Family Dinner with JP

I love Smitten Kitchen . Everyone loves Smitten Kitchen. The familiarity with which people lovingly refer to "Deb" as "Deb" and not "The Woman Who Posts on Smitten Kitchen" blows my mind. And apparently she is gracious and delightful in person. If you've not checked out her site, you are a fool and know nothing. The recipes Deb publishes are somewhere between elevated and easy home cooking, with a whole spectrum in between. She has a relaxed, explanatory style, and she takes wonderful photos of the dishes. I highly recommend her delightful cookbook, too. So this week I did a straight Smitten Kitchen recipe, with minor variations. To be honest, I was sold on both the spring flavors of the dish (lemon, mint) and on her description of it as a weeknight meal (wish I had started just a little bit earlier, but next time I could shave time off for sure). It was nice to have guests over for a meal for once(Hi Joe! Hi Beth!), as I don't think I coul...

The first time I ever had hash, I was in high school. I'd spent the night at my friend Rob Dentry's house, and in the morning his father made us corned beef hash. We smothered it in hot sauce, and I ate until my stomach hurt. It was one of the most delicious things I'd ever had, and I think some part of me wondered why, in a childhood where I grew up eating scrapple and Taylor Pork Roll and S.O.S. (chipped beef gravy), my family had deprived me of this delicious, salty, starchy vehicle for Crystal Hot Sauce. To be fair, everything can be turned into a viable vehicle for Crystal Hot Sauce. At any rate, years later, after the baptism of my godson, the lot of us went out to breakfast. This is where I first experienced corned beef hash in a non-cat food state. Giant chunks of tender but crisped corned beef (rustic), with a perfectly poached egg on top. This was the elevation of something I never knew could be elevated. It was only in the last year that I first came up...

The keys to a good pizza, in my humble opinion, all rely on minimization. A good crust, light on the sauce (but let's intensify that sauce, shall we?), easy on the toppings, washed down with a nice IPA. There are few things better in life than good pizza and a beer. And believe me when I tell you, a little bit of this pepperoni sauce goes a very long way. Resist the urge to drown your pizza in it, or to bathe in it yourself. Like all good things, it should be enjoyed with restraint and moderation. HAHAHA. Psyche! You're going to want a straw for that junk! Baking and food blogging are new to me. When you start a new hobby, there are so many things you can do to make huge improvements on the front end. In the early stages, changes and purchases are improvements of miles; later in the game, major changes and purchases are improvements of inches. In terms of moving ahead miles with this new blog project, I have recently acquired: a light source and reflector (expect impr...