Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 53

Fried Rice for Breakfast

Along with my chickpea curry disaster, I’d made some white rice in my rice cooker that looked like it was going to go to waste. I could have made rice pudding but Craig hates rice pudding so I put the leftover rice in the refrigerator and forgot about it.

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The Most Disgusting, Inedible Dinner I’ve Ever Cooked

We all mistakes in the kitchen, even those of us who’ve been cooking ten years or longer. My mistakes are all documented here on the blog: The Pound Cake That Threw Up. The Fried Chicken That Wasn’t Crispy. The Blueberry Disaster.

In all of these cases, the food was salvageable. The pound cake went back into the oven, the chicken was edible if not exactly crunchy, and the blueberry innards tasted OK over ice cream. But last week I made a dinner so repulsive, so awful, it could only go one place: the garbage disposal. Here’s what happened.

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Explain Yourself, Minute Maid Lemonade

0% juice? Really? But you have a picture of beautiful, fresh lemons on your label… if you have 0% juice, why are those lemons there? Shouldn’t you have a picture of a pile of citric acid, maybe someone snorting it off a table like Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights? But seriously, why can’t you put a little real lemon juice in your lemonade. It’s really not that hard to do. Little kids do it all the time and they sell it for $0.50 at a table on the street though today’s kids probably charge more so they can buy an iPad mini. We’re getting off topic. How are people ok with this? Why don’t we boycott Minute Maid until they make their lemonade with a few–ok, just ONE–real lemon? Who’s with me? Real change starts here.

New Apartment? New Oven? Buy This

This is an old school food tip, I didn’t invent it or anything, but I wonder how many of you actually do this?

I’m here to tell you that I do this. When I move into a new apartment, I buy an oven thermometer to calibrate the oven. If you don’t do that, you don’t know if your oven runs hot or cold or if it’s perfect. And since I just got started in this new kitchen, it’s something I really needed to know. So let’s buy this one from Gelson’s and see how our new oven does!

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We’re On iTunes

The Clean Plate Club is now officially on iTunes. Click that link to load it up on your computer or, if you want to listen in your car, use your iPhone (or other mobile device) to find the podcast in the iTunes store and entertain yourself while you’re sitting in traffic.

Something Happened At Rustic Canyon

On Thursday night, we were supposed to go to dinner with Craig’s former boss and the boss’s wife. A work dinner, so to speak. “7:30 at Pizzeria Mozza,” said Craig, earlier in the day.

Then, as 7:30 rolled around, Craig pulled me aside. “I told a white lie,” he said. “We’re not going out with (name redacted) and (name redacted). I’m taking you to Rustic Canyon.”

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Almond Cake with Plums

“Take a risk or play it safe?” That was the question I asked myself the day before Besha Rodell and Rachel Shukert came over for dinner last week. Rachel I wasn’t nervous about. Even though I’d never met her before, I knew we’d click because we’re both musical theater geeks. The food would be secondary. I also knew I’d click with Besha, who I had met before (at Proof Bakery last year) but that’s not what made me nervous. What made me nervous is that Besha is a food critic. A food critic! Can you imagine cooking for a food critic? I was kind of freaking out.

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The Clean Plate Club Logo Contest

In case you couldn’t tell, I made the logo for The Clean Plate Club myself using Photoshop Elements. It’s not very good. And so, I turn to you, my talented readers. Send me your best Clean Plate Club logo (e-mail: amateurgourmet@gmail.com) and the winner will receive a copy of my cookbook PLUS a shout-out/link on the blog.

The Clean Plate Club, Episode #1: Besha Rodell & Rachel Shukert

Hey there! So guess what? A few weeks ago I had an idea for a podcast: what if I host a dinner party where I invite one food world guest and one non-food world guest over for dinner with me and Craig and I record the conversation? Wouldn’t that be fun to listen to? Well, after a trip to the Apple Store (where I procured a large, round microphone called a Snowball) I decided to put my plan into action. The result is what you see/hear below: The Clean Plate Club, a brand-spanking-new podcast that may become a regular feature here on the blog.

Our debut episode features two EXTRAORDINARY guests. The first is the celebrated food critic from L.A. Weekly, who stepped into Jonathan Gold’s shoes when he moved to the L.A. Times: Besha Rodell. The other guest is a hilarious author and playwright who took the world by storm with her brilliant Smash-recaps for New York Magazine’s Vulture site: Rachel Shukert. Her Kindle single about that experience is climbing up the Amazon charts.

So sit back, relax, click play and join us as fellow members of The Clean Plate Club. Then let me know what you think in the comments!

P.S. If you want recipes for the meal that I cooked for a famous food critic and a famous Smash critic, here’s my Caesar salad and here’s my chicken with cous cous and salsa verde. The plum cake is coming later this week.

Breakfast Crêpes with Eggs, Bacon and Cheese

Our first weekend in the new apartment and it was my mission to make breakfast. I’d carried a box of foodstuffs from our old refrigerator to the new refrigerator so as not to waste anything and that box contained perishables like eggs, bacon, butter and milk. In my pantry, I had flour, sugar and salt. What could a person make with these things that wasn’t boring? A vision came to me, a vision of a nun on a beach dancing the hoochie-coochie. But then another vision came to me: Crêpes!

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