Category: Chef Ben Cooks!

As our faithful readers know, Phil likes a good bargain. I always used to claim to be even thriftier, but the year that he was on sabbatical and cooked every meal was a real eye-opener. (You saw the big vats of vinegar, oil, and soy sauce in a post a few weeks ago.) The freezer…

The new week of meal planning in our household gears up Saturday morning. Ben rises early to begin a lobbying campaign for whatever he has set his heart on, but he has learned that subtlety is sometimes the most useful tool in his belt. Luckily, I am no longer so green that I can’t read…

Thank goodness Ben has not turned his back on mushrooms, because I wanted to try making homemade mushroom ravioli. It was quite a production, so when morale was flagging, I decided to use a fancy jar of morel sauce for serving. The result was excellent, so I intend to stock “morale sauce” for the next…

If there is one thing that will make Ben straighten up and fly right, it is the promise of good food. He was a model citizen on Saturday when we cooked together. This week, we made a shrimp tikka dish, homemade naan bread, and a cucumber salad. The bag of shrimp we pulled from the…

Ben requested Peruvian chicken, and that sounded great to us, especially since Wegmans carries a Peruvian marinade that bypasses the umpteen ingredients needed for a homemade version. We still made a “green sauce” from scratch, and blimey, it was limey! If you like limes (and we do) you can’t go wrong! Often we serve Peruvian…

This week, while donning his apron in preparation for cooking, I heard Ben mumble under his breath, “Passing gas. It’s what chefs do.”  “Nope. No, they don’t,” I answered, though he had not phrased it as a question, more of a slogan akin to, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” If you know Ben, you know…

Much like his father used to at his age, Ben tends to latch onto a phrase and overuse it until it has run its course. His current response to offers that don’t match his increasingly narrow idea of what he wants to eat or do is that he is “not interested.”  Last week, he picked…

What a grand world this would be if the hot dog and the reuben joined to live in harmony. Ben and I both love a good hot dog, but the weakness is often the bun. I guess the squishy white bread serves the purpose of keeping the mustard off your fingers, but nobody eats a…

I think Ben has been using this phrase for awhile, but I only recently picked up on it. Personally, I think foreminding falls somewhere between reminding and forewarning. In some cases, Ben makes up words for the sake of efficiency (cheddar + shredded cheese = shredder) but a word like foreminding offers a subtlety in…