- Ways of smoking meat. It's fun, easy hobby with endless room for creativity, and delicious food.
- He reminds us of the always-handy digital meat thermometer
- My Paris-trained chef friend says that canned or jarred Cassoulet au confit de canard is better than you will ever have time to make. Says it is dee-licious. Recommends the brand with the rooster. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, heat up in oven until it begins to bubble, then some chopped parsley and it's ready.
- Does adding pasta water really matter? With some other excellent tips about pasta.
- Pasta with tuna roe. I had this in Sicily. Very pleasant. Nice with some squirts of lemon on it. I'd guess the best place to get that dried tuna roe is online, like so many good things.
- Sicilian classic primi: Pasta con Sarde. Sarde, sardines, are pretty much the same critter that we often call anchovies in the US, but not the canned brown overly-intense salted variety that most people (not me) hate on pizza. The dish is best with fresh sardine/anchovies, which you can find in some stores, or canned Italian sardines without the tomato. When I was a lad doing manual labor with mostly black and hispanic guys during summers, our favorite sandwich was sardines and onion slices with some mayo, on a hard roll. Maybe a leaf or two of lettuce.
- Another easy Sicilian one, ubiquitous in Sicily - Pasta alla Norma. You can use whatever type of pasta you like for that.
