Being in my 30s — and not being a native of Louisiana — my first exposure to Justin Wilson was from a Ruffles commercial in the mid-1980s. For better or worse, that was also the first time that I’d ever heard the Cajun dialect, a quirky easygoing patois that now has many associations for me, having lived and cooked in New Orleans since then. During the same few years that Wilson was landing these national ad campaigns, his Louisiana-based cooking series began to appear on California public television stations, and Wilson himself began doing cooking demos on several morning [... read more ...]
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The Culinary Timeline is a side-project that I've been working on since October. I'm hoping to have most of it complete by the end of January, with any luck. Until then, updates around here will be weekly, rather than twice weekly. Do stay tuned. • • •
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The eggnog anglaise contains bourbon. You can also add a little bourbon to the whipped cream, if it's been that kind of a year. Back when I was working as a prep cook at Houston’s Santa Monica, a cracked cheesecake wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the entire world: It meant that some of the pieces couldn’t be served, and that they would become fair game for the cooks. Of course, for the unfortunate person who actually baked the dessert, it was a little more bitter than sweet, seeing an otherwise beautiful cheesecake suddenly develop an [... read more ...] White bean puree, topped with duck confit, duck cracklins, garlic sausage, and Gruyère de Comté breadcrumbs. Click any pic to zoom. The idea of a “cassoulet” pizza popped into my mind the other night, if I remember correctly, somewhere between my second and third bottle of Cab Sauv. I’m a comfort food junkie above all else, and cassoulet ranks as one of my all-time favorite dishes, especially in the fall. As I thought about it further, the entire concept of “cassoulet pizza” soon began to reveal itself: The duck confit and garlic sausage would garnish the pizza, of [... read more ...]
Heritage Pork Belly alongside Heirloom Tomatoes, Bibb Lettuce, Sourdough Bread, and Kewpie Mayonnaise. Click pic for actual size. I certainly adore a great BLT, but I can hardly ever bring myself to order one in a restaurant. I just feel that this particular sandwich, as tasty as it might be, is a little too simple for a restaurant menu (greasy spoons excluded). When I’m dining out, I’m looking to feel the love, so I’m leaning towards items that require a little more culinary skill, even at lunch. However, when I’m at home, I’ve really [... read more ...] The Main Event: Blackened Pacific Halibut with Crispy Pancetta New Potatoes, smothered in Sauce Anthony. Here in the Napa Valley, hosting a dinner party this time of year can be a mighty tall order. The problem is finding enough guests with free time, since so many folks in the valley remain hopelessly preoccupied during harvest and crush. Among most of the people I know, they’re either working long days in the cellar, or they’re working long nights in the kitchen (tourism in the Napa Valley also hits its peak this same time of year). No doubt, as September [... read more ...]  I’m not sure if the following recipe appears in Morimoto’s cookbook or not, but a couple months ago, when I tasted the delicious pork belly sliders at the pre-opening festivities at Morimoto Napa, I decided that I really needed to learn to more about the Iron Chef’s approach to swine. Fortunately, I have a friend and former chef-school roommate who has cooked at one of Morimoto’s East Coast restaurants, so he’s actually executed this pork belly recipe dozens of times, if not hundreds. As I found out, the recipe itself doesn’t really contain any guarded secrets or esoteric [... read more ...]  Peach perfect. I had dinner at Ad Hoc on Friday night, and although I’ve offered tepid reviews of this restaurant in the past, I did have a great meal there, I must admit. The night’s menu featured an Italian-themed dinner, which actually began with meatballs, which to me was so much more interesting than salad, Ad Hoc’s typical first-course selection. After the meatballs, it was a perfectly-roasted half-chicken, followed by a cheese course, and about as much tiramisu as I could devour. The cheese plate was garnished with honey, chopped pistachios, and one of my favorite things in [... read more ...]  Set adrift on butter, brown sugar, and rum bliss. Although Bananas Foster is widely known as a New Orleans recipe, I never had any experience with this particular dish while I was cooking in the Crescent City. I dealt with plenty of bread pudding recipes, and I had an occasional hand in the hyper-decadent sweet potato-and-pecan pies at K-Paul’s, but Bananas Foster was never part of my repertoire. However, when I was attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park NY, I did have the opportunity to whip up several batches of Bananas Foster while I was [... read more ...] Although the “language” of cooking is essentially universal, the “vocabulary” itself can be very different. As a born-and-raised Westerner, some of the fundamental ingredients of Asian cuisine remain exotic to me, although cooking professionally and living in California have certainly both helped to foster my assimilation. Even so, I didn’t grow up in a household where shrimp chips and salty plum candy were the norm — it was more like Cheetos and chocolate chip cookies for us. I may have mentioned this anecdote here before, but my very recent appreciation for red miso paste actually began with a lemon-miso [... read more ...] Many people may claim to love bacon, but I say that unless you’re willing to make it yourself at home, then it’s probably just infatuation. As my way to gear-up for the BLT season ahead (let’s just call tomato season what it really is), I’m going to spend the next couple of days curing and smoking the pork belly pictured above. Look at it. It’s a lovely porcine specimen — only a shade under three pounds — with a nice, uniform thickness. But despite these auspicious beginnings, this piece of belly is really no more than a meager [... read more ...] |
 
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© 2012 The Accidental Wino |
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