A couple of years ago I spent almost a week in Kansas City, where I lived in a perpetual state of the “meat sweats.” Between Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ, Anton’s Taproom & Steakhouse and Town-Topic burgers (where they cook the fries and burgers in lard), we spent enough time in meat joints to find ourselves on… Read more »
Cuisine
Pork: your New Year’s Day picker-upper
Reprinted from Dec. 26, 2013 Time marches on and the present is no different from any other in terms of paltry temporal matters. We are once again fortunate enough to be ringing in a new year and in a couple days someone out there will have a monstrous hangover as a result of their… Read more »
‘Snow time like present to steam shrimp
Really? The middle of December and I’m wearing shorts and flip-flops? I could get used to this, but I certainly know that it isn’t going to last. The cold weather will move back in, and I will have to retreat back into my jeans and sweatshirts, but boy this sure feels fantastic. I was speaking… Read more »
Nothing horrific about smoked bluefish
There’s nothing quite like watching the babysitter getting killed by a dead 4-year old while you’re trying to write a scintillating article about smoked seafood. Yes, that is exactly what is happening at midnight as I try to compose a most-enticing piece of culinary literature that would encourage you to actually stop what you’re doing… Read more »
‘Perfectionist’ garlic puree perfects chicken
Years ago I was reading Chelminski’s “The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine,” the tragic rise and fall of real-life chef Bernard Loiseau (a contemporary of Paul Bocuse who took his own life when rumors circulated that he was about to lose a Michelin star). I was bemused throughout the story, as I knew… Read more »
When it comes to KC barbecue, trust Pokey
It’s hard for me to even remember what I’ve written about and what has eluded the clicking of keys under-hand. I feel that I have so much to say, but that so very much of it is uninteresting. I know my stories drive my kids insane, and I often get the courtesy laugh paired with… Read more »
Try this tart-sweet pickled shrimp appetizer
“Quelle surprise.” That’s all that I could muster when the doctor told me that I had been working through pneumonia for the past week. Oh, the mistakes of stubborn and stupid men. I tend to convince myself that I can magically make a random head cold go away; then, when it turns into bronchitis, I… Read more »
Pineapple salsa cools off jerk skewers
I have had one hell of a day. After an eventful day at school, to say the least, during which students argued and then studied and cooked foods of Florida, it was time to spend an hour on the phone with my cousin who wants to move to Ocean City from Wisconsin. Getting a restaurant… Read more »
Forget myth; oysters are always in season
Oysters; one of the many bounties of the Chesapeake. Mysterious mollusks whose introduction to the human race was probably at the hands of a river otter banging one open on its chest. I don’t know that this particular version of history is completely accurate, but I’m sure that however it happened, it was a very… Read more »
For perfect pasta, ‘00’ flour essential
REPRINTED FROM SEPT. 25, 2014 There are times when something just strikes my fancy and today marked one of those spells. Walking through the kitchen after straightening out the walk-in, I remembered my days in Baltimore, cooking in some good restaurants. One such place was the Polo Grill by Johns Hopkins University. The chef was… Read more »