Meat Archives

Reverse-Seared Ribeyes

Remember that scene in Mary Poppins where they all go up the chimney and come out all sooty? That’s what my dinner guests usually look like when I cook steak. The whole kitchen fills up with black clouds as I sear the meat in a large cast-iron skillet, flipping and continuing to cook while frantically taking the temperature to make sure I stop in time to hit medium-rare. Sometimes I get it right on the first go; other times, I serve the steak and somebody politely says: “Ummm, sorry, but is it supposed to be blue inside?” That all changed this past Saturday when I cooked my usual steakhouse dinner for our friends Marcos and John, only this time the kitchen wasn’t full of smoke and the steaks came out absolutely perfect. The secret? Reverse-seared ribeyes.

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Spicy Merguez with Spinach and Borlotti Beans

Every so often you encounter a recipe that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go. That was the case when I was thumbing through an old book in my collection: Daniel Boulud’s Braise, which he co-wrote with Melissa Clark back in 2013. This is one of those books that’ve survived many a cookbook cut because (a) braising is my favorite cooking technique (so much reward for such little effort); and (b) the recipes in it are fascinating. Like this recipe for Spicy Merguez with Spinach and Beans. It’s not that shocking to imagine lamb sausage, spinach, and beans together; but the technique is what left me shooketh.

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Keema Pau

Have you ever been in a cooking rut? Sometimes I literally have no idea what to make for dinner even though I have a cookbook shelf overflowing with books and I read about food on the internet for 85% of my day.

Thankfully, I started this new podcast and my guests send me recipes to make that I would never think of making on my own. Case in point: this Keema Pau which was suggested to me by my guest this week, Karan Soni, who you may know from the Deadpool movies or the show Miracle Workers. Karan and his partner Roshan came over for dinner and noticed the Dishoom cookbook on my shelf and Karan lit up: he cooked his way through it during the pandemic and absolutely loved the food that he made. So when I asked him to send me a recipe for the pod, he referred me to page 109, which has the recipe for Keema Pau.

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Rosemary Dijon Rack of Lamb with Crispy Potatoes

Would you believe that I’ve cooked lamb necks, lamb shoulders, lamb legs, but never that most famous lamb preparation of all… a classic rack of lamb?

The reason’s actually pretty simple: rack of lamb is expensive. And as confident as I am as a meat cook, I’m always scared that if I splurge on something as decadent as a rack of lamb, I’m going to screw it up. And meat is hard to fix once you overcook it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry with this particular rack because it was a gift! Well, I received a gift certificate for $100 for an online butcher and I chose one 1 1/2 pound rack of lamb that, with shipping, worked out to the full $100. (I know, that’s insane, but now you know why I’ve avoided cooking lamb racks for so long.)

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Spiced Pork Chops with Delicata Squash and Apple Chutney

Making new friends is always a treat but difficult to do when you’re supposed to avoid social gatherings and remain six feet apart while masked. Luckily, I made two new friends last year when the food writer Ben Mims and his partner J made the same move that we made back in 2011 from New York to L.A.

Ben moved here to write for the L.A. Times (his recipes are top notch; I made his tamarind lamb shanks last night and they were dreamy); we met for dinner at a steakhouse on Hollywood and Vine and he told hilarious stories about growing up in Mississippi, then told even funnier stories on my podcast Lunch Therapy.

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Lamb Burgers and Tomato Salad

One of the reasons that I stopped blogging for as long as I did was that I felt like I was starting to repeat myself. How many times could I tell you about making cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes? Or how I roast a chicken?

Now, on this new-ish iteration of the blog (where my m.o. is to be much more casual about the whole thing), I find myself repeatedly talking about Cookbook in Echo Park. It’s where I do most of my grocery shopping and it’s pretty much the best food store I’ve ever been to anywhere. Look what I saw when I walked in there yesterday…

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A Summery Steak Dinner

Sometimes people ask me if I barbecue and I say “no” and when they ask “why not?” I say: “Because I don’t really like my backyard.” And it’s true: we share one with our neighbors in our fourplex, and they’re all very nice, but it’s not very private and it also kind of looks out on to a gas station. So the idea of being back there for a long time with a pair of tongs and a brewski doesn’t really excited me much, even in summertime.

But that didn’t stop me last night from “grilling up” some steak. (“Grilling up” in quotes because, ya know, I wasn’t really grilling.) This dinner really was a triumph, if I do say so myself; I was welcoming Craig back from the Palm Springs Shorts Festival, where he spoke on a few panels. He was already glad to come home (Palm Springs is 105 degrees right now), but with this dinner he was even gladder. Let me tell you how I made it.

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Lamb Meatballs on Ottolenghi’s Hummus with Pomegranate Molasses

Laurie Anderson has a song–more of a performance piece–called “Only An Expert Can Deal with a Problem.” It’s a dark, satirical look at the way Americans defer so willingly to experts; whether it’s the talking heads on Fox News, hyper-judgmental celebrities on Fashion Police, or mental health gurus like Dr. Phil. And nowhere is this more evident, really, than the way Americans cook from cookbooks. I know because I’m an American and for the larger bulk of my cooking life, I was such a slave to whatever recipe I was following; if I didn’t have precisely 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda left in the canister, I’d throw everything away. Julia Child wouldn’t approve; on her show, once, I heard her say, “Anyone who doesn’t finish a recipe because they don’t have all the ingredients will never be a cook.” It took me a long time to get there but now I cook much more loosely, much more confidently, and cookbooks function less as sacred texts and more like casual idea-generators. Which is how this terrific dinner came about.

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