Does this not sound like the most disgusting BBCook post you’ve ever heard of?  I know.  Me too.  Stay with me.  The jalapenos are traumatic but merely incidental in the grand scheme of this post.

Last weekend, my dear friend Dave and I embarked on an epic culinary adventure in the hopes of saving a few bucks by not going out to dinner.  Three chicken legs, three sticks of butter, a tub of the expensive Greek yogurt, three jalapenos, six limes and $35 later (thanks, PCC!), we realized our cheapness plan failed dismally.  We trudged home trying not to do the mental math to figure out what sort of restaurant meal this could’ve bought us (more sushi than we could possibly eat from Musashi’s…six sandwiches from Baguette Box…) and devised our battle plan: we would split the dinner duties of chopping, sautéing, etc. and then I would make dessert once dinner was on the stove. Continue reading →

For the first time in BBCook history, “professionally educated” has been added to the list of reasons to read this blog.  Other reasons include, presumably, you have nothing better to do and/or you’re related to us, so this really adds an air of legitimacy to things.  That’s right, ladies and gentleman, I went to my first-ever outpost of The Dream: culinary school, in the form of a hard cheese-making course.  “Why not start with something you’re actually interested in, Blair, like cake?  For example, you could’ve gone to a cake-making course and finally decided to stop boring us with your recipes.”  Well, yes, dear reader, that would’ve been logical, but when opportunity presents you with a hard cheese-making course, you grab it by the horns (Cow joke.  Get it?) and sign on board. Continue reading →

I’m obsessed with the idea of ice cream this summer.  It seems that every food blog I read has links to really interesting ice cream recipes (like Molly Wizenberg’s Fennel Ice Cream on Orangette or David Lebovitz’s Banana-Brown Sugar Ice Cream) that can only be made with the aid of an ice cream makin’ machine.  Now, I know my way around a recipe, precisely because I’ve unlocked the key to cooking: it’s really just reading.  So when I get to the end of a recipe after mastering all sorts of techniques like simmering and tempering eggs and see the phrase “freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions,” all I want to do is kick the cookbook and drown my sorrows in a big pint of ice cream.  Preferably homemade. Continue reading →

“Set it and forget it!”  This tagline always makes me think of seriously dangerous cooking techniques, like putting a can of soup in the oven and not remembering it until it explodes, or letting the kids take the new deep-fryer out for a spin: cooking strategies that just aren’t worth the convenience.  I want to be intimately involved in my cooking, even if only to prevent myself from burning the house down, so I’m always a little suspicious of recipes that rely on the aforementioned principle (and kitschy TV slogan). Continue reading →