I first ate nasi goreng in the late seventies, when I worked as a research assistant at a Washington think tank. I had been befriended by one of the secretaries, a wonderful Dutch lady who had lived an exotic and harrowing life: raised in Indonesia before World War II, she spent her teenage years in a Japanese internment camp in unimaginably horrible circumstances. Later, as an adult, she lived in Saudi Arabia with her husband and children, where one afternoon […]
There’s nothing like a 250-year old recipe to be really…disappointing. Our ideas about great food change with time. We have so many more food choices today, ingredient options that the founding fathers and mothers wouldn’t have had, and such a varied range of cuisines that have altered and opened the American palate that finding a historic recipe and making it work for modern tastes requires some adaptation. This recipe for Martha Washington’s crab soup would have been considered an elegant […]
I’ve been making these chicken potpies since my girls were little, and, over the years, I started getting special requests for the fillings in the pies. My husband wanted extra peas and pearl onions but no potatoes, one daughter is allergic to carrots, another liked the original version, and it became fun, and a special treat, to ‘customize’ the potpies. I marked the top of each with the initial of the person whose pie it was using a small cookie […]
Lyndon Johnson had a good grasp of the perils of the presidency. He once said, “Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but stand there and take it.” There probably hasn’t been a president who didn’t feel the same way. Johnson’s extraordinary grasp of the art of legislating made him one of the most consequential presidents of modern times. He came into office with a nation in shock and mourning, and presided over […]
It’s time to redress the excesses of the past few weeks with some clean eating! I find most veggie burgers disappointing; they either lack texture or lack taste, and you can’t fake it by adding barbecue sauce to the mix. Here’s a veggie burger that I can get on board with – the trick comes from SeriousEats.com (thank you!): they roast the black beans in the oven before assembling the burger. This takes the moisture (and hence the mushiness) out […]
