20 Dollar Dinner


Cookbook/The $20 Dinner


Article

Wednesday February 8, 2006 12:04 AM EST

I’m a horse, he’s a monkey and it’s a dog world — well, at least this year. We’re in the early days of Chinese year 4703 (New Year’s Day was Jan. 29), also known as Year of the Dog.

Unlike New Year’s Day in the Western world, Chinese New Year is more than a one-evening, ball-dropping affair; it’s a two-week period of reflection, renewal, feasting and family time. The 15th day of the...

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Wednesday February 1, 2006 12:04 AM EST

I’ve screwed up a lot of bread, as recently as a few weeks ago. With the bread maker in my life gone, it was incumbent upon me to get over my chronic dough dread and connect with the gluten network I long had been shirking.

In the dawn of this new year, I was determined to dust off my bad bread karma and start over. I also decided that if I could make any kind of bread, it would be raisin....

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Wednesday January 25, 2006 12:04 AM EST
Recipe: Lemon-ricotta pancakes with berry sauce | more...

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Wednesday January 18, 2006 12:04 AM EST

Dec. 31 was an eve of eves. I cooked up a heavenly spread and my darling co-pilot tended bar. Not long after the ball dropped, it became apparent that perhaps my sweetheart had sucked back one too many bourbons, as he was finding greater pleasure in air guitar-playing with the Who than entertaining the remaining guests.

The next day, I would see my dark prediction come true. Bourbon Boy woke...

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Wednesday January 11, 2006 12:04 AM EST
From mid-December until New Year’s Day, I cooked A LOT. In two weeks, I shimmied from chocolate bark to chocolate terrine. Pork garnered double-billing — a Cuban-style pork shoulder on Christmas Eve, followed by Asian-style ribs on New Year’s Eve. Potato latkes segued into fried plantains; black beans proceeded hoppin’ John. Green beans received Szechuan treatment; spinach leaves were... | more...

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Wednesday December 28, 2005 12:04 AM EST

The final week of the year tends to have a peculiar rhythm. No one, it seems, is really working, yet it feels like one big race, from yuletide caroling to New Year’s reveling.

With all of that energy bubbling to the surface, it’s easy to miss Kwanzaa, a holiday that falls during this seven-day stretch and tends to get lost in the mass-media shuffle. Beginning the day after Christmas, Kwanzaa...

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Wednesday December 14, 2005 12:04 AM EST

Everybody needs a little latke now and then — even when Hanukkah is not just around the corner. The Yiddish word for “pancake” is also a lesson in how the simplest things can be divine. I would venture to say that the latke, a grated onion and potato patty fried up in a pan, can hold a serious candle to the ubiquitous french fry, and probably kick diner home fries in the pants.

All it...

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Wednesday December 7, 2005 12:04 AM EST

My friend Maura is far from a cook. She’ll tell you so herself. But a baker? Damn straight. So what if she’s a one-hit wonder — Maura makes some mean cranberry-pistachio biscotti.

These dried fruit and nut-studded biscuits earned her approval (and ultimately, love) by a group of people she now calls her in-laws. That was two holiday seasons ago, when Miss Catholic Girl fell in love with...

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Wednesday November 30, 2005 12:04 AM EST

I can’t take a sunrise and sprinkle it with dew, sorry. No dipping tomorrows into dreams, either. But with a little sugar, cream and butter, I can probably make the world taste good.

It’s December. We all could use a little sweetening to get through the darkest days of the year, which, depending on your mood, may include the holiday season. Try to snap out of it and make the world taste good...

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Wednesday November 23, 2005 12:04 AM EST

Ever have a hangover the day after Thanksgiving? I’m not talking the red wine kind (although that’s always possible), but rather the gluttonous, stomach-won’t-budge-variety from pigging out on too much holiday chow.

A walk around the block about 100 times is always helpful, but this isn’t an exercise column. I’m more concerned with those turkey leftovers, begging to be used in a way that...

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Wednesday November 16, 2005 12:04 AM EST

How I love ma petite chou chou, aka the Brussels sprout. At this time of year, her pretty little cabbage head stops farmers market traffic. But alas, she often is ill-treated in the kitchen and then takes all the blame for tasting yucky at the holiday table.

Give the girl a break. All she needs you to do is bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Everything tastes better with pork fat,...

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Wednesday November 9, 2005 12:04 AM EST
Give veg heads a treat on T-Day | more...

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Wednesday November 2, 2005 12:04 AM EST

In continuation of the make-do-on-an-island theme, I’d like to call attention to the Dark ‘n’ Stormy, a cocktail that is grossly underestimated on the mainland.

Known as the national drink of Bermuda, this elixir of dark rum (in Bermuda, it’s Gosling’s Black Seal) and ginger beer, garnished with lime, is one of life’s greatest little pleasures. While island bound, my housemate and I...

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Wednesday October 26, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

Some recent time on an island got me thinking about making-do with limited resources. Not that I’m complaining — the skies were blue, the sun hot, the ocean bathtub-warm.

When it came time to cook, however, I was up against the challenges of geographical remoteness that locals face all the time. Here on the mainland, as my island-bound brother calls it, we can get anything at any time of...

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Wednesday October 19, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

“How do I make my favorite Asian dish so it tastes like the restaurant?” is a question I hear often in this line of work. Since I consider myself still very much a student of the many varied cuisines of Southeast Asia — particularly Thai, Vietnamese and Malaysian — I stumble, too ... until I find something that really sings on the tongue.

During a recent stumbling, I found some...

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Wednesday October 12, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

There is some truth to the theory that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. A few misfires notwithstanding, I have long believed that if you dig somebody, you should pull out all the stops ... I mean the pots and pans.

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Nothing stimulates the libido quite like a specially prepared meal, one-on-one style. In An Alphabet for Gourmets, the late, great M.F.K. Fisher —...

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Wednesday October 5, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

If cheese sauce is all you’ve ever had in the way of broccoli and its kissing cousin, cauliflower, then we need to talk.

It is hard to mention one without the other, given the popularity of the newfangled hybrid broccoflower. Plus, cauliflower is available not just in traditional virgin snow white, but in shades of funky green and Barney purple as well. A food fight nearly broke out at a...

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Wednesday September 28, 2005 12:04 AM EDT
Impromptu Winter Squash Soup | more...

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Wednesday September 21, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

Ever since my muddied-leotard days as a precocious, pigtailed first-grader, I’ve loved making and tearing into grilled cheese sandwiches of all varieties, even those made from individually wrapped orange slices.

The mechanics are simple but the results are alchemical: Buttered bread develops a crispy crust in a hot pan. The heat of the bread cuddles and coaxes the cheese interior to melt and...

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Wednesday September 14, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

School back in session means busy days, eating on the run and fast-food fetishes. Let’s stop the madness before all those trans fats and sulfites eat their way into your arteries, shall we?

You want a Hot Pocket? Fine — let’s make ‘em instead. The dough is certifiably moron-proof, and spinach (or chard) is packed with nutrients. The one item of note is sumac, a brick-colored spice found...

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Wednesday September 7, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

It’s back to school, chickadees! After the pencils are sharpened and the textbooks are covered, let’s get to a more pressing issue — like what’s in that lunchbox of yours.

Rather than reinvent the meal, let’s talk simple tweaks instead. I’m thinking about peanut butter and jelly, that old reliable staple of American lunchrooms over the past 50 years, the one true north for kiddies and...

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Wednesday August 31, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

I could wax philosophical on why I shop at farm markets. I could preach about the environmental do-goodness, the connectivity one develops to the seasons and how satisfying it is to deepen the pockets of local farmers vs. that of a multinational agri-biz executive.

But at this time of year, the reasons for showing up at market are simple and practical: Mother Nature offers her version of...

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Wednesday August 24, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

It’s too hot to wear pants — throw on a sarong instead and a pair of espadrilles to match. And since you’re probably not gazing out into the azure waters of the Mediterranean (me neither, I’m afraid), let’s pretend like we’re cooking on the veranda without a care in the world.

And let’s do like all the vacationing Côte d’Azur beauties and cook something “à la Niçoise” — you know,...

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Wednesday August 17, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

I love the tomato, but only when she’s sexy. For eight weeks out of the year, she and I pick up where we left off from the previous September to continue our mad love affair that began more than 30 summers ago at the Jersey shore.

Besides fried chicken, the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich — aka the BLT — was a close second in my list of favorite foods as a child. I’m confident...

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Wednesday August 10, 2005 12:04 AM EDT

Last week, I began my adventures in unearthing the best chocolate cake ever.

After tasting a gorgeous hunk of the “Very Good Chocolate Cake” from The Gift of Southern Cooking (by Decatur’s own Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock), I had declared it the best I had ever eaten, but I still wanted to know if it would be the best I’d ever bake.

Herein the countertop notes:

Adaptations: Instead of...

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