A Hungry Bear

thomas keller’s yabba dabba do

Monday, December 14, 2009

I picked up Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry cookbook a few months ago, and it’s one of the few that I’ve read cover to cover. The photographs in it are stunning - it really belongs on the coffee table. I’ve only mustered up the courage to make a couple of things from the book, since [...]

new york strip and fall vegetable roast with mustard cream sauce

Thursday, December 3, 2009

4 Comments

I think I’ve finally started to cook enough roasts that I’m starting to get the hang of it. The most important thing I’ve learned is that you absolutely have to use a meat thermometer, and start checking it not even halfway through the amount of time you think it will need to cook. [...]

brisket and butternut squash chili

Monday, November 16, 2009

6 Comments

Last winter I made a double beef chili recipe that was inspired by something I saw on the cover of October 2008 Bon Appetit, a Texas brisket chili. I still remember how hearty that chili was, but I wanted to try the original version this time. The chunks of brisket really fall apart, [...]

stout-braised brisket

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

3 Comments

To use up the rest of the stout I got for the chocolate stout cupcakes I made last week, I turned to Epicurious. I’ve always thought of brisket as a vehicle for barbecue sauce, so the depth of flavor this dish had without any tomato-based sauce was pretty surprising. Next time I make [...]

focaccia reubens

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

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Food & Wine magazine had a great article about top sandwich spots in the US this month. One that caught my eye was a recipe for reubens made on focaccia bread, a sandwich from a San Francisco restaurant called The Sentinel. For the record, I’m not a fan of corned beef, and the [...]

lisa’s barbecue beef brisket

Thursday, May 21, 2009

3 Comments

I finally got around to making a friend’s mom’s recipe for barbecue beef brisket (a while ago I tried a spice-rubbed, grilled and roasted version, which was pretty good). Since Lisa’s secret barbecue sauce was involved, this wasn’t much of a competition actually. Her recipe was the favorite, hands down (but the boys [...]

barbecue beef brisket

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

6 Comments

Do you know when I feel the most satisfaction from cooking? It’s not when I really nail a recipe and get compliments (that’s nice), or when I come home from a restaurant and recreate a dish (rare, but also really nice). It’s much simpler than that. The most rewarding thing to me [...]

braised beef short ribs

Monday, March 30, 2009

5 Comments

I’ve cooked short ribs before but knew I must have been missing something. They were fatty and chewy when I made them - if this was the essence of short ribs, why would they keep turning up on the menus of some of the best restaurants I’ve been to lately? I decided to give it [...]

steak with olives and parsley

Monday, March 9, 2009

3 Comments

I clipped this recipe out of Gourmet a year ago, and stuck it in my “food ideas” binder with all the other recipes I intend to try at some point. I honestly can’t believe it has taken me a year to get to this - it’s steak, it’s fast, and the few ingredients are [...]

bison burgers with cabernet caramelized onions

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

3 Comments

New blog design, new burger recipe. This one was adapted from an article in February 2009 Gourmet, featuring 100+ ways to eat green. I’ve always liked bison, not because I knew it was environmentally friendly, but because I’ve heard it has the same high-protein and low-fat nutrition stats as a boneless skinless chicken [...]