2.0somethings

Real Simple has a list of 5 common cooling mistakes. I thought the first tip was the best and the one that has most often sent me ordering take-out.

The Mistake: You didn’t read the recipe all the way through before you started cooking.

“Reading a recipe is like looking at a map before going on a trip. It’s the best way to make sure your meal is successful,” says Linda Carucci, author of Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks (Chronicle, $23, www.amazon.com). Most cooking mishaps happen when a crucial detail is overlooked. …

What to Do Next Time: Before picking up a spoon, take a minute to focus on the details.

Though that is the best tip, the one I am probably guiltiest of is not heating the pan enough when I am trying to cook, which apparently leads to every problem short of dysentery. All of the tips are worth checking out. See the full article here.

While real Italians would never serve spaghetti and meatballs on the same plate, we must sheath our Mediterranean food snobbery in recognition of the fact that it’s a damn tasty dish, no matter how it’s served. It’s a simple dish that we hope becomes part of your repertoire, but like most simple dishes, it is founded on attention to detail. First, find yourself quality tomatoes (you can’t go wrong with anything that says Product of Italy and/or San Marzano on the label). Second, make sure you cook your pasta — and this is imperative — perfectly. This means monitoring your spaghetti as it cooks. Once you hit the 4 minute mark, begin tasting every fifteen seconds. The difference between al dente, blah, and mush is a matter of seconds (and never rinse your pasta — you’ll wash away all that glorious starch).

On the meatball side of things, the ingredients can vary according to taste and indeed, we encourage you to experiment. We like lamb for its intensity, even in small doses, but you could just as easily use pork, veal of beef. The only bit of advice here is to use equal parts bread and meat. Keep in mind, meatballs, or polpetti, were created as a way to stretch leftover ingredients. While our wallets and meatballs may be fatter here in America, nobody likes a dense meat sphere on their plate. Balancing it with bread ensures a light, airy result.

Recipe and follow-along-at-home video after the jump.

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Sometimes you just want to get your starch on. But, being burgeoning civilized men of the world, fries, baked potatoes, and Lay’s are out of the question. What to do? A depthy (a term we are hereby coining) dish of perfectly browned potatoes and vitamin rich kale, the porterhouse of the green leafy vegetable world. A little bit Irish, a little bit Italian, this preparation relies on just a splash of tomato sauce to bring some acidity to the otherwise rich dish. Plus a single (hardy) serving shouldn’t cost you more than about $3. Boom.

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Bacon is about sustained attention in a click-happy TV-remote-and-computer-mouse world. It must be forked, flipped, watched. It must not be under- or overdone. It must be honored.

-Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register

Though we just got back from our most recent culinary adventure, the 2.0somethings crew is already gearing up for our spring break plans: The First Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival in Des Moines, Iowa. The festival will be held at the High Life Lounge on March 1. According to The Register, “PBR will be offered for $1 a draw, paired with succulent dishes such as bacon-wrapped shrimp, little bacon cheeseburgers, a bacon-wrapped jalapeno and tater tot - all the gourmet bacon foods.” The festival will also include bacon-flavored craft beers, a “Blazin’ Bacon Bloody Mary, served with a slice of peppered bacon,” and maple bacon cheesecake. No word on whether EMTs will be standing by to provide on-the-spot bypasses.

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Blame childhood stereotypes and inept, though well-intentioned (love you, mommy!), mothers for broccoli’s bad rep amongst our generation. Steamed, boiled and, egad, microwaved, poor broccoli seems to be the lamb/cilantro of the vegetable world: people either love it or hate it. But here’s a recipe that will change the way you approach broccoli (not to mention every other colorful thing that grows out of the ground). By deeply caramelizing your broccoli, sans steaming or pre-cooking of any kind, the flavor profile changes from tepidly grassy to intensely earthy. The addition of the pasta rags, covered ever so slightly in the olive oil/broccoli business helps reinforce the idea that pasta should simply be dressed, not doused.

Full recipe after the jump.

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