Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 50

A Beginner’s Guide To Grilling

Summer’s almost over which isn’t a big deal here in L.A.–it’s almost always grilling weather here–but for the rest of you, I bet you’re split into two groups: those who are grilling up a storm and those who, like me, don’t have the courage to play with fire. Well, that was me until 24 hours ago when, inspired by you and all of your comments (thanks!) I finally tackled that final hurdle of my culinary education: the grill.

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I’m Scared To Grill

Finally, I have an apartment with a shared backyard where I could get a Weber grill. Not only that, there already IS a Weber grill out there that my neighbor says I can use. And also? I have a bag of charcoal that I bought last year because I thought I could get a Weber grill at my last place, but I couldn’t. So the only thing that’s stopping me from grilling, at this point, is me. I need your encouragement. How do I light those coals if I don’t have that chimney Ina Garten uses? How do I know if I’m making the grill too hot? Once you take the food off, what do you do next–let the coals cool and throw them away? How do you clean the grate? What should I cook first, steak? If you build up my confidence, I promise a grilling post on Monday morning. If you don’t see that post, you’ve totally failed as readers and grilling-enthusiasts.

Sweet and Spicy Pickled Peppers

There are many things in this world worth pickling–cucumbers, carrots, pig’s feet (if you happen to have a few lying around)–but my favorite thing to pickle? It’s peppers, just like that tongue-twister about Peter Piper. (How do you pick a peck of pickled peppers, anyway? If they’re pickled, aren’t they in jars? I guess you can pick from jars. I wonder if he had tongs?) This is a recipe I learned from Brandon Pettit (aka Mr. Orangette) while writing my cookbook. It’s hidden in a sidebar, next to a pizza recipe, but it remains one of my favorite recipes that I learned how to make writing the book.

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Serious Eats Magazine

Hey, check it out, the good people at Serious Eats have launched a digital magazine featuring all of their best content in a beautiful new format. Each issue is $2.99 but the first issue’s free in the iTunes store.

Baked Ziti

We all need a good baked ziti recipe, don’t we? Well here it is. I was looking for something like this to serve up for Episode #3 of The Clean Plate Club. Pasta being my favorite food, I wanted to serve pasta without having to be in the kitchen the whole time, boiling, straining, stirring, etc. Baked ziti is the perfect solution. You make your pasta earlier in the day, cook it al dente, toss it with a flavorful sauce (more on that in a sec) then layer it in a baking dish with lots and lots of cheese. Boom: you’re done. All you have to do is pop it in the oven.

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My Name Is Adam and I’m A Squatter

This San Francisco Chronicle article addresses the problem of coffee shop squatters and how they hurt business. This resonates a lot for me because, um, it’s about me. Here in L.A., I can tell which coffee shops are cool with the squatting (Coffee Commissary, Broome Street General Store), which probably aren’t (Proof, though I still squat there because I love it so much, so I buy as much as I can) and which are dealing with it in clever ways (Paper or Plastik which designates most of their tables as laptop-free). Craig points out that this problem’s heightened by the fact that so many young people have jobs that allow them to work from anywhere and working from home can be a bit depressing. So many squatters, only so many seats. What’s to be done?

The Clean Plate Club, Episode #3: Drew Droege, Ganda Suthivarakom

Baked Ziti was on the menu for Episode #3 of The Clean Plate Club (along with that disastrous/not-so-disastrous chocolate cake) when I made dinner for one of the funniest people I know, Drew Droege, and one of the original founding-father/mother food bloggers, Ganda Suthivarakom of Eat Drink One Woman. If you don’t know Drew by name, you probably know his work; he’s a major player at The Groundlings (back in the day, he did improv with Kristen Wiig; something we talk about in the podcast), appears in various movies and TV Shows and is probably best known for the character he created for YouTube, his riff on Chloe Sevigny–”Chloe”–that’s something of a viral sensation. Here’s a taste of that.

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Caketastrophe 2013 (A Disaster with an Edible Ending)

The bar was set very low. I wanted to recreate the Olive Garden chocolate cake that we used to get for our non-birthdays, growing up (non-birthdays because my parents would lie and say it was somebody’s birthday so we’d get a free cake) and would keep in our refrigerator for the week. I’d eat it cold with a glass of milk and it always hit the spot. I wanted something simple like that, so I turned to Twitter. A follower suggested I make the chocolate cake on the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa container. I was sold.

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Stay Sharp

Any time I put a new razor head on my razor and I shave I have a little monologue in my head that goes: “You should do this more often because you don’t cut yourself and it’s so much smoother and, really, it’s worth it.”

Now that same monologue is going to kick in when I get my kitchen knives professionally sharpened. I’m such an idiot for not doing this more often. At the Atwater Village farmer’s market, there’s a man who sharpens knives (you can see him above). All I had to do was carry my knives to the market–a 20 minute walk–and cough up $11. That’s a small pittance considering the impact it immediately makes in the kitchen.

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Spicy Chickpeas with Curry Leaves and Kale

Oh kale, you’re everywhere. You’re in my belly right now because I just had you for lunch (a raw salad that was a little too spicy from Little Dom’s Deli). You’re a fad, you’re a trend. You’re chips, you’re juice. You’re unavoidable in L.A.

And here I am putting a recipe with kale in it up on the blog. Have I no shame? Am I the equivalent of an insecure middle schooler who chases the popular kids around yelling, “Hey, guys, wait for me!” (Funny: when I started high school, one of the first friends I made–an older girl–actually said, “You seem like the kind of kid who’d say, ‘Hey guys, wait for me!’”) Whatever.

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