I love roasted garlic, Sweet, nutty, caramelized goodness. But it can be a hassle.

A great bowl of pho is one of the most magical foods on the planet. I don't know where it gets its restorative powers from, but if you're feeling physically out of whack, even a pretty good bowl of pho will work wonders.

As you may recall, I made a batch of berbere a while back for Ethiopian drumsticks. Having some left over, I was doing some research and found this Eating Well recipe for a chicken and red lentil stew that seemed like a great winter dish. And since it's still winter here....

Yes, it's April. Yes, I cooked and ate things in March. And accumulated things. And now that a variety of energy-sapping things have cleared up, it's time to tell you about them.

So, two Sundays ago, I applied my fried chicken learning and my new electric skillet to the task of making another batch of Alton Brown's fried chicken. I am honing in on the technique and tools.

For a few years now, my brother has hinted/suggested/ordered that one of these years, I should make him Alton Brown's fried chicken for his birthday. I had demurred, because of completely incorrect memories of how complicated it was.

But this year I'm going to do it. And it's not bad at all, really. An overnight soak in buttermilk, a shake of seasoning, a dusting of flour, twelve minutes in a pound of shortening, flip, twelve more minutes. I did a practice run last night to work some of the kinks out, as I generally have trouble with frying, and learned some important things.

Right. I am writing the fucking smoked salmon post. It's been almost a month at this point, and it is long past time to write the smoked salmon post, because I made my own smoked salmon. As part of the Summer Of Smoking.

Another indication of the insane time is that I have been awful at documentation. Normally, if I were to make gyros from motherfucking scratch, meaning I start the morning with a leg of lamb and some greek yogurt and end up with gyros for dinner, there would be a ton of pictures. But there aren't, because I had the time and energy to make them, but not document them.

A few notes from the weekend:

AREPA UPDATE:

After I made a dozen of the thin arepas, I froze eight of them. THis weekend, I tried popping a couple of them in the toaster like toaster waffles, and in a glorious success, they came out near-fresh. Drizzled with butter an honey, they were nice, but now I really want to make a hot pepper jam.

AMERICAN PIE:

This strip mall pizza joint was competent without being special, but the damndest thing happened duirng a wait for the check that, if I'm gonna be honest, was insanely fucking long.

So, yeah. Arepas.

I make no bones about the fact that when I taste something good at a restaurant, it inspires me to make it myself. Two years ago, World Street Kitchen's banh mi got me totally into Vietnamese sandwiches. Still am, in fact. Just started another jar of pickled radishes and carrots for future sandwich toppings.