“Oh my Gawd, it’s like an oven out here!” This is a not-uncommon refrain heard in Sacramento in summer. Well, if life gives you an oven, use it. This is one of the few places in the country where I can consistently dry things without an oven: Sacramento typically sees summer days over 95 degrees
Cooking Basics
How to Make Chicory Coffee from Scratch
For a time, my favorite coffee was New Orleans style, where the coffee is cut with roasted, ground chicory root. Chicory coffee is smooth, a little more acidic than normal coffee, with a taste and aroma similar to a mocha — and it makes a drink darker than the inside of a cow. I used
Boneless Tempura Shad
Unless you are an eater of American shad, that giant river-running herring anglers greet eagerly every spring, you might not fully appreciate just how elated I am right now. You see, I have solved the most vexing problem facing any shad angler: How to deal with the bones of a fish the Indians referred to as
How to Make Paprika at Home
Why bother making homemade paprika? Fair question. After all, the Spanish and Hungarians are better at it than we ever will be, right? Why not just call up Penzey’s or somesuch and order some? Well, I do. But making something like paprika at home is not so much something I did out of necessity as
Tinkering with Sausages
I have been making a lot of sausages lately, and as each batch will typically give me some new insight into this craft, I have much to tell from my recent adventures. You can learn all kinds of things from books on the subject; I recently went through a quick review of my sausage-making library. But
Braised Rabbit, and a New Way to Look at Food
This is a dish called Winter into Spring, something to make with rabbit, pheasant or turkey while the weather is still changeable.
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Wild Duck ‘Buffalo Wings’
Yes, of course I watched the Super Bowl! Haven’t missed one since the mid-1970s, and I must say that this was an excellent game, even if I didn’t care about the teams themselves (I am still in afterglow from the Giants’ win last year). And for me, the Super Bowl isn’t complete without yummy fried
How to Break Down a Game Bird
A basic skill I use all the time is breaking down, or cutting up, ducks, geese and pheasants. Not every bird is worthy of a full-on roast: To me, such a bird needs to be fat, young and not terribly shot-up. For those birds with broken legs, shot-up breasts, that are skinny or very old,