3.26.2006
for tom's birthday
It's my friend Tom's birthday this weekend, and in his honor, I give you two things. The first involves slow-cooking and tasty bacon. The second involves Prince. What more could you ask for?
I've scanned in this recipe as a pdf, so you can print it out. It's truly great winter-time food, but since it's still too cold out, I don't think you have to wait until next winter to make it. Here are some of my notes on the recipe:
- It's very important to use a good pan for the browning of the bacon, onions, and beef. By "good" I mean heavy and non-non-stick. (A "stick pan"?) Spoons and I have been discussing what the right pan would be - I think something like this ridiculously-on-sale calphalon pan would be perfect for the stove top and oven, Spoons says you should do the stove top stuff in a skillet, deglaze it, and then combine everything in something else for the oven part, like a stock pot. Go with whatever you've got.
- "Imported dark beer" is Guinness, or some other lovely stout or porter (not too bitter)
- Beware. This recipe takes frickin' forever, Mr. Bigglesworth. Hours. Like... 3 or 4. Cubing meat/chopping onions takes longer than you think, then browning the beef takes a while if you do it right, then there's 1.5 hours of oven-time on top of that. If you're going to have this after a day of skiing (as suggested by the authors) you better make it the night before.
The recipe's from a book by some of my all-time-favorite cookbook authors, Rosso & Lukins. It comes from the Silver Palate cookbook. I also highly recommend their New Basics book as well -- New Basics is probably the one I would buy first. They are easy to come by used, often for a dollar or two. (But don't you guys buy them, Tom and Laura... they might be on the way to your house already...) There's some sentimental attachment for me, since New Basics is really the first cookbook I learned to cook from in college, but I think the recipes are really solid, and range from complicated ones with weird ingredients to plain old, easy good stuff, like salsa and guacamole.
And! Didn't I promise you something related to his purple-shiny-ness, Prince? Yes, I did. Thanks to Jordi for this post: Prince Made Us Have Sex, since she couldn't have written a better story for Tom if she had known him personally. The page is technically "safe for work," I think, but you may want some time alone afterwards.
In case you were wondering:
I still haven't managed to leave: Pittsburgh
Sometime very soon I'll be flying to: Chicago
If I could choose Flight or Invisibility, I would choose: Flight, in a second. What does that say about me? John Hodgman will tell you on This American Life's Superpowers episode. (soooo good!)
