What Thanksgiving Day is complete without potatoes? Boiled, mashed, roasted, and puréed, sweet or savory, rare will be the Thanksgiving feast that lacks one or more of these varieties. Like the turkey, also a New World endemic species, potatoes are certain to have made a vital contribution to the Pilgrims’ diet on their arrival to […]
Three rabbis walk into a bar… -coding lab. I had received the worried call from Rabbi Chaim Loike of the Orthodox Union only a few days before. Increasingly of late, congregants had been reporting worms in their fish – mostly canned sardines and fish eggs – notwithstanding that all had been certified as Kosher Pareve
Biotechnology, barcoding and dag (דג) DNA: is it kosher? Read More »
I can’t be the only one who’s done this, so I do not pretend that what follows is definitive. However, I am a decent cook, and I quietly pride myself on something close to what insecure musicians brag about when claiming “perfect pitch” – for me, it’s taste. What’s more, I am genome biologist, and
To Impossible and Beyond! Read More »
TRIGGER WARNING: This post has pictures of delicious animal meat. So, I’ve been “cooking for one” for about half of my time these last 2 weeks. That “one” being me, of course. “Cooking for one” can be a form of self care – a reason for being, and a place to focus positive energy. It
Self care in cooking for one: a burger build Read More »
What was that big empty orange thing we carved up this year for Hallowe’en? One might be forgiven for calling it a “pumpkin,” were it not devoid of any pumpkin flavor. After all, it was grown in a pumpkin patch, sold as a pumpkin, carved, rotted and tossed like millions of other pumpkins. Close to
A patch for the kabocha pumpkin Read More »
Mark SiddallOctober 28, 2020 What is a dumpling? Or really, what isn’t a dumpling? There seems to be no necessary or sufficient condition that defines “dumpling”. The dropped-into-soup dumplings of my suburban Canadian childhood are not the exquisite mouth bombs I know from Taipei as “soup dumplings”. Indeed, quite opposite as to which-side-of-what the soup
Chicken Stew with Dumplings Read More »
Mark Siddall, October 27, 2020 Chicken stock is where the culinary arts meet the dark arts. Stock-making is the sole remaining prefecture of an ancient and occult science. Alchemy is now derided for having sought to convert base metals like lead and tin into gold or silver. Alchemy’s successor, Chemistry, didn’t manage that either. It
Taking stock. A prologue to chicken and dumplings. Read More »
Mark Siddall – October 27, 2020(~ 5 min read) Last night, the boy asked for chicken stew for dinner. It’s pretty rare that he has the foresight to contemplate dinner a day in advance. As a result of that, and the fact that he has never liked soup, I was curious. I pressed for more
Chicken and dumplings preamble… rip out the spine! Read More »
Mark Siddall – October 11, 2020 While filming Yellowbeard on location in Mexico, on December 2, 1982, Marty Feldman was discovered dead in his hotel room at age 48. Feldman was a comedy writer genius who burst on the British television scene with his bulging, misaligned eyes in “At Last the 1948 Show” with Graham
Did a corrupt crustacean fell Feldman? Read More »
