Cooking Backwards

I'm predisposed to finding a recipe I want to cook, and then shopping for the ingredients. But sometimes you need to work backwards: I have carrots, ginger, tofu and peanut butter--what can I make with that? And now that my CSA has started for the season, I get a feeling I'll need some inspiration for new ways to use all the fruits and vegetables I'll be saddled with. This new site, Cookthink, is a nice resource. It's sort of like a Pandora for food--you enter what you feel like eating, it spits out some recipes that might do the trick.

Porcine Operations

I apologize to all five of my regular readers for my sporadic posting lately. I have a few good things coming up that will warrant posts. In the meantime, please enjoy my amigo Fidel Gastro's tales of pork butchering.

Totonno's on Film

My quest to make the perfect home pizza is progressing slowly. This weekend I made four pretty successful pies for a dinner party. I still haven't quite figured out how thin crust joints like Grimaldi's and Lombardi's are able to stretch the same amount of dough that I use so thinly without tearing it. I think it just comes with a ton of practice. This video on Grub Street is actually pretty helpful--it shows how Totonno's (my favorite NY pizza spot) makes a pie. It's short and musical, so watch.