How To Make Mashed Cauliflower, Because It Goddamn Tastes Great

This article originally appeared on October 12, 2013. I'm republishing it today because I went on an insane cauliflower kick this week, and also for the lesser reason that I couldn't find good ingredients for what I wanted to cook. If you're looking for something especially St. Patrick's Day-ish, put some chopped… » 3/14/15 1:10pm Yesterday 1:10pm

How To Make Arrabbiata Sauce, The Angriest, Loveliest Sauce Of All

Picture, in your mind, a mundane interaction between any two regular, essentially happy Italian people. One purchasing a packet of chewing gum from the other, for example. Can you picture it? The screaming, the wild gesticulating, the red faces, the flashing whites of crazed eyes and bared teeth, the elaborate… » 2/28/15 12:20pm 2/28/15 12:20pm

How To Make Soft-Boiled Eggs: A Minute To Learn, Two Minutes To Master

The weird thing about soft-boiled eggs is the widespread misconception that they're so much trickier to make than their hard-boiled brethren. Done right, they're really not much trickier at all. Easier than stuffing 1,200 words of padding into an instructional blog post about making them, that's for damn sure! » 2/21/15 12:00pm 2/21/15 12:00pm

How To Cook Valentine's Day Dinner, Like You Damn Well Should

The first thing to know about cooking for Valentine's Day is that the list of occasion-appropriate food preparations you'll find below was made in consultation with a woman, the only blemish on whose otherwise immaculate record of good taste and judgment is her baffling and indefensible decision to marry an unkempt… » 2/14/15 1:00pm 2/14/15 1:00pm

How To Cook A Bunch Of Good Food For The Super Bowl Party

So the Super™ Bowl® is here, and that means some sucker—maybe even you!—will be hosting a Super™ Bowl® party which they will feel weirdly obligated to refer to as a "Big Game" party, because the NFL likes to sue people for liking it. You will have to bring something to this shindig—especially if you are hosting… » 1/31/15 12:37pm 1/31/15 12:37pm

Meet Your Ultimate Super Bowl Snack: Nacho Cheese Doritos

Holy cow bells, what a contest! Voting was neck and neck virtually throughout the entire Finals of our Ultimate Super Bowl Snack Playoffs, with Nacho Cheese Doritos maintaining only the barest of leads. In the end, the neon orange chips stayed scrappy and took it all, with 107 more votes than tough competitor… » 1/30/15 3:00pm 1/30/15 3:00pm

How To Bake Bay Scallops, And Prove That Size Isn't Everything

Seems like bay scallops get kind of a raw deal, doesn't it? At my local purveyor of seafoods, the big honkin' fist-sized sea scallops get a place of honor in the glass display case, while the bay scallops are stuck over in the freezer across the way, packed by the dozens into grim plastic bags, frozen, largely… » 1/24/15 11:35am 1/24/15 11:35am

Round 2 Of The Ultimate Super Bowl Snack Playoffs Starts NOW! Vote!

Cheese & Crackers very nearly pulled off a huge upset. The 8-seed, matched up against football snack staple Nacho Cheese Doritos, was almost left off the bracket entirely because your bracketeer thought it perhaps a touch too bougie for this exercise. Which is insane, when you consider that the same bracketeer… » 1/21/15 2:00pm 1/21/15 2:00pm

The Bullshit King-Making of Local 'Best Of' Lists

Big-name chef Patrick O'Connell made some news this week with a passive-aggressive swipe at Washingtonian magazine, D.C.'s foremost upper-crust see-and-be-seen monthly chronicle of How The Wealthy Live In Our Nation's Capitol. O'Connell is a blustery fart-bag, and his restaurant is a far-flung capital-D… » 1/08/15 3:21pm 1/08/15 3:21pm

How To Roast Butternut Squash, Which Is Phallic And Fantastic

There's the versatility of, say, a boneless, skinless chicken breast—it tastes bland and uninteresting pretty much no matter what you do with it, so it "goes" with everything, like gustatory khaki—and then there's the versatility of the butternut squash, which is so outrageously goddamn good that you could wrap it in… » 1/03/15 1:36pm 1/03/15 1:36pm