Month: June 2020

A Lemon Garlic Kale Salad Now Is One of My Favorites Back in May, my oldest daughter Nell came home from college with her boyfriend Emir. We wanted to make them something special for dinner and the kids said they wanted to help by making this kale salad with lemon and garlic dressing they found in the New York Times. Rack of Lamb We knew from Nell, Emir loves lamb. So we picked up a couple of racks of lamb ribs consisting of eight ribs each for a total of 16.  When cut between the ribs, these tender “lollipops” are incredible when grilled to medium rare. The rack we purchased from Costco was already “frenched” or exposed. This means the meat was cut off from the bone end of the rib chop. It is not necessary to do this, but it does make for an extravagant presentat...

Grilled Rack of Lamb Chops Will Take You Back to Italy This post on how to make grilled lamb lollipops or what are lamb chops cut from the rack was written by my wife Meg. I’m so happy she is finally retired from her career in HR and is now helping me on the Reluctant Gourmet.   By Meg Jones - wife, mother,professional, contributor Our older daughter spent a semester in Rome during her junior year in college and I took the opportunity to visit her for a long weekend.  When I travel abroad, I look for things to do that veer me away from the tourist destinations so I can get a glimpse of the local experience. A few years ago I was introduced to a Philadelphia-based company that arranges tours in cities across the world, billed as “scholarly tours for curious travel...

Lest you think that a man known for playing grisly boxing coaches and machete-wielding federales on the big screen might be an odd person to run a restaurant empire, let Danny Trejo prove you wrong. Cooking is part of his DNA, and the 76-year-old actor still remembers dreaming about restaurant ownership alongside his mother, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park in the 1950s, when most of the city’s Mexican food was relegated to informal stands. Today, Trejo runs eight restaurants in LA and has published a brand new cookbook, Trejo’s Tacos, to immortalize all of the carne asada, vegan-friendly roasted cauliflower tacos, and doughnuts that his restaurants, Trejo’s Tacos, have come to be known for. The book is full of California soul, storie...

Jenny Dorsey is the cofounder of the educational culinary nonprofit Studio ATAO, but she’s also a chef, poet, food competition TV winner (she beat Bobby Flay in 2015), and cocreator of a now widely circulated and widely praised document that breaks down food media’s (that is, all media’s) problem with tokenization—defined broadly as the practice of making only a symbolic effort to give the appearance of equality within the pages of a publication, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups to serve as a mouthpiece. The tool kit presents, with rich examples and methodical detail, the causes and results of tokenization, while defining the conscious and unconscious gatekeeping that holds BIPOC editors and writers f...

A hearty slow cooker beef stew with fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth, tender chuck roast, potatoes and carrots. Here’s a comforting, warm meal that’s perfect for the cold weather. It’s mighty cold! So today we’ll be doing a slow cooker beef stew to warm ourselves up. This is the perfect time to break out the crock-pot and let it do the cooking for you while you reward yourselves at the dinner table later. With chuck roast, potatoes, carrots and onions and some seasonings, you’ve got yourself a meal that goes well with some crusty bread to help fill you up. The meat is melt-in-your-mouth tender. So tender, I had to be careful ladling it into bowls to not break them apart. Sounds good? Let’s begin.   The bulk of the work comes from all the chopping and ...

This tangy and creamy buffalo chicken dip is perfect for parties, cookouts or game day. With tender, lightly shredded chicken, cream cheese, hot sauce and ranch dressing. Add some cheese on top to make it a bubbling dip! Here’s a good one for parties, cook outs, potlucks or game day. Its enough dip for 4-6 dedicated dippers or 6-8 nibblers.  With basic pantry ingredients like cream cheese, ranch dressing, buffalo hot sauce and chicken, this one is easy to whip up in a hurry at any given notice. You can also customize it by adding shredded cheese for the browned cheese crust on top, or mix some cheese in with the dip itself. To add some color and texture, throw in a mix of fresh, diced peppers. And for fans of blue cheese, some crumbles on top for that extra kic...

Enjoy this 20 minute easy shrimp scampi meal with seared, juicy shrimp in a rich garlic buttery sauce. Top it off with freshly squeezed lemon juice and parsley over a bed of your favorite pasta or with some crusty bread to mop up the sauce.   Today we’ll be doing a quick and easy 20 minute meal from start to finish for those busy work days. This one will be feeding 4 and is perfect for garlic lovers since that’s the star of the show. Lots and lots of fresh garlic in a lemon infused buttery sauce with fresh parsley to carry on the flavor. This simple dish does not lack flavor despite having very few ingredients. You can either have it with some crusty bread or on a bed of angel hair, spaghetti or linguine pasta. Let’s get started. Melt the butter an...

Entertain with this easy to make 3-ingredient cream cheese sausage dip. It’s ready to eat in 15 minutes from start to finish and easily customized to up your dip game! With the Super Bowl coming up, you’ll want your dip game strong. Here’s a meaty, 3-ingredient dip that honestly doesn’t feel like it only has 3 ingredients. There’s also plenty of ways to customize this and make it yours. With a base of sausage, a can of Rotel and cream cheese the possibilities are endless. Add some corn or jalapenos or some smoked paprika or liquid smoke. I once added a few shakes of ancho chili coffee rub to it. Lots of ways to build on this dip! You can even change up the base a little with a different type of sausage and cream cheese. Experiment and find the perfect combinati...

This hot pepperoni and olive penne pasta has few ingredients but many ways to build on to increase flavor. Add regular pizza toppings such as sausage, bacon, spinach or mushrooms to make it your own or stick with nice and easy. Today we’ll be making an easy, hot pepperoni and olive pasta meal. There’s plenty of ways to add to it using regular pizza toppings such as sausage, bacon, mushrooms, spinach and fresh basil.  I usually add in mushrooms and spinach but stick with what suits you. The pasta can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be! If you’re a fan of supreme or pepperoni pizza, you will love this pasta. I’ve done a casserole version of this before with pizza pasta casserole, but here’s a much easier version that doesn’t require an oven. So tod...