Shrimp scampi

Even though about five people read it, I had been updating this blog every day like a good blogger. I fell off the wagon a month ago after my trip to Portland, Oregon, where I ate such delicious foods at each meal that I became overwhelmed by the prospect of documenting them. I still plan to do so without too much more delay, but today I'll ease back into posting with something simple. Even people who don't cook should learn to make this dish. It's a universal pleaser, and hardly anything could be easier.

1. Cook a pound of spaghetti al dente in lots of heavily salted water and drain, reserving a little of the pasta water. Meanwhile, peel and devein a pound of shrimp and sprinkle with salt.

2. Peel and chop half a head of garlic and half a bunch of Italian parsley. Heat a swirl of olive oil and a large knob of butter in a large saute pan, then add the garlic, half the parsley and a bit of salt. Saute until it releases its aroma, being careful not to burn. Turn the heat down to medium-low, add the shrimp and a dash of white wine and saute until just pink. Squeeze with the juice of half a lemon.

3. Add the pasta to the pan, tossing well and moistening with reserved pasta water if needed. Stir in the rest of the parsley and a generous dash of red pepper flakes and serve.

Pork slivers with sweet fermented paste (jing jiang rou si)

I know, its name is so appealing. But that's the translation Fuchsia Dunlop gives to this rustic Sichuanese stir-fry, which turned out so pleasantly mild that I'll cook it up next time we host chilliphobes. The key ingredient is sweet bean paste, found in the mysterious jar aisle of any Chinese grocery.

1. Cut 12 ounces of boneless pork loin into thin slices and then into long, thin slivers, ideally about 1/8 thick. Place in a bowl with 2 tsp. cornstarch, 2 tsp. cold water, and 1 tsp. Shaoxing rice wine and stir in one direction to combine.

2. Cut the whites of 4 scallions into 4-inch sections and then lengthwise into fine slivers. Dilute 5 tsp. Sichuanese sweet bean paste with 1 T. of water to give it a runny consistency.

3. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 tsp. sugar, 1/2 tsp. soy sauce and 2 T. chicken stock.

4. Heat 1/4 cup peanut oil over high, swirl in a bit of oil, and stir-fry the pork briskly. After a minute or two, when the slivers have separated and are becoming pale, push them to one side of the wok and let the oil run to the other side. Place the sweet bean paste in the space you have created and stir-fry for 10-20 seconds. Then tilt the wok back to normal, mix the paste with the pork slivers, and add the soy sauce mix. Stir well, turn onto a serving plate, and garnish with the scallion slivers.

John and I are off to Portland, OR tomorrow, so watch this space for our yummiest finds.

Genghis Khan beef

This colorful stir-fry adapted from Grace Young's cookbook packs a nice spicy punch. I've found that trimmed chuck steak turns out excellently in stir-fries. Commonly used in braising, this inexpensive cut has enough intramuscular fat to stay tender in the hot wok.

1. Cut 12-16 ounces of beef into 1-inch cubes. In a medium bowl, combine 1 tsp. each of dark soy sauce and light soy sauce. Add the beef, stir to coat, and marinate while you prepare the other ingredients.

2. Thinly slice a bunch of garlic cloves and pull the stems off 6 red Thai chillis. Slice the whites of 8-10 scallions into 2-inch pieces and cut a few of the green sections into slivers for garnish.

3. In a small bowl, combine 2 T. hoisin sauce, 1 T. sambal olek, and 1 tsp. sesame oil.

4. Heat a wok over high and swirl in a bit of oil. Add the beef, spreading it evenly in the wok, and let it cook undisturbed for a minute to begin to brown. Then stir-fry the beef 1-2 minutes until just browned all over and transfer to a plate.

5. Wipe the wok with a paper towel and swirl in a bit more oil. Add the garlic and chillis and stir-fry a few seconds until fragrant. Add the scallion whites and stir-fry another minute. Return the beef to the wok, add the hoisin mixture and stir-fry 30 seconds. Turn onto a plate, garnish with the scallion greens, and serve with steamed rice.

Banana bread

I don't bake. We don't have any of the equipment (stand mixer, beaters, pans) and I don't really enjoy sweets, certainly not enough to justify the calories. Also, I'm not very good. I just can't muster the precision and attention to detail good baking requires. But when friends Kate and Tim crashed here for the night, I figured I could muster a simple quickbread. Or so I thought, until I absentmindedly dumped the sugar in with the flour rather than creaming it with the butter. Once this little mishap was sorted, it actually ended up pretty good.

This is based on the Banana Banana Bread recipe from allrecipes.com, which is apparently a popular standard with 5,000 reviews and 80,000 saves. Wow.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly butter a 9x5 loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, mix 2 c. flour, 1 tsp. baking soda and a pinch of salt. In a medium bowl, mash 5-7 ripe or overripe bananas.

3. In a third largish bowl, cream together 1 stick of butter and 3/4 cup brown sugar (or less if your bananas are superripe). Stir in the mashed bananas and 2 beaten eggs. Shake in whatever appropriate spices you have: in my case, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

4. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture until just moistened. Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes until a butter knife comes out clean.

Drumsticks with caramelized onions

This was the dinner I made the night we got our cat. He was still a little shy, but kept trying to jump into my lap during dinner. I didn't give him any because onions are bad for cats. He jumps in my lap all the time now, so I'll never know if it was because he smelled chicken.

Adapted from Grace Young's Breath of a Wok:

1. Slice one onion and a few scallions. Thinly slice a few garlic cloves and mince a piece of ginger.

2. Heat a wok until smoking, then swirl in a bit of oil. Add the garlic, ginger and onion, season with salt and white pepper, and stir-fry over medium heat 4-5 minutes until light golden. Transfer to a plate.

3. Add a little more oil to the wok, then add 6 or so chicken drumsticks, spreading them evenly in the wok. Pan-fry 20-25 minutes over medium heat, turning the drumsticks until browned on all sides and the chicken is cooked through.

4. Add the cooked onions, the scallions, 2 T. oyster sauce, and a drizzle of sesame oil, stirring over low heat until well combined. Serve with white rice.

Pioneer Woman v. Thomas Keller

In this Slate article, Jennifer Reese pits two cooks offering folksy homestyle recipes against one another: the Oklahoma populist Ree Drummond, aka Pioneer Woman, and elite restaurateur Thomas Keller. Drummond buys Reddi-wip; Keller makes his own salad croutons from home-baked brioche. Reese cooks a dinner of fried chicken, biscuits, mashed potatoes, salad and pineapple upside-down cake from each of their cookbooks.

Since Keller's Ad Hoc at Home is my current coffee table book, I was interested in the results of this little cookoff. Predictably, Keller's recipes take more work but yield food a thousand times better. Unfortunately, Reese is the only one who notices; her husband and kids are oblivious. Her son says Keller's garlicky mashed potatoes taste "weird," favoring Pioneer Woman's spuds made with cream cheese. Fried chicken is fried chicken, says the boneheaded husband, who actually prefers the saccharine stickiness of canned pineapple to Keller's fresh-fruit version. Reese concludes that Keller's is the superior book, but the one she needs is the one that helps her put a "good enough" dinner on the table.

I say: Why bother cooking if you're only going for good enough? Frying chicken and baking biscuits is a mess whatever shortcuts you take, so instead of settling for Drummond's chicken that tastes like KFC, you might as well go out and get a bucket for $9.99. Thomas Keller's fried chicken may be my next cooking experiment.

Tupelo

I had really good memories of our trip to this Southern restaurant shortly after it opened in Cambridge's Inman Square a year ago. The place was nearly empty and we stayed for a few hours, trying practically everything on the menu, most notably the jambalaya of the day and a wonderful catfish entree.

After we went to visit our new cat in his foster home near Inman a couple weeks ago, we decided to celebrate the impending adoption with a return trip to Tupelo. A year has obviously treated the place well, as we had a 30-40 minute wait for a table. We passed the time in the charming back parlor with watermelon sangria and great beer from Abita, a Louisiana brewer making a comeback after its facilities were damaged in Hurricane Katrina.

Starters were the bourbon jalapeno ribs and the awesome fried oysters with pickles and remoulade, followed by a big bowl of gumbo and the catfish over collards and cheddar grits. Sorry, catfish not pictured — went in my belly too fast.