Today’s Ben’s Day Wednesday is brought to you by lemons. We found ourselves at the tail end of a grocery cycle, but with careful use of what we had on hand in our fridge, pantry, and freezer, we were able to pull off a pretty good meal. Every dish we made today featured lemons: Caesar…
Category: Chef Ben Cooks!
Sweet Soy-Braised Pork
This week we adapted a recipe from Christopher Kimball’s cookbook, Milk Street Tuesday Nights. These days, we use what we have, and a giant pork shoulder was the meat on offer at Wegmans. I cut off pieces for this recipe before slow-cooking the rest of the pork shoulder to use in various ways throughout the…
Shake it Off!
Corona Blues gotcha down? Follow Ben’s lead, and adhere to Taylor Swift’s advice to “Shake it Off!” Ben wanted to play this video from the fall while we cooked tonight. I think his desire to reminisce came from a chance meeting outside (at a safe social distance, of course) with Cate and her parents. We…
Grill and Chill
Now that May is upon us, we decided it is time to start using the grill more often. We made this salad (that I am calling “Grill and Chill Salad” because it sounds hip) for the first time a few weeks ago, and Ben gobbled it up like it was his last supper, so he…
Chicken Vindaloo and Homemade Naan
Usually, when we make naan (an Indian flatbread), we make chicken tikka masala to go with it, but this week, we decided to try something new – chicken vindaloo. Huge bonus – chicken vindaloo is fun to say. For days, Ben has been looking forward to this and asking, “What are we making for Ben’s…
Taco Party!!!
Though strictly speaking, these were not tacos, and it wasn’t a party, it was the best Mexican food we’ve had in awhile! The definition of “taco” seems to have morphed or expanded since I was a kid, and I would call what we had burritos, because they were on soft flour tortillas instead of crunchy…
The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow – So why are you making me bike in the rain?
Our world food tour wrapped up in India. Chef Ben will tell you he’s “not a big fan” of Indian food, but from a pandemic point of view, curried lentil tomato and coconut soup is the perfect dish, because nearly everything can be found in the pantry. Luckily, Chef Ben is always willing to pitch…
“Let Them Eat Cake!”
Next stop on the world food tour: France. In these weird limbo days where we walk a balance beam between boredom and stress, normalcy and the extraordinary, family and sanity, togetherness and loneliness, zoom conferencing and corona hair, when we are all having a shared experience alone, I acknowledge that sometimes you just have to…
Next Stop on World Food Tour – Ethiopia
When we lived in Bloomington, Indiana in the early 90s, there was an Ethiopian restaurant called Ashenda, that offered me my first taste of Ethiopian food. I was hooked from my very first bite, and I’ve been trying to recreate the experience any way I can since then. From the smell of simmering wat (meat…
World Food Tour with Chef Ben – First Stop, Vietnam!
Need a cure for the cooped up blues? Follow Chef Ben this week as he cooks and eats his way through five countries. Phil and I love ethnic food, and we exposed the kids to it from an early age. One of my gimmicks when the kids were little was to make them little passports,…