Culinary Resolutions for 2009

Our food blogger neighbors over at Cookography asked if we'd be interested in posting some culinary resolutions for '09.  Since this blog was borne out of our resolution a year ago to put our cooking magazines to use, we were excited to put together a list.

Here's what we're aiming for this year:

• Cook a whole fish -- We've never done it and it sounds like something we should know how to do, you know, in case we get stranded by a river or something.

• Buy foods with five or fewer ingredients -- Zach once heard someone say that when grocery shopping, they tried to not buy anything with more than five ingredients.  It's a handy guideline that will hopefully keep us from buying foods with too many chemicals.

• Make Beef Wellington -- We're not even sure we'd love the taste (Zach's not wild about mushrooms, and Clay doesn't care too much for pâté), but this just seems like a classic dish that would be so fulfilling to have made.

• Cook Indian food -- We absolutely love eating Indian food, but we've never prepared it ourselves. But armed with the great curries and spices Zach ordered with his birthday gift card, we're set!

• Don't let food go to waste -- We're too often guilty of buying food that we don't cook.

• Keep our knives sharp --We sharpened our knives just before Thanksgiving for the first time in a loooooong time.  It made such a difference to actually slice & dice with a sharp blade.

• User fewer paper towels -- This fall we tried to eliminate the majority of our paper towel usage. We still use them occasionally but far less than we did before. 

• Learn to make fresh pasta -- This is a perennial resolution for us.  It's going to happen in '09!

• Eat at least one vegetarian meal per week -- We. Love. To. Eat. Meat. But we could eat less, which would be better for us and the planet.  In his excellent New York Times open letter to the president-elect, Michael Pollan suggested that the first family observe one meatless day each week.  We're not yet up to a meatless day each week, but we'll start with at least one meatless meal.

• Eat more short ribs -- and that's what we'll be writing about next!

And for those of you who are curious about the photo, we ordered Chinese the other night and that was Clay's fortune. We're not quite sure what it means, but we're choosing to think it means something positive.

Comments

[Amy C]

Great resolutions!
Good luck on the Indian food one. I am an Indian food fanatic, and would eat it 24/7 if possible. I have tried, and tried, and TRIED, to make Indian food that is comparable to the kind I can get at the restaurant down the street. So far, I have only succeeded in making my house smell like burnt cumin seeds. Sigh.

Also, I started the meatless one last year, and it has been awesome. This year I am moving it up to two days, because we so enjoyed it. I also cut down on red meat to once every two weeks. We were perpetually shocked at how much money we ended up saving on groceries!
Have fun!

[Carl]

I highly recommend Suvir Saran's "Indian Home Cooking." I got it a couple years ago, and while I wouldn't quite say I'm cooking like a good Indian restaurant, I'd say it's pretty respectable.

I would also like to eat more short ribs, but I'm annoyed that they now cost an arm and a leg, now that they're popular with the foodie set. If I read one more article calling short ribs a "humble cut," I'm gonna scream.

[Zach @ The Bitten Word]

@ Carl -- Ha, ha! "Humble cut." You're right: SO annoying. And yes -- when we first started cooking short ribs four years ago, I SWEAR they cost, like, $2.00 apiece.

[maggie]

Good luck! and happy new years! These are great...I really, really want to make fresh pasta this year too!

[Robert]

Great resolutions for the New Year! For the Indian cooking, I would highly recommend any cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey. She makes Indian cuisine very easy to understand, and her recipes are wonderful. That reminds me, I need to dig out my copy of Indian Cooking and make something soon.

Fresh pasta is a revelation! I received pasta rollers for the Kitchen Aid last year, and they are lifesavers. I've tried several recipes for fresh pasta now, and Alice Waters' recipe in The Art of Simple Food is the best!

[Crystal]

Not buying foods with more than 5 ingredients is a great resolution. I may have to adopt that one myself!

[dp]

If you guys get stranded by a river, you'll have to know how to clean the fish as well :-)

There's nothing to cooking a whole fish. If you can cook a filet you can cook it whole. Once you do it, you'll wonder why you waited so long.

Eating more vegetarian meals is also a great resolution, one we are also trying.

Good luck with your resolutions and other endeavors in 2009!

[FoodieInDisguise]

Seek out Survir Suran's cookbooks on Indian dishes. He taught a class on Indian Foods when I was running the cooking school at Sur La Table in Arlington. He's a great chef and family too!

[Victoria]

I want to see the results of the Indian meals! And the vegetarian ones too. Good luck!

[gansie]

dudes - whole fish is awesome and really not that scary. try this:
http://www.endlesssimmer.com/2008/05/12/name-that-food/

[Barbara]

There is a great recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala in Cook's Illustrated. We think it is the Dec '07 issue. We make it often.

As for fresh pasta, go for it! I grew up making with with my Italian grandmother. We used the old fashion crank and it took some serious effort. Now I have the Kitchen Aid mixer attachment and it is so much easier. Raviolis can be frozen and used at a later date too.

Happy New Year!

[Beatrice]

I have had great success with Maya Kaimal's "Savoring the Spice Coast of India." She has a nice glossary of Indian ingredients, and her recipes are clearly written and result in really tasty food. The book offers a good selection of vegetarian dishes, as well as recipes involving seafood and chicken/beef/lamb. I'm putting photos of a meal I made from the book in for my URL.