Ben Cooks Everything

This past August, my parents rented a lovely place upstate in the Hudson Valley and generously invited me and my boyfriend Michael, and my brother Jonathan and his fiancee Eva, to come visit as much as possible. Boy, did we take them up on that. One night, it was just the four of us without the parents, and when Jonathan invited his friends Mikey and Nicole to come over for dinner, I knew we had an excuse to go all out and make something special, something our parents would never go for . We settled on pernil, the slow-roasted Puerto Rican pork shoulder. We planned on using Joshua Bousel’s version of the recipe from his grilling column on Serious Eats. I called up Fleisher’s in Kingston, New York, a finalist for Happiest Place On Earth, and placed an order for the pernil, which is often sold as a picnic shoulder (it’s the lower part of the shoulder, with skin on and bone in).

When my brother went to pick up this beautiful hunk of meat, the woman behind the counter suggested that we score the skin, rub salt and herbs all over the thing, let it sit overnight, brush off the salt, marinate for a few hours, roast in the oven at 400 degrees for an hour to crisp the skin, then finish on an indirect, low grill for 3-4 hours. This differed a bit from the original plan. Always one to trust the butcher, especially at a mecca of fine meatstuffs such as Fleisher’s, I decided to follow this recipe, borrowing from Bousel’s.

After a total of about 5 hours on the grill (plus one hour in the oven to start), the thing was just shy of falling apart tender, salty in places and just plain porky in others, absolutely perfect served with a drizzle of mojo sauce or just some lime juice–something bright and tart to cut the richness of the meat. Hands down one of the best things I’ve ever made. Click “Read More” for the pernil and mojo recipes.

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Last week at the Stuyvesant Town Greenmarket I was moved to buy a bunch of rhubarb stalks. I don’t know why. I’ve never cooked with the stuff, and when I got it home I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I landed on a recipe from The Paupered Chef for a simple syrup made with rhubarb. Looked easy enough, which was lucky because I fancied a cocktail. (more…)

I received a press copy of How to Cook Everything: The Basics weeks ago, and I meant to write about it right away. But I found myself stymied. Because I think that what Bittman and his team may have unleashed upon us here is a book so good that it could replace the full edition. And that sounds like crazy talk! (more…)

I’ve written a few times now about how much I adore Melissa Clark’s recent cookbook, Cook This Now. In a year when culinary hero Jacques Pepin released an expansive career retrospective, Melissa managed to write the best cookbook of the year for my money (which is not to downplay the Essential Pepin, a truly essential work).

My admiration for her work led me to reach out to Melissa a few months back, and to my delight I found myself doing some freelance work on her blog over at melissaclark.net. Melissa’s been blogging recipes over there for years, but she wanted a page that would index all those recipes. As it turns out, there are over two hundred of them in all! I’m proud to tell you that as of today, that page is live on Melissa’s site, and there’s something for everyone on it. (more…)

Here’s one of those elegant-yet-simple Pepin dishes from Essential Pepin. Toss together tomatoes, bread (torn or cubed up), garlic, parsley or thyme, salt, pepper, olive oil and parmesan cheese. Put in a gratin dish. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes. Garnish with some more parsley or thyme, but only if you feel like it. Serve. Try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting. I think I ate half in the kitchen before I served it. (more…)

This beef stew, the recipe from How to Cook Everything augmented with a whole lot of dried shiitakes, was a Fishner joint all the way: my brother and I collaborated in the kitchen to make a huge double batch of it (way too much, incidentally). Which is to say, it was all his fault that the beef came out dry and flavorless. Okay, fine, that’s not really true. I think we just picked out too lean a cut of meat. Dry meat aside, it was still delicious. I picked the beef out of my portion, and upped the amount of egg noodles. A fantastic meal, all things considered. (more…)

Last month saw the release of Essential Pépin, a comprehensive collection of recipes from Jacques Pépin’s 60+ year career. This is marvelous news. Instead of owning the 27 (27!) previous cookbooks the man has written, you can just hold on to this one. It has over 700 recipes, and they’ve all been revised and retested for this volume. (more…)

There’s a line in the introduction to the recipe for Stir-Fried Chicken with Leeks, Oyster Mushrooms, and Peanuts in Melissa Clark’s Cook This Now where she really gets to the heart of the matter on stir-fries:

And here’s what I’ve learned, something I’ve known in theory but never really lived: stir-fries are easy. They are quick. The hardest part is cutting up the ingredients, but once that is done, dinner practically is, too.

I can relate. Everyone is always saying this about stir-fries, but I never quite believed it in my heart of hearts. So far everything I’ve made from Cook This Now has been delicious, and all of Clark’s advice sound, which was enough to make me give this recipe a shot. (more…)

I’ve admired Melissa Clark’s recipes for years now, mostly through her contributions to the New York Times’ Dining section. That led me to Greenlight Bookstore last week to a reading to celebrate the release of her latest cookbook, Cook This Now: 120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can’t Wait to Make. (more…)

Ratatouille, to me, is the perfect dish for this very moment of the year: fall is here, but summer produce is still all in season at the market. So you can stock up on zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant, and then actually turn on the oven and make the dish without fear of collapsing in a puddle of your own sweat. (more…)