Sorry

Sorry I've neglected the blog. I'm on vacation for the next two weeks, but check in after August 18th for more exciting news from the Beet.

Pizza Party

At this risk of boring you with more of my pizza-making exploits, I need to give a shout out to my friend Erin over at NY Cookery. She's going around Brooklyn cooking people's favorite homemade dish with them, and then documenting via text and visuals. The result is a nice cross-section of the BK kitchen scene. She recently stopped by my pad so I could impart a little of the pizza-making wisdom I've accrued these past few months.

(Photo courtesy of Erin Patinkin)

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.

Take that, Hippies!

As a cheesehead through and through, I've got no love for the California cheesemakers who are trying to dethrone Wisco as the king of the cheese states. So I'm glad to see that Saveur is showing some love to the men and women keeping the Dairy State tradition strong. I haven't tried any of the cheeses featured in the piece, but let me know if you have and what you thought.

Schmo-ish to Pro-ish

I fancy myself someone who knows his way around a backyard grill. If you've tasted my grilled sausages, or my headless pig cooked in a box (NSFV--not safe for vegetarians), you might concur. But I don't know jack-squat about real BBQ--that is the variety that takes 8 hours in a smoker, not 20 minutes on a grill. So Metromix sent me off to talk to some real BBQ pros--click here to find out what I learned and impress your aunt, sister, and baby mama this memorial day with your 'cue knowledge.