Julie tasked me with finding a cookbook to go through, to match her bread quest. To be clear – I am not a cook, unless pouring milk on cereal counts as cooking. This will definitely be much more of a challenge for myself. Expect lots of whiny cries of “Juuullliieee” as I go through recipies when I get stuck or don’t know what to do. The book I chose is “Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook“. This is a collection of French Bistro recipes for all sorts of different ingredients, from potatoes to seafood to pork. I chose this one because we have both read Anthony Bourdain’s other books and enjoy his writing style, and this cookbook follows in the same patterns. I like being berated in all sorts of colorful language when I read a cookbook. Plus, he turned us on to bone marrow, so I know the recipes will be good. I know there will be some horrible things going wrong as I attempt this (hooray for Polito’s and El Mezcal), and I know for a fact that we are going to have to be creative in how we obtain certain ingredients, but at the same time I have always wanted to learn how to at least feed myself, so this will be a good start. Normally when Julie is gone I mooch off friends, eat Portessi cheese fries, and go to my parents’ house for meals.
Daily Archives: June 7, 2009
My chosen book = Justin crazy time
New Challenge
To try to encourage ourselves to eat at home more and try even more new recipes, we are each going to choose a cookbook and attempt to cook every recipe in them. I know this is not a new or original idea, but it is a fun one that I can get behind. Plus, lately I have been sticking with old favorites rather than branching out to find new ones. Justin is still deciding on exactly which book to commit to (after he first picked up my On Cooking text and I looked at him like he had lost his mind) and I’ve chosen one I know I can count on, Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, by Jeffrey Hamelman. There are 118 recipes for different breads in this book, of which I’ve already tried about 15. Mmm… I’m already starting to anticipate the warm, yeasty smells! I promise to report on the failures as well as the successes – even though they’ll probably make me cry. Or gag. And please feel free to drop by to help clean the dirty dishes! First one to the sink gets their own loaf!
