Air Fryer Chestnuts

Everyone feels like a chestnut expert because they make them once per year for stuffing or whatever and it's a family tradition or whatever. They confuse familiarity with expertise.

I've made chestnuts almost 50 times this year alone (they're cheap and great here), and I've refined my method to perfection. I won't explain why I don't soak them, or parboil them, or salt them, or any of the other unnecessary and counterproductive moves people do. Just trust me.


Preheat your air fryer 400

"But Jim, air fryers don't really fry, they're just a convection oven!"

Correct. But they're really good, handy, economical, windy, and self-contained convection ovens, perfect for chestnuts. You can do this recipe in a real convection oven, but it won't work as well. Buy a small air fryer (I have this, and when the silicon bumpers wear away I suggest you buy a new air fryer). You'll never use your toaster oven again, and you'll hardly ever use your convection oven. Just run it 15 times outdoors to burn off rubber and plastic manufacturing artifacts without turning your kitchen into Love Canal.

Put chestnuts in a deep bowl full of water (more than you think necessary) and discard any floaters. Drain the water.

Use a serated steak knife or bread knife to slash an "X" on the flattest side of each chestnut. Try not to cut into the meat, but definitely cut through shell and sub-shell.

Place in preheated air fryer, cut side down. Set it for 20 minutes.

Cook 5 minutes.

Shake tray violently. The chestnuts will flip to cut side up.

Cook 5 minutes.

If you shake them, they won't flip. They'll just sort of move around. So you must laboriously and painfully flip each chestnut with your fingers (cooking gloves, tongs, etc., won't work) back to cut side down. Just this one time.

Cook 5 minutes

Shake tray violently. The chestnuts will flip to cut side up.

Cook 5 minutes

Dump chestnuts into a dishtowel, double it over, and press firmly downward with your palms, trying to press each chestnut solidly at least once. This loosens the skins.

Cooking over charcoal is better, but not as much better as you think, so probably not worth the extra effort. And if your charcoal method doesn't allow smoke penetration, it's not better at all. If you master the air fryer technique, you will not yearn for charcoal.


Eating notes:

Eat them hot. Don't let them sit.

Most of the skins will come off effortlessly. But for stubborn patches, don't scrape. Just push your fingertip directly down hard on any lingering skin. It will crunch (like with the dish towel), wrinkle and detach, easy to flick off with another finger. For larger patches of stubborn skin, squeeze the nut between thumb and index finger, then flick off skin with your other hand.

Introducing "Year of Smoothies" (also: How I Learned to Cook)

Here's how I learned to cook.

I didn't want to be "educated". I didn't need to know how to blanch a rutabaga or prepare savory gelatins or make my own lasagna noodles or bake croissants or cut a turkey or roast a capon or whip up a hollandaise or chowder. I'm the only food lover who doesn't yearn to be a chef. I just wanted to cook healthy and delicious at home. That's all. Modest ambition. But really seriously delicious. Focused modest ambition!

I don't cook dishes with names. For dishes with names, I go out. At home, I might whip up something interesting with chicken breast, kasha and scallions. I improvise. But I wanted better results. I wanted control. I wanted touch.

I started with a Year of Panini, circa 2015. All year I cooked pretty much exclusively panini. And, no surprise, I got good at it. Because what makes you good is iterations. Lots of go-rounds. That's why restaurant cooking is so consistent; they've made that calamari 50,000 times, and it shows.

Not just iteration, though. You don't want to stand there with a pinched face and dangling cigarette pounding the food into submission, like scrubbing a toilet. You can't be rotely procedural. Instead, I played off of my perspective; my framing. Every time I have to make a decision, I picture myself eating the final result. Would I prefer this crunchier? Saltier? Would it miss some sort of oomph or other? Is this how I like it? How could I better serve my own taste? What might give me 100% satisfaction?

After a year of diligently making panini, I'd evolved certain habits - bundles of micro-tricks and nano-decisions. As mutations crept into the DNA of my panini-making, the successful ones endured. And that's how you build up deliciousness. Constant micro-revision, careful analysis, and sticking with what works amid oodles of iterations.

Why panini? I could get my mind around it. It felt familiar. And there's a safety net. Merely dropping a leftover chunk of chicken between two slices of decent bread and press-toasting would yield reasonably good results. The entry point (on my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating foods and other things) would be a "6". If I'd started out attempting to master stock or crêpes Suzette, vast terrains of awfulness would need to be evaded. Also: panini-making didn't intimidate me. It didn't feel fussy. I could stretch my mind around it. Nearing age 60, I've discovered the immense power of a comfortable entry point.

My panini eventually got great, and I followed with Year of Tacos. I'd sourced righteous nixtamal tortillas (which again propped me up at a "6" starting point). And, as with the panini, as I improved my prep of protein fillings and my artful use of spices, sauces, and condiments, I sneakily instilled broader cooking skills. I learned how to sauté a helluva chicken thigh, and mastered salmon-broiling and high-confidence omelets (instructions buried here). In the end, I discovered that tacos and panini are effectively identical: protein engulfed by starch. I already had a feel for that, thanks to panini, so I expanded into tacos from a position of confidence.

Then came Year of Pasta, another configuration of engulfing protein in starch. I applied what I'd learned. I started getting good faster. I was learning. And now, even if I'm not making panini or tacos or pasta, I can use that experience, so long as I don't try to preparae dishes with a name. Still no hollandaise!

I've been smoothie-curious for some time, but whenever I research blenders, I rediscover two truths:

1. Everything but a Vitamix absolutely sucks, regardless of how many of your friends rave over their Nutribullets or Ninjas. Dig deep into comments and reviews, and you'll find that they suck. They all just suck.

2. Vitamixes are super-expensive, super-bulky overkill.

Whenever my blender amnesia leads me to deep-dive this realm, the conclusion is identical: I really can't beat the $20 Cuisinart Smart Stick immersion blender I already own.

Note: recent versions of the Cuisinart Smart Stick immersion blender suck. For liability reasons, they've added a safety nanny switch at the other end of the stick, so you need to press the "on" button with one hand and the nanny switch with the other, giving no way to control the cup, which results in splurging explosions of milk and fruit. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe try to buy a "vintage" used Smart Stick on eBay predating this "innovation.” Or else just give up and bite the Nutribullet.

The notion that I had the magic shoes all along was too surprising to stick. So I'd snooze the idea for another 6 months and then launch back into blender research. I was caught in this loop for several years.

Finally I roused myself from my stupor and bought this steel cup for smoothie-making (it doubles for smoothie-drinking), and gave it a try, discovering that my immersion blender actually works better than a conventional blender for smoothies, because you don't need to stop to unclump. Immersion blending is a more active way of blending, so clumps unclump in situ.

The one drawback is that only an expensive conventional blender can really crush ice. But you don't want ice in your smoothie! As any beginning chef learns: water dilutes. It's the enemy! So I slice bananas onto wax paper, freeze them for a couple hours, then pop the slices into a sealed freezer bag. Those are my ice cubes. Any other sort of fruit will work the same way. And not every smoothie needs to be super cold. When I must resort to ice, I do the spoon trick, very lightly but persistently tapping upon each cube with a teaspoon until the vibrations shatter the cube. Walla.

My stone mortar and pestle is better/faster than any other method for grinding flax seeds. You don't want to buy/keep ground flax seed, it goes rancid super-easily (it probably did before you even bought it). Whole seeds are far more resilient, and can be ground, a teaspoon or two at a time, in 20 secs flat. You can grind lots of other stuff in mortar pestle faster/easier than in food processor (unless you'd doing large quantity). Low-tech, low-price really works best in this realm.

My first smoothie triumph is a bit of a work-in-progress:

1 pitted medjool date, chopped fine (Trader Joe's has these)
1 handful of raw unsalted pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds, also Trader Joe’s), lightly pre-ground in mortar and pestle
9 ounces Milkadamia unsweetened, non-vanilla macadamia milk, available at Shoprite or Whole Foods

The result was really thin (and not super-cold, since nothing was frozen), but smoothies don't always need to be milkshake thick or freezing cold. But the flavor. Oof, the flavor.

One problem: I found the limits of my immersion blender. It left a sediment of chewy date nuggets at the bottom of my stainless steel cup. But that was a problem only until I grabbed a spoon and ingested said nuggets amid dregs of the nutty medium, at which point I had no problems on god's green earth.

I have bought lucuma powder (low-glycemic butterscotchy natural sweetener) and dried mulberries and Venezuelan Gourmet Cocoa Powder as well as planet-killing plastic flexi-straws in preparation for this understaking. My flax seeds are organic whole goldens from Bob's Red Mill, bought at Stop-N-Shop.

Nutritious, Delicious 5 Minute Meal

This is a guaranteed "8" (out of 10 in my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating foods and other things from 1-10).

Directions are lengthy, but execution is easily completed in less than 5 minutes.

It's remarkably healthful and nutritionally well-balanced, and beefed up to be as filling as an entree. Perfect light supper after an ambitious lunch.

Trader Joe’s BBQ & Black Pepper Toscano Chopped Salad includes chopped green and red cabbages, shredded carrots, broccoli, and kale...plus three separate packages:

• Mini cornbread croutons
• Aged black pepper Toscano cheese
• Sweet - but not quite obnoxious - BBQ sweet onion dressing

TJ's says of the dressing that "its molasses notes pair exceptionally well with the flavor of the black pepper cheese, and the rest of the dressing profile (including mustard, white wine vinegar, onion, garlic, and chili powder) provides the finishing touch for this un-shy salad." Yeah, whatever. Sure it does.

We will disrespect the intention. Creativity requires disrespect. That's why many people feel "uncreative." They've been instilled with over respect. Clast those iconos!

Throw a steamer basket in covered pot with some hot water, heat on high.

Heat small skillet on medium, with a bit of olive oil.

Shuck one fresh ear of corn, dump in steamer, steam 5 mins.

Scramble two big eggs (or 3 medium), or use whites for maximal health. Add to skillet with salt and pepper.

Dump half the salad into large bowl. Add about 1 tablespoon of salad dressing (way less than half the packet), and mix with large spoon. That quantity of dressing will essentially disappear. That's fine.

When eggs begin to set, sprinkle a teaspoon of cheese (just a touch, to prevent egg from registering as bland; also make sure the egg is well-salted), distributing evenly. Flip omelet. Doesn't need to look pretty. I like the eggs soft for this application, but you can let it brown if you'd prefer.

Remove omelet from pan and chop fast/roughly into small pieces. Add to salad bowl.

Remove corn, holding ear lengthwise in salad bowl (stick a fork in the high end to hold it from). Remove kernals with a steak knife (or serrated bread or paring knife).

Mix like crazy.

Sprinkle the mini cornbread croutons (some toasted sesame or poppy seeds, too, if handy).

Drizzle with your most characterful extra virgin olive oil.

Walla.

LEFFtovers: Oniony Ravioli

Fridge contents

6 Trader Joe's Beef Bolognese Ravioli
Half an onion
Straggly few fancy salad greens
Ecuadorian hot sauce

"What's with all the Ecuadorian hot sauce?" you might understandably wonder. There's an Ecuadoran rotissierie joint near me I hit once per week, and always ask for extra sauce. So there are always some small containers in my fridge. Ecuadoran hot sauce is creamy, like Peruvian ají, but more vegetal. It combines well, and I'm always looking for excuses to use it up.

I wanted to do this but had no tomatos.

So I roughly chopped the onion, and sautéd with lots of black pepper. Near the end, I added the greens atop, letting them wilt. Meanwhile I briefly re-boiled the ravioli to reheat them, drained the pot, splashed the hot sauce in the pot, then added the ravioli/onion/greens, stirring violently for a few seconds.

LEFFtovers: Breakfast Hash

Please please touch to expand.
I sautéed onions, then added cut-up chunks of leftover gyro meat and cut-up French fry chunks, and served over an egg white omelet.

Small touches count (understatement of the century):

• I did not salt the onions because the gyro is salty. And I under-salted the egg.
• Those tomatoes were small, so I could have served them whole. But when I envisioned myself eating them, I realized I'd be happier if they were quartered. Cooks can go very far by pampering their predilections.
• I had a vision in my head of really crunchy/chewy gyro meat, almost like Issan jerky. I also wanted to fully crisp up those fat steak fries, which were mushy from overnighting in the fridge. So I timed it appropriately (the more I make everything like toast - i.e. subjected to micro-concern via vast attentive patience - the more delicious my food turns out).

LEFFtovers: Scallop Thing

Particularly intricate LEFFtover treatment.

Raw materials in fridge:

Less than a full serving of Guatemalan take-out seafood soup
Small amount of leftover soba noodles
Small amount of basmati rice
Sautéed asparagus
Tiny takeout container of Ecuadoran hot sauce
Four raw scallops

Heat seafood soup. When bubbling, stir in soba noodles AND rice. Kill heat.

Sautee scallops with garlic in olive oil, cook 2-3 mins per side.

Upon flipping scallops, add asparagus to pan to reheat. Quarter the scallops after cooking.

Add noodle/rice mixture to a bowl. Top with asparagus. Top with scallops. Top with garlic. Dab each scallop segment with hot sauce. Walla.

Faith Cooking

This took seven minutes to cook, and was a near-10 (on my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating stuff). Please click to enlarge (as-is, it's a bit too small for full impact).


Sometimes cooking is about restraint and faith rather than technique or effort. A "letting" rather than a "doing". You can pull off a magic trick if you tighly harness your clear-minded, emotionally-engaged sense of taste (i.e. how you like it; how you'd like it to be) to your actions. If you make that connection, you don't need to do much.

Don't think about cooking. Think about eating, and let this framing fuel your myriad micro-decisions. "How will it look and taste?" Keep your attention firmly there, and don't let up for a moment. You can make it exist if you hold close and care enough. It's harder to do with a lamb stew requiring 30 ingredients and 75 steps. But simplicity, like this, is easier. And also harder.

Simplicity is easier because you don't need to worry much. You don't need to divide your attention or sustain your vision through time and travails. You can do the whole thing essentially in one single swoop (no one's ever driven to Boston, but this is a quick drive to the corner store). It's harder because there's no safety net; no complexity to hide behind; no formula to carry you. You are raw; naked; vulnerable. Just you and your decisions, revealing the commitment/faith/love (or lack of same) behind them.

The recipe below is like a joke. As with Von's Magical Cookies, you won't get special results from brutishly following these handful of "duh" steps. There's no magic to be found here, but I already told you the trick. It's up to you to commit.


Bring water to boil, then boil five Trader Joe's Beef Bolognese Ravioli for five minutes.

Slice three compari tomatoes and sautee briefly/lightly/gently in nonstick pan with a handful of baby spinach, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Don't cook it into a mush. Think about how you'd like it to be, and stop cooking the instant that point arrives; like clicking a camera button (remember how I suggested making toast!). The more you apply deep emotional micro-vigilance, the better your cooking - and everything else - will get!

Grate a bit of parmesano into the tomato mixture, still in the pan. Don't make it a Nebraska Sprinkle. Don't stir. Add another couple teaspoons olive oil plus some chili flakes to the mixture. And a tablespoon of cooking water. Stir very slightly. Do very little.

Drain ravioli. Cut each sloppily (I opt for deliberately sloppy - even raggedy - cuts about 75% of the time in my cooking) in half, and toss in a serving bowl with tomato mixture. Don't over-mix. Cease and desist the instant it looks like something you'd kill to eat. I just buried the lede again.

Serve.


Again: that recipe absolutely won't yield this result. As they say in jazz, learn it, practice it, then forget it. Make it a fluent swoop - a single drive to Boston - never losing track of end result. Align your myriad micro decisions around your vision of how you like it. Not in the big cartoon view ("See how diligent I am!"), but in the micro. Deep into the micro! Take responsibility for your actions! :)

The Life Cycle of Moroccan Lefftovers

I've had more experience with leftovers than you have. The only other statement I can make confidently about me and you is that I've eaten in more restaurants than you have. And the two are not unrelated.

When I was working as a food writer, my fridge was always full of greasy little bags. I was the "Mikey" of the food writing world - the guy they gave impossible, crushing, stupid assignments to. Newsday had me survey restaurants under the 7 train in Queens, and create an overview of all the best Puerto Rican restaurants in NYC. Time Out NY had me track down the best examples in the five boroughs of two dozen cuisines. My first book attempted to find 150 splendid "virgin" restaurants no one had previously written about (I cheated and threw in a few evergreens where conventional wisdom needed adjustment).

When you're fact checking 150 restaurants - or raking through the boroughs for Puerto Rican food - you're not eating every bite. Usually it's a single bite or two, and you bring home the rest. Circumstances forced me to became an accomplished and creative leftover reheater long before I learned to cook. In fact, my cooking could be viewed as an extension of my reheating.

The following shows the life cycle of a few copious foods I had in my fridge for a week. File it under Lefftovers.

Those are two containers of stewed vegetables on the left, three containers of mesmerizingly fluffy and massaged couscous on the right, and a potently concentrated container of short ribs in gravy.

Just for kicks, a kitchen background tour:

• 1: Big version of my bagel plates
• 2: Flour for a cracker-making project
• 3: Semolina (for cracker-making project)
• 4: Podiatric metatarsal pads
• 5: Tomatoes "on the vine"
• 6: Domaine Désiré Petit - Arbois-Pupillin
• 7: Trader Joe's white grits.
• 8: Dried flowers to give the place a perky touch
• 9: Magic mushroom folk sculpture from a hilltop village in Oaxaca
• 10: Rubbing alcohol
• 11: Trader Joe's Chili Onion Crunch (my brain's on a permanent loop of believing I've run out. This is like my 73rd jar).
• 12: Newsylum "Counting the Days" IPA, from historic Newtown CT by John Watson, the former homebrewer I wrote about here (search the page for "beer")
• 13: Evil Twin "Harlan's Even More Jesus" beer
• 14: Evil Twin "Even More Jesus" beer
• 15: Black Diamond Cider "Porter's Pommeau"
• 16: Trader Joe's "Taste of Vermont" maple syrup assortment
• 17: Dried fenugreek for cracker-making project
• 18: Zozirushi "fuzzy logic" rice cooker (has more computer power than Apollo 11. Me and Bob(TM) at one point considered using it to serve Chowhound. Currently inoperable, I'm stumped as to how to proceed).
• 19: The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré
• 20: Autographed copy of "Sizzle and Drizzle" by Nancy Birtwhistle
• 21: Instant Pot. Bought five years ago, never used.
• 22: Mortar and pestle
• 23: Rolling pin for the cracker-making project
• 24: Sample bottles of bourbon from a tasting 6 years ago.
• 25: Maggi Seasoning ("improves the taste"). Note that this has been moved off my kitchen table since March, 2019.
• 26: Big bag of spices from Penzey's for the cracker-making project
• 27: Kayanoya Original Dashi Stock Powder
• 28: Harry & David Pepper/Onion Relish
• 29: Harry & David Contry Cranberry Relish
• 30: Quite possibly the last surviving box of original-recipe Cope's Dried Sweet Corn on the planet
• 31: Empty bottle of Chimay Anniversary Ale
• 32: Maker's Mark (no, I'm NOT an alcoholic. Alcoholics don't have this stuff lying around. They drink it all up.)
• 33: Vast pile of Chinese pu-erh tea
• 34: Lots of cereal boxes, because I'm a grown-up and can have as much cereal as I want

Here it is in its full plated succulence:

There is a story about how I came to possess this blessed Moroccan wonderment. But I will not share that story today.

So here's the bite-for-bite:

Day two was a clone of Day one. Meat was finished.

Day three, I still had a little couscous and a bunch of vegetables. I broiled some salmon and topped the bowl with chunks of it. One of my nutrition axioms is that there must always be protein:

Day four, I realized I'd fail to properly dredge the vegetable containers, so heavier chunks were disproportionally left over. I served them over soba noodles:

...and topped it with leftover broiled salmon reheated with some onions I sautéd, and sprinkled with chili flakes:

Day five, breakfast. All I had was a precious small container of meat gravy (not vegetable broth). I heated it in a pan with leftover soba noodles, murasaka sweet potato, and chopped pea shoots, then served over an egg white omelet jazzed up with Trader Joe's Italian soffritto seasoning:

Thanks to the legendary Phil Simpson of PMS Graphics for assistance with the kitchen tour.

LEFFtovers: Pork Rib Hash

The key to hash is counterintuitive: don't futz much with the components. You'd imagine lots of chopping, scraping, combining, tossing, and flipping. But that just results in a granular mash, not a hash. For hash, do very little. In fact, touch it as little as you can. Also: always work from leftovers. This is meta-cooking, not cooking.

Here's what I did:

Roughly chop onion, drop in olive oil/salt/pepper and leave it alone until brown on bottom.

Once brown, flip and lightly mix in leftover latino deli pork rib meat that's been roughly torn off the bone with fingers (hands beat knives for hash). Reduce heat to low medium. Some rice and a couple of black beans were clinging to the ribs, and were happily thrown in.

Remove skins from leftover baked small Murasaki sweet potatoes (from Trader Joe's), smash flat with a palm in a plate, then transfer with spatula to smother onion/rib mixture.

I know it sounds really layery (and looks like that at first), but have faith.

Cook for a couple minutes, then flip 1/4 of the pan at a time, mostly to keep the bottom stuff from burning. As you do so, ingredients will unavoidably combine.

Once flipped, cook another minute or two (cusp burning is not only ok but optimal), transfer to plate (more unavoidable combining), simply piling it on. Don't get arty. Trust the process.

Serve with hot sauce alongside or squirted atop.

Note: no stirring happened at all. Just one flip of onions and one flip of all ingredients and that's it. So how did it hash up? If it seems like magic, just consider what would have happened if you were trying NOT TO.

Yup! Hash!

Another note: maybe 1 TBS oil, period. The meat's greasy enough. Sure, if I added a half stick of butter it'd have had that cheap straight-to-the-amygdala brain zonk quality (the gourmand's roofie), but I don't pull cheap tricks, I work for my deliciousness. Plus I try to eat healthy at home.

Room for improvement: in close-up photo, you can see that the meat hasn't browned into frizzy crunch. My timing still needs work. Maybe I should have added meat when I first started the onions (or even earlier, cooked low and slow for a while on dry nonstick). And maybe roughed up the meat a bit more with my fingers. More fat would get me there more easily, but, like I said, I work for my deliciousness.

Pandemic Sauce Spaghetti

I mentioned this video on Facebook but I just realized I forgot to slog about it:



Friend-of-the-Slog Paul Trapani created this "Pandemic Sauce" video to serve a very specific need: his friends were complaining last spring about how supermarkets were all out of spaghetti sauce due to pandemic hoarding.

As a Sicilian, this drove Paul a little batty, because tomato sauce is so easy to make yourself. So as a health emergency public service, he offered this video to show people how easy it is.

Of course, 90% of the value is in the bad things Paul staunchly does NOT do. Avoiding mistakes is the little-examined dark matter in a world where everyone pursues Slick Moves ($300 copper pots! The entire inventory of Williams Sonoma! Etc.!) rather than the expungement of Dumb Blunders. Nobody wants to expunge blunders because that would make them feel like blunderers. Once again, humans would rather feel smart than be smart, and feeling smart requires ignoring, at all costs, your stupidity.

Paul admirably sidestepped the expected Italian logic outcome where in trying to demonstrate an easy thing, loads of unnecessary complexity get piled on because only a stronzo would take a basic approach.

This is the most stripped-down sauce imaginable. And, if you do it right, it's good - while supermarket sauce is very very not good. There is something to be said for easy step-ups.

I've made spaghetti sauces an order of magnitude or two more ambitious. They took much time and fuss, and, honestly, were well worth it, because the end results were far more refined and nuanced. But, despite what snobs say, "refined and nuanced" isn't superior. Simplicity absolutely has its uses. I'd much prefer an excellent simple sauce to a pretty good refined one. In fact, I wouldn't necessarily prefer an excellent refined one to an excellent simple one. It depends on the context, and what I'm in the mood for. Every snobbish heirarchy stems from misconstruing delightful horizontal options as vertical heirarchies.

Anyway, here's my latest effort (it's way better if you click to expand the photo):

Having made a slew of Paul's pandemic sauce, I'm beginning to inject small iterative tweaks:

1. I simplified the procedure still more by crushing tomatoes (with the potato masher!) right in the pot with the garlic. That's one less bowl to wash!

2. For the first time, I added ground parmesan cheese.

I'm not a fan of the Nebraska Sprinkle - the shaggy white mound atop the sauce atop the spaghetti that screams "That's Italian!!!" to gringos. Cheese, like secret agents, does its best work quietly burrowed deep inside the enterprise. So I grated up a half cup, and, after draining the spaghetti, I returned the pasta to its cooking pot and savagely stirred in the cheese, as if I were making a cacio e pepe, along with a whole bunch of grated black pepper (I've been experimenting with potent Tellicherry Indian black peppercorns, and while there are a lot of contexts - e.g. in combination with onions - where I still rely on The Seasoning of My People - 10-year old Durkees pepper stored over-the-stove - I'm digging this stuff for pasta). Then, after the violent alloying of pasta, cheese, and pepper into a new Higher Substance, I delicately, oh-so-lightly, stirred in (still in the cooking pot) pandemic sauce. I didn't spoon it atop plated pasta because I don't like the inevitable uncoated strands from the watery borderlands, but I didn't over-stir because I also dislike the school lunchroom effect where sauce has been completely worked-in, leaving the pasta ketchup-red and every bite offering the same sauce-to-pasta ratio.

I offered this cooking tip on Twitter last week:

Every time you cook something, criticize it like it’s a restaurant. And next time, make tiny adjustments to ensure it comes closer to your pref. Think Grand Canyon: macro progress via cumulative myriad micro-iterations.

...and that's exactly what the above moves were about. I don't like the Nebraska Sprinkle or Lunchroom Effect Saucing. And it's my kitchen and my pasta, so I'm absolutely free to coddle my preferences. You can get very far as a cook by simply making your preferences conscious and gradually but persistently aiming to coddle them...even if your efforts are blindly feeble (with sufficient iterations, anything's possible, so long as you never stop trying).

3. I used really fancy expensive spaghetti (Rustichella, which is produced painstakingly in some bronze thingee or whatever).

Why? Look, I've had a slight aversion to choosing spaghetti as a pasta shape to cook for various reasons. I'm now all-in, so I'm helping myself over the hump via The Best I Can Buy. It's inevitable that I'll downshift to De Cecco. But for now, I up-pay for the psychological support.

Chicken Pasta With Angry Onions

Rotisserie chicken (hand-picked and chopped)
Roughly chopped onion
Sliced garlic
Parmesano
Trader Joe's gigli pasta
I added some leftover chopped broccolini after shooting the picture (a guy's got to nutrify)


This is more complicated than it seems.

My previously posted salmon pasta used very gently-cooked onions. In fact, I wrote a whole followup about the proper mindset for gently cooking onions.

This time, I flipped that (in case you haven't noticed, I'm a one-trick-pony. Flipping = reframing, and that's what I do. I've been flipping profitably ever since I stumbled upon the move in college while pondering the odd artifact - an iron - my mom had packed for me).

This time I cooked the onions harshly. I was a real bastard. Medium high heat, hardly any stirring, lots of sizzle. I let them brown nearly to burntness, and there was nothing gentle about it. I wanted them a little dry and a little crunchy and plenty sharp and angry.

The garlic, by contrast, was pampered low and slow, bringing out the sweetness. I used more grated parm than usual, figuring it would bridge the harsh onions to the mellow garlic. It worked.

I added the chopped chicken to the onion/garlic pan, raising heat and stirring madly for just long enough to warm it up. Then I stirred the mixture madly into the pasta along with parm and more olive oil (the latter injects a fresher flavor when it's added at the end, without heating much).

The result was just a bit dry (which is why the photo seems slightly flat). I'd forgotten to add pasta water for finishing sheen (and salt). The struggle continues.


Making of:

Salmon Pasta

I've made several dozen versions of this basic dish over the past few months. Cooking's all about iteration. Forget the recipe, forget technique, forget ingredient quality. Those vaunted X factors are dwarfed by the magical power of iteration; fine-tuning your moves (and, even more importantly, your micro-moves). The easy informality of it all, combined with absolutely full attention and deep caring, is the trick.

My guiding principle is to be as lazy as I can get away with. Not because I'm lazy, but because I want to focus, and if I'm navigating a fraught obstacle course where every single task is a demanding stressor, my attention gets diluted and I find myself acting more like a harried project manager than a deeply attentive artisan. I know where to invest my care. That's one thing the iterations show you (of course, you need to carefully analyze your results, or else the iterations won't improve on each other).

The caring part has to be way more extreme than you'd ever imagine. That's why you're lazy; to clear space for excessive caring. Not a cinematic display of furrowed brow where you tell yourself stories about your own diligence. Don't pose, but really do it. Lose yourself in it. Cook like you're saving a life.

See the religious tract I once posted about the devotional level necessary for producing a properly toasted and buttered bagel.

Ok, here goes.

Have some leftover salmon that was broiled first flesh side up and then skin side up until the skin nearly burnt. The skin won't remain crispy in the fridge, but you'll be rejuvenating it.

Heat water in a pot (use minimal water so it becomes starchy and thick and useful for adding later to make final results glisten).

Roughly chop a small onion and sauté in minimal oil. Cook it (seasoned with salt/pepper) about two notches cooler and twice as long as you ordinarily would. "Gentle" is your mantra. Stir infrequently (laziness!).

When you start the pasta, add thinly-sliced garlic to the onions (if the pan's actively sizzling, you'll brown or burn the garlic, so be sure the heat's tame before you add).

Roughly chop salmon and place atop the onion/garlic mixture. You don't want to use a ton of salmon. One full handful, roughly chopped, is sufficient per person. Don't do the ugly American move of deeming your protein the equivalent of a steak dinner. Be poor tonight.

Cut the salmon skin into small strips with paring knife, and add to sauté pan, keeping it separate from the other items.

Slice some tomatoes (I used Camparis) and place above the salmon which sits atop the onion/garlic. You don't want to cook the tomatoes to mushiness.

Drain pasta, saving water.

Hastily sauté a handful of spinach per serving in a little too much olive oil in the pasta pot (excess oil will help compose the sauce).

Critical checks before proceeding:
Salmon skin must be dry and crisp - almost starting to curl up.
Onions and garlic must be soft and golden.
Tomatoes must be relaxed but not gooey.
Spinach must be limp but still deeply green.

Remove salmon skin from pan, and keep handy on a plate.

Mix salmon, onions, and garlic.

The following should take about 30 seconds:

Add cooked pasta to pot with spinach, hoist the pot with one hand and stir aggressively and disrespectfully with the other hand, using a wooden or bamboo spoon or spatula.

Add a dab of cooking water.

Add salmon/onions/garlic/tomato (don't stop stirring!).

Add a dab of cooking water.

Stir in some seasoning (I used leftover Ecuadorian creamy hot sauce from a previous day's takeout, but sky's the limit: chili flakes, za'atar, any fresh herbs, etc.).

Add a dab of cooking water.

Add some grated Parmesan (not too much; this needs to be subliminal; cheese is great with salmon, but you don't want to flaunt the broken taboo).

Keep stirring violently until it looks like something you'd be eager to eat.

Transfer to plate.

If you're using lengthy pasta (linguini, spaghetti, etc), use tongs and give the mound a twist as you plate it. Carefully study 2'29" in this classic short video for spaghetti limone, where Frank Prisinzano makes that move look way too easy.

Arrange salmon skin atop.

Walla.


Read this followup posting more closely explaining about the onions.

Corn and Egg Panini

Carefully cut a savory Hispanic "pan" (bread) in half with a serrated bread knife.

If you're mystified by the non-sweet end of the Hispanic "pan" spectrum, the panini treatment is your first step to enlightenment. Savory breads are either crumbly (which works great in panini), or eggy, which works great in panini. This one was more crumbly (with added cheese). I got it from the best hispanic bread bakery in the Tristate Area, Sabor Ambateño (which has branches in Peekskill, Ossining, Elizabeth, and, Jesus, I see they just opened in Danbury (they're everywhere all of a sudden). They do highly regional breads from the part of Ecuador most local immigrants aren't from, always with a great selection and friendly service. Sweet stuff is hit or miss (though they play up their intricate cakes...see the Ossining branch's Instagram account).

Trader Joe's Chili Onion Crunch is my current go-to agent of je ne sai qua. I smeared it sparingly on one side of the bread. You could butter the other side, or drizzle good olive oil on it. I'm too austere for that.

I steamed an ear of corn and cut off the kernels (serrated knife!) and arranged them on the bread.

I flopped over over an egg white omelet, heavy on the black pepper, and added some split grape tomatoes.

I press/toasted in my panini machine.

....and cut.

Awesome!

Note that the cutting step is essential. Home chefs sometimes ignore it. It's a mistake, especially with panini. The cutting changes everything. I use one of these KAI Ultimate Utility Sandwich Knives, which Williams Sonoma has been trying to unload for months now. At a crazy-low $10, it's a steal and I highly recommend it (great for splitting bagels, btw).

This was my latest kooky pandemic cooking experiment (see also Unnameable Breakfast).

Unnameable Breakfast

I don't even know what to call this. It's a breakfast bowl that built itself via unconscious direction.

I entered my kitchen.

I poured some yogurt into a bowl.

I added blueberries and banana slices.

I plopped in a couple tablespoons of chunky/crunchy raw almond butter.

I stirred lightly - to swirl, not mix.

I toasted, intentionally nearly burnt, some leftover fluffy whole wheat pita, ripped it into tatters, and threw them on top.

Good.

Poultry Victory

I've finally figured out chicken (sometimes I'm very, very slow, but one of my secret tricks is to keep plying away, ant-like, even in - especially in! - realms where I'm hopeless. That's why I'm a writer even though I'm aphasic).

The trick: low heat and long cooking time. Also, I added a bit more olive oil to the pan than usual. I need to eat low-fat (and enjoy the creative challenge of devising delicious workarounds), but some things can be a little less low fat than others. So for twice this quantity of chicken, I used a tablespoon rather than my usual teaspoon. Not exactly a deep fry.

Here's how I produced this weird-looking plate:

Chicken
Crush a few garlic cloves and very briefly sauté them at medium low temperature (mostly to flavor the oil).
Lay unfurled boneless/skinless chicken thighs atop crushed garlic cloves, rough side down.
Sprinkle with ground coriander, Smoked Spanish Paprika, Aleppo Pepper, and salt and pepper.
Cook on medium, just barely sizzling. Don't touch anything.
Flip when brown and shrunken (and pull out and set aside garlic cloves).
Note: I never needed to scrape chicken thighs to flip them before. A good development!
Requires only minor cooking time on other side (just as well; you don't want the smoother surface to get tough/dry/browned).
Remove thighs, add chicken broth or wine to pan, reduce while stirring, pour over final result at the end.

Baby Bok Choy
Cooked American style, not Asian! This 'Merica, dude!
Cut bulbous bottom off each baby bok choy
Cut roughly in 1" thick slices, vertically
Lots of water baths to remove dirt
Shake dry then blot dry with paper towel
Season with Aleppo Pepper and salt
Sautee with olive oil in post-chicken pan until well-shrunken and tired looking.

HMart's Five Grain Rice (pre-cooked)
Heat cast iron pan or griddle to high.
Add rice mixture to pan (no oil necessary if pan is properly seasoned), crushing it down with heel of hand
When it starts sputtering like popcorn, remove and serve.
Note: any leftover rice or rice dish would work.

Smoked Chicken Pasta

My Year of Pasta continues. This follows my Year of Tacos, which, in turn, succeeded my Year of Panini. 

I undertake these obsessive cooking binges for a few reasons:

1. I find that I can't cook anything really deliciously until I've worked the category many many times, experimenting with permutations. What can I say; I'm a devotee of John Thorne.

2. I've told this story before: my Dad was a sculptor who dreamed of painting, but felt overwhelmed by color. He had a brainstorm: he'd paint only with prime colors, taking the issue entirely off the table. It was a brilliant idea that I've tried to emulate. So when I felt overwhelmed by the idea of learning to cook (having no interest in souffles or dug-out potatoes or hollandaise sauce), I decided to take most of it off the table. To this day, I can't make roasts or soup or a conventional omelette, and I haven't fried (much less deep-fried) in many years. But what I do make is hyper-delicious.

3. In order to satisfy dish cravings, I go out. When I cook at home, it's strictly about healthy eating, comfort, and whim indulgence. So I don't require versatility, I just need to be really good at making the sort of thing I like to cook and eat. And who doesn't like to eat panini, tacos, and pasta?


Ok! Smoked chicken pasta!

Note:
I don't believe in precise recipe quantities. Like "Door Open" buttons on elevators, they're fake-outs, installed solely to let people vent their anxieties. Use your taste! More or less of something will make the result different, not worse (and your result will unavoidably be different from mine, anyway, due to thousands of micro-decisions you'll make differently). Precise recipes are for people with no commitment to sustained iteration (first efforts are like first-batch pancakes).


Ingredients:
Leftover sauceless smoked chicken. Leftover is fine, and the smokier the better (this place in Dutchess County will sell you a whole cold smoked bird that works optimally)
Pasta (enough for two)
1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 small tomato, 3 "cocktail" sized tomatoes or 6 grape tomatoes.
Baby spinach
Parmesan cheese
Extra virgin olive oil
Leftover barbecue sauce (optional)


Directions:
Boil pasta in enough salted water to cover plus 2 or 3 inches (i.e. much less water than most people use).

Pull chicken meat off bones with your fingers, then chop.

Chop onion and finely-slice garlic cloves.

Grate a small amount of parmesan cheese (mostly for umami; you don't want a cheesy effect).

Thinly slice tomato (easiest with a serrated paring knife or steak knife).

Sautee onion on medium heat with a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil, and season with salt and pepper.

Once onions soften, add tomato and garlic. Stir frequently for a minute.

Add chicken. Stir thoroughly then cover. When sizzling resumes, reduce heat a bit and let sit for 2-3 minutes (until hot on bottom and warm on top).

Stir chicken mixture, then cover until heated through (monitor carefully to avoid overdoing it).

Drain pasta when al dente, conserving a few tablespoons of cooking water (which will be thick because you used less of it).

Return pasta to pot, turn heat up to medium, generously drizzle in extra virgin olive oil, dump in cheese and a generous handful of baby spinach. Stir violently in wide churning circles with wooden spoon or spatula until spinach is soft. Turn off heat, add chicken mixture, stirring violently, adding several small splashes (maybe 2 tsp at a time) of pasta water as you go (this is what adds the shimmer to the pasta you see in the photo).

Assuming the chicken came with barbecue sauce, and assuming it's good quality, stir a tablespoon in when you add the chicken mixture. Don't overdo it; you don't want a sweet pungent clobber. This is just to help unite disparate flavors. If you don't have decent barbecue sauce, skip it.

Reheating Frozen Leftover Pizza

This will not restore leftover frozen pizza to the way it tasted while fresh....

My first rule of leftovers (I'm very very good with leftovers; as a food critic, I've had to cope with a fridge perennially full of greasy brown paper bags) is: don't try to recreate the original meal. Just find some way to make it delicious. If you aim to recreate the original meal, you will 1. fail, and 2. work within a low ceiling of possible quality, which is why everyone normally hates leftovers. I view leftovers as mere fodder to be disrespectfully repurposed, retrofitted, and recycled rather than resurrected.

...but it will result in something tasty and worth eating.

I assume you've wrapped the frozen slices individually in tight aluminum foil. If that's not true, improve your procedure, fast forward, then proceed.

Open the foil to expose the top surface of the slice. Place it directly on the rack your toaster oven at 350 degrees (preheating's unnecessary). Check frequently after four minutes. When the cheese begins to just barely loosen (not warm but not fully frozen), heat a cast iron skillet or griddle on medium. A couple minutes later, transfer slice (still encased in foil, which should now be lightly re-closed) from the toaster oven to the skillet/griddle. After three minutes, watch carefully, as the crust can suddenly burn right through the aluminum (I'd suggest, btw, using thick heavy-duty aluminum, which also offers better freezer protection).

When the kitchen smells like pizza, and the crust's underside is beginning to pick up some additional color (perhaps there are minor dark (not black) patches appearing; that's ok...again, we're not recreating the original experience), serve. Note that while crust will be hot, the cheese will be pleasantly warm, not hot. If you want the whole thing raging hot, you'll be forced to eat a dried-out cracker with unpleasantly molten twice-cooked cheese. Ick.

If the slice has significant toppings, and they're not quite warm, open up the top foil and pop the slice back into toaster oven at high temperature (broil, if possible) for just a short time...and watch it like a hawk. Do not wait till cheese bubbles or top crust begins to brown! That's much too late! This isn’t like the original baking of the pizza (again: don’t try to recreate).


Further Reading:
A Toasted Bagel Tutorial and Manifesto

A Toasted Bagel Tutorial and Manifesto

This starts off about bagels, then blears without warning into something more broadly about toast. I was going to re-jigger it for consistency, but I really want to say both things, and it's my party, so I'll blear if I want to.


TOASTING
Every toaster has a hotter side, and the brown part of the bagel must face that side. You want the brown side thoroughly caramelized, its blisters well-crisped. The cut side is a more delicate matter. There is an extremely brief window where a wide diversity of toasty coloration and texture can exist. The outer rim has just begun to display a dark golden brown hue while virginal white wheaten patches still punctuate a fast-widening golden landscape. Wait another second, and the entire surface will be browned, dry, monotonous. Pull a second too early, and there'll be little crunch or resistance (#resistance).

To zero in on that vanishing moment requires high-level attention-paying. As I wrote last year:

I've made toasting a spiritual practice, honing my tolerances to milliseconds, aiming to extract the bread at its peak. That's working out quite well, but it's just a matter of vigilance and commitment - of wanting it (watching me peer expectantly into my toaster oven, you'd think I was slicing atoms).

BUTTERING
You must commence buttering immediately, and work swiftly. You can't pause for an instant, because the surface is rapidly cooling and drying - i.e. becoming less absorbent. Soon, your buttering knife will kick up micro-powder from the desiccated surface (if you hear that awful scraping sound, you're too late), and the powder will settle back down and absorb the butter. Greasy grit. Awful.

You must strive for very thin yet very thorough coverage. Know that there's a theoretical limit to buttering thoroughness. One can never completely cover the surface without using huge quantities of butter. So one must triage. Darker ridges are the highest priority. Being more caramelized, they're more flavorful, so non-butteriness will stick out more than with butterless gaps in milder, breadier portions.

There must be no pooling of butter. I understand the French aesthetic of bread-and-butter (i.e. tons of the latter), but a bagel - a homely, sturdy carb bomb - is no sophisticated Frenchie delight. A bagel is earthy, and whether you're a Hispanic Indian pounding out tortillas or a Japanese crunching through the rooty delights of kinpira, earthiness is something to connect with directly, and not to defile with reckless gussying-up.

Also: this is toast. Fresh bread can receive infinite butter while remaining bread, but toast absorbs, and no one wants to suck saturated pockets of liquid butter from their toast. Yuck.

This is more or less where it becomes about toast, generally. Hey, happy holidays, everyone! Be careful out there, and don't forget to tip your waiters! Ok, I'll let you get back to it...

The butter's nothing more than a necessary compromise to mitigate what would otherwise be unendurable blandness. So paint with your knife, rather than smear. Butter quickly, yet thinly, yet thoroughly, a devilishly tricky goal. In my fifth decade of effort, it still doesn't come easily. It requires inhuman commitment.


TIMING
If your first bite comes more than 10 seconds post-buttering, you've committed an atrocity. That hard-won diversified landscape of toasty texture is quickly stiffening into the inevitable end state of hard, dry unity; what industry types call "bagel rigor mortis". The clock's ticking, so you'd best be chewing.

If your ideal breakfast is to leisurely work on a crossword puzzle with periodic interruptions for a bite of toast and a slurp of coffee, for god's sake, find some other bready vehicle. Toast must be eaten not calmly, like a croissant, but eagerly, like xiaolongbao.


YOU'RE NOT RIGHT
I realize much of this contradicts widespread beloved life habits. But people acclimatize themselves to hideous culinary results all the time. The average American is perfectly fine with roaringly rancid nuts (e.g. 75% of the nuts in packaged foods like breakfast cereal or granola), and see no problem at all with "skunked" beer, where light's interacted with the hops through clear or green glass bottles to conjure up horribleness. We accept awful tastes out of habit, and toast is among the most grievous victims.

If you enjoy crap like Taco Bell, bless your heart. It won't taste any better if you're diligent, so scarf freely. Botched toast, however, is a crime, and a waste, because toast can be great.


SACRAMENTAL RELICS
Ok, cue the singing angels (and click, please, for full porn):

...and no, you can not have my bagel plates when I die. They will be shattered and buried, because I have looked long and hard but found no one worthy of the mantle.

Fantastic Breadless Stuffing

Big discovery. This is the best stuffing I've ever had, it's super easy to make, and it doesn't use any bread (I will not use the "g" word). Low fat, to boot.

Any time I post a photo of a meager food portion, that's a good sign. It means I tore into it like a hunger-crazed wolverine before calming down sufficiently to think of shooting a picture.

Heat nonstick pan to medium, spreading olive oil thinly but thoroughly (e.g. with a paper towel). Sprinkle salt and more black pepper than you imagine you need in the pan.

Coarsely chop a medium onion and spread it out in the pan. Cook a minute or two.

Finely chop a few red Swiss chard stems (green works, though is less festive-looking), add to onions.

Skin and use a fork to hastily/coarsely mash a large leftover baked sweet potato (I prefer Murasakis, the purple-skinned Japanese ones, seasonally available at Trader Joe's). When onions and stems are soft, lay mashed sweet potato over vegetables. Add a small splash of water or apple cider (especially good: cider sediment and/or cider that's slightly spoiled) to pan surface (i.e. not directly onto vegetables) and immediately cover tightly (if liquid doesn't immediately sizzle, increase heat).

When liquid stops sizzling, stir violently with spatula, add another splash and cover again.

Season with cumin and chili pepper flakes. Stir again (optionally drizzling some olive oil atop before final stir), and monitor closely, removing from heat once onions are nicely brown. Timing is tricky. Sweet potatoes burn easily, so it's better to forgo fully-browned onions rather than risk burning the sweet potatoes.

Oniony Chicken Fajita Tacos

Definitely click the photo; it's much better enlarged.

Ten minute recipe, produces a sure-fire (and genuine!) "8":

You'll need:

Leftover chicken
Onion
Tomato (I used Compari)
Pea shoots or baby spinach
Hummus
Corn tortillas (I used these courtesy of this)

Preheat cast iron skillet (a small one if you've got one) to medium-high.

Coarsely chop some onion

Coarsely dice some leftover chicken

Coarsely dice a couple of Compari tomatoes

Pour and spread a tablespoon of olive oil in pan

Add onions, shake pan to settle into a single layer, generously sprinkle with salt and pepper and leave alone.

When onions barely begin to brown on bottom, pile chicken atop in a single layer and leave alone.

When onions are quite brown on the bottom, stir/scrape chicken/onion mixture.

Add a generous handful of pea shoots (baby spinach will also work), continue stirring.

Season with hot sauce or chili flakes.

Once the chicken mixture glistens, the greens are wilted, and the kitchen's filled with aroma, transfer to a bowl.

Wipe out pan with paper towel, add two quality corn tortillas (no oil).

Warm tortillas, flipping frequently with your fingers until soft (it doesn't matter if the tortillas overlap a bit in the pan).

Spread tortillas lightly with quality hummus and top with tomatoes and chicken mixture. Eat immediately.


Note: some chopped coriander added at the end (or briefly marinated with the tomato in some vinegar) would have been even better.

Another note: there's nothing more satisfying than turning blah provisions into something delicious without any highly-involved trickery. Regardless of how miserable your leftover chicken seems, or how simple this recipe appears (there's literally nothing novel or interesting about it), it's like a magic trick. Try it and see!