This Thanksgiving, don’t let your turkey lay down on the job. Make it stand up and fly (er, cook) right. Yes, cook your turkey standing up. Vertical turkeys cook much faster than those lie-down birds. They’re incredibly juicy. And carving is a cinch. What’s the secret? The Spanek vertical roaster. And if you use a...
read more
If it weren’t chicken or turkey, the centerpiece of the Norman Rockwell portrait of Sunday dinner would be roast beef. But oh, how times have changed. “When I shop I see young couples at the meat case of the supermarket looking at the roasts without the foggiest idea of what to do with them. And with pot roast, they know...
read more
We may talk turkey on Thanksgiving but what we really want is the stuffing. That’s why many Thanksgiving tables have two kinds of stuffing. Who has two kinds of turkey? My mother made her stuffing the night before Thanksgiving. This remarkably simple bread stuffing, gently seasoned with celery, onions, and sage, was so delicious...
read more
Many people still have trouble cooking plain long grain rice, let alone risotto. And risotto in a hurry? “Fuggedaboudit,” as Tony Soprano might say. But you can make risotto in about 20 minutes any night of the week. In case you’ve been on another culinary planet for the past decade (or three), risotto is the Italian rice...
read more
Last September, my wife and I and three other couples rented a house near the town of Menerbes in Provence for a few weeks. As is the case when we have rented houses elsewhere, I like to cook the local classics. One is bouillabaisse. Bouillabaisse is one of those dishes that generates arguments about what must go into it to make it...
read more
Superbowl Sunday will soon be upon us and it’s time for major snacking while we watch the big game. When I was food editor of the San Jose Mercury News, I often tied the foods for the Super Bowl to the teams participating or the cities in which the games were played. So, for example, when the Superbowl was played in New Orleans,...
read more