©2008 Harry Kenney

What we have here essentially is a Spanish Oxtail Stew featuring Root Vegetables. Not only is it a dish eaten in the south of Spain, but this is a dish that transcends not only geography, but also social classes and time itself. With a few variations this dish could have been eaten in close to this form not only a few hundred years ago, but also two thousand years ago, and even nine millennia ago. Talk about getting in touch with the earth and roots huh? So how did I decide to do this exact dish?

Having done so many Italian and Italian-American recipes lately I’ve felt a great need for change. And a desire to let my taste buds, if not my actual personage, travel to some different distant lands. It was an episode of Dinner: Impossible that got me interested in trying out oxtails. I find it in some ways humorous and in many ways delightful when poor people’s food or “peasant food” becomes trendy cuisine.

Read the rest of this entry »

As with meat loaf, I have several different ways to make beef stew, depending upon my mood du jour. Actually the ways are not all that different, so maybe variants or “slight variations” would be the more correct phrase. But this one is pretty much what I would consider the “master” verion.

There are so many great things about stews. Number one is they turn any tough meat into delicious meat. Second they bring together so many wonderful things — meat, vegetables, herbs, sometimes wine — into this well amazing orchestra, basically. For what is an orchestra but something which at times you hear (in this case taste) all the individual elements, and yet they also work in harmony with each other Kill me for saying this, but it’s music for your mouth and your stomach

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m noticing as time goes on and, especially with pasta dishes, when you interchange different ingredients, it becomes tougher and tougher to come up with the actual names of the recipes. To me, my short-hand for this dish is “Chicken Z-and-Z” for Zuccini and Ziti. Of course if I actually named it that, you would be going “huh?” and either turn away. Or maybe it would conversely grab your attention. But you surely wouldn’t know what it was until — and if — you started looking closely. And if you were specifically looking for a chicken and squash pasta dish, you might not find it here either.

No wonder Rachel Ray and others come up with crazy names after a while for things. I mean I love pasta simply because you can put sooooo many different ingredients, meats, seafood, proteins and veggies in it. And then the number of sauces as well are staggering. But then with all those mixes and matches, naming does become difficult.

Read the rest of this entry »

Taken straight from Wikipedia: “Mirepoix is the French name for a combination of onions, carrots and celery […] is the flavor base for a wide number of dishes, such as stocks, soups, stews and sauces. […] Traditionally, the ratio for mirepoix is 2:1:1 of onions, celery, and carrots.”

So today’s magic number, ladies and gentlemen, is 2-1-1. Though I find that can be confusing (believe it or not, at times). So maybe a better way is thinking 1 and half and half … one part onions, and the combination of half carrots and half celery. So 2-1-1 or 1-.5-.5, whichever works for you. How to remember which item gets the “2″? Think of “OCC”, of onions, carrots, celery, in that order.

Read the rest of this entry »

If I say I’m making some homemade Chinese food tonight and I’m using yellow onion and button mushrooms, is your first thought “that’s not authentic Chinese food”?

Good chance you might think that. Sometimes I stop and think that myself. Which gets me to even more thinking. Namely: what is Chinese food as compared to what is Chinese-American food?

Read the rest of this entry »