently no evidence of foodborne transmission of the novel coronavirus; here’s how to grocery shop safely. If you are afraid of cooking meat, here’s how to conquer those fears. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3dPHANy

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