Few things are more satisfying to me than cooking with my friends. I’ll admit that I’m a decent cook. It comes from my Grandmother who was a magnificent cook. Lately I’ve been getting into pastries. My favorite are Rustic Apple Tarts from a recipe in last autumn’s Cook’s Illustrated entertaining issue. I’ve also been getting a ton of ideas from a few food blogs that I regularly read.
These are just a few of the food blogs out there, and I look at a lot of others. These three just have really great recipes. Skinny Gourmet has a recipe for cinnamon rolls that I’ve yet to try. I think that they’ll debut at next month’s family reunion. Smitten Kitchen has a pizza dough recipe that I’ve had great success with, and Cooking for Engineers taught me how to cook bacon. My favorite method of these is baking at low heat. I actually bake the bacon at 350 degrees for 20 minutes unless I need the bacon grease for something. Cooking it at 200 degrees like Cooking for Engineers does takes hours, the bacon needs just a little extra heat at the end to crisp it, but the fat renders out beautifully!
One of the greatest things about cooking this way is that you have an opportunity to know exactly what you’re putting into your food. I try to get down to the core ingredients of the recipes preferring to cook biscuits or pancakes from scratch for example. Instead of using someone else’s biscuit mix or pancake mix, I mix up my own to much better results. It takes a little extra effort sometimes, but having a pantry stocked with staples usually results in meals that are much more exciting than the fare that you get at most restaurants. Happy cooking everyone!
Written by Philip Robert