Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 96

Lemon Butter Chicken with White Beans

What you see above is one of my favorite meals I've ever made at home. It came about rather organically: after raving about Rancho Gordo beans in this post from last week, I went back to Cookbook (the store where I bought that first bag) and stocked up on more.

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A Thin Mint Milkshake Recipe

When I heard that Doug and Bryan of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop were making a Thin Mint Milkshake, a part of me thought: "Whoah, I wonder how they make that?" I also thought: "I wish I lived in New York still so I could taste that."

Then, the other day, after Craig and I took a hike in Bronson Canyon, we stopped into Gelson's (our local grocery store) to pick up a few things and encountered a Girl Scout standing outside.

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My Pinterest Page

Have you ever wanted to see all of my recipe archives laid out for you visually? Click here and check out my new Pinterest page. All my big recipe categories are there–breakfast, desserts, pasta and risotto–plus I made a page of my Most Popular Recipes of All Time. If you create a Pinterest account, you can invite your friends and pin your favorite recipes to your bulletin board; and I'll continue to update my page as I continue to update my blog. Have fun browsing!

My Mom's Five Tips For Scoring A Table At An Impossible-To-Get-Into Restaurant

My mom may not cook, but she's an absolute authority when it comes to eating out at restaurants. She and my dad eat out almost every night of the week and they do so with a real zest for excitement and experience; they love to patronize busy restaurants, especially ones that are hard to get into. Which is why I had the idea to call my mom, this morning, to ask her for her tips on getting into an impossible-to-get-into restaurant. What follows is her top secret advice.

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White Plates

My favorite food blog, of late, is Canal House Cooks Lunch. It's deceptively simple: every day, the women of The Canal House (that'd be famed cookbook photographer Christopher Hirsheimer and former Saveur test kitchen director Melissa Hamilton (who also happens to be Gabrielle Hamilton's sister and a prominent figure in "Blood, Bones & Butter")) take a picture of what they make and eat for lunch and post it on their blog. Every day. You'd think that could get boring fast, but it's quite the opposite: I find their pictures/posts to be exciting and, more importantly, inspiring. Especially how the food always pops; and part of that, I realized, has to do with their white plates.

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Chocolate Guinness Cake

Here's how you know I'm the real deal: whereas most food publications will cram an upcoming holiday down your throat in hopes that you'll link to their page as you plan your holiday meal, I'm not so clever or strategic. I wait until the holiday's over, when the post will no longer be relevant, and then I blog about it. This means: (1) I'm not very smart; and (2) I'm pretty authentic. And so it is that I share with you now a cake that would've been very nice to bring to a St. Paddy's Day Dinner this past weekend (as I did) but which you will probably not make anymore because the holiday's over.

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Rancho Gordo's Good Mother Stallard Beans with Lamb Sausage (By Way of Echo Park)

The best dinners are the ones that have a story. This is one such dinner.

It started on a typical day: I was driving to Silverlake to eat lunch at Forage (one of my favorite places to grab a bite here in L.A.) and to have coffee and do work at Intelligentsia. Only, it was street cleaning day which means half of the normally available spots were no longer available. I circled and circled and started to go a little crazy. Trying to find a parking spot isn't something I had to do in New York; here, it can be a totally maddening experience, especially as you pass the same landmarks again and again, not one car budged, not one person dangling their keys.

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Bacon For A Crowd

You have people coming over for breakfast. You want to serve those people bacon. You want the bacon to be hot. You don't want to fry it because that would require several pans, it would make a mess and it would be hard to manage while entertaining guests. You may think to yourself, "Maybe bacon's not worth it." But you would be wrong: bacon's always worth it! And there's an easy solution that you should know about; lean in close, and I'll tell you.

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Knowing What To Eat

It's funny: the smarter I get about the food, the harder it is to figure out what to eat.

Eating didn't used to be this hard. If I wanted a chicken club sandwich for lunch, I'd eat a chicken club sandwich for lunch. I didn't worry about whether the bacon came from an industrial pig, about whether the chicken was free-range, about the provenance of the bread, the lettuce, the tomato. I didn't worry about carbs or fats or nitrates, about having too little protein or too much protein or not the right kind of protein. I just ate and didn't think about it.

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Losing It At Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village

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