Ham Sandwich Indicted!

It's the holiday season, kids...the time of year to dig out old traditions, dust off old recipes, and wax poetic about the past.  Unexpectedly smacked by a wave of nostalgia, this past weekend I channeled the ghost of my paternal grandmother, Bertha, and busted out a classic German cookie recipe.  We called them "German S Cookies" and after searching the Internet for recipes, apparently so does everyone else...I guess it goes to the practicality of the German mindset. They're not much more than a basic shortbread, with the addition of egg yolks and lemon zest, but it's their simplicity that makes them so enjoyable. They're just slightly sweetened, the sort of cookie you can graze on absentmindedly while enjoying some eggnog at a holiday party. As far as I can tell, the "s" shape might relate to similar cookies called  Spritzgebäck   that are made with a cookie press and shaped into random letters/shapes. One recipe ( this one), refers to them ...

Brunch. That amazing combination of breakfast (eggs a million ways, waffles, sausage gravy) and lunch (Bloody Marys) that is situated just late enough in the day that you don't have to set an alarm to get to it on time.  Fancy or casual, eggs Benedict or eggs over easy, it's easily tailored to suit your mood (or degree of hangover).  If you're a brunch fan--and seriously, who isn't?--the talented (and wonderfully dedicated to a cause) Nick Dekker just published a spectacular book ( Breakfast with Nick , natch) on all the great places in Columbus to get your breakfast (and by proxy, brunch) fix. He does an excellent job covering everything from greasy spoons, to doughnut shops, to upscale brunches.  If you love breakfast, you should totally buy this book--it's an excellent reference guide, showcasing off the beaten path holes-in-the-wall as well as classic standbys. Reading it on an empty stomach will make you very, very hungry. ...Anyway, while Nick has...

What exactly is a marshmallow? We toss them in hot chocolate, melt them into Rice Krispie treats, and top our sweet potato casseroles with them.  They're obviously made with (a lot) of sugar, but what else gives them that soft, melty-chewy texture?  And can you make them at home?  (The answer to that last one is an unequivocal 'yes.') Per Wikipedia (and other assorted websites), the marshmallow first appeared in ancient Egypt, where Egyptians used sap extracted from the marsh-growing mallow plant ( Althaea officinalis ) to create a type of candy; in the Middle Ages they used it medicinally   to soothe sore throats. The French later used the sap in combination with whipped egg whites and sugar to produce a meringue called   pâte de guimauve,   but it was apparently very labor intensive to whip to the desired consistency.  Sometime in the 1800s, producers determined that they could use gelatin mixed with corn starch to get to the right chewy/fluff...

For this past weekend's adventure, I headed east to Newark, OH with my equally adventuresome brother to partake in some honey extracting.  Out in God's Country, in a garage heated up to 90 or so degrees by a wood-burning stove, I met the incredibly informative and entertaining Aaron Kirkingburg and his assorted  family members.  Aside from an extensive knowledge of hunting, fishing, and trapping, Aaron's been keeping bees since he was a kid, and was happy to show this wanna-be homesteader what goes into a honey harvest.  For the record, it's a lot of work, and the amount of honey collected is entirely dependent on the weather, other natural elements (predators, parasites), and the temperament of the bees themselves. The whole art of beekeeping is another story entirely, so I'm just going to focus on the process used to extract the honey from the honeycombs.  When my brother and I arrived at the Kirkingburg farm, Aaron had already star...

Cleveland is home to a great many awesome things.  Lake Erie. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Great Lakes Brewery's Christmas Ale.  A bunch of fabulous restaurants (Greenhouse Tavern, anything by Michael Symon). The Flats. (Eh, maybe not so much that last one...it's not 1995.).  It's also the hometown of Michael Ruhlman, writer, chef, and general food-lover. Maybe you've heard of Ruhlman because you watch No Reservations with chef/global traveler Anthony Bourdain...they're friends, and Bourdain frequently mentions Ruhlman on his show. Maybe you've seen him as a judge on Iron Chef, or maybe you've actually read a couple of his books. Ruhlman started out writing non-fiction books on a variety of topics ( all-boys high schools , wooden boat building ) but began spending more of his time focusing on food after he did a stint at the Culinary Institute of America, then wrote about it in The Making of a Chef . Fourteen years and several more food-related books...

Every Sunday evening, I get together with my sister and brother-in-law for dinner and some HBO viewing at what they've deemed "Sunday Night Wind Down."  They've been hosting the Wind Down almost every week for the last several years, as they've moved from New York to Philadelphia to Columbus.  It's an ideal way to start the week/end the weekend, especially since my bro-in-law also loves to cook and we work rather well together in the kitchen. The soundtrack for our kitchen work varies from "This American Life" episodes to '90s  hip-hop to obscure indie bands, depending on who is DJing. Wine and microbrews flow, several hunks of cheese get eaten while we're cooking, and we'll then troop into the living room to eat and catch up on the lives of the Stackhouses, Atlantic City gangsters, or the Starks of Winterfell. Because the sibs and I both have CSA shares, we've got a lot of vegetables at our disposal, and it can be a challenge to ...

It's damn near impossible (at least for me) to take a picture of braised meat that looks half way decent, but you'll just have to trust that it tastes amazing. Beef cheeks, you ask?  Are those what I think they are? Yes, they are on-the-face-cheeks, not rear-end-cheeks.  They're a tough, fat and sinew-marbled piece of meat, and are surprisingly big, as evidenced below: Big hunks of meat, huh? (And that's just two.) Anyway, somewhere along the way I read an article about beef cheeks and decided to give them a go.  After talking to the fine folks at Bluescreek Farms , I pre-ordered a "bunch" of cheeks and picked them up a week later...A bunch turned out to be about five and a half pounds for $18.  A pretty good bargain, I'd say.  I took home my bag o'cheeks and surfed the internet for ideas. (Not happening: The French Laundry's "Tongue in Cheek" --not because I'm anti-tongue, but I was really not interested in a three day project....