Chefs
Hi, we are Bryan and Jessie - a recently married couple who enjoys cooking at home, eating at our favorite local restaurants, and trying new restaurants and recipes. We also have two pets - Brew, a black lab, and Alton Brown, a domestic shorthair.
Foods we couldn't live without: blue cheese, potatoes, gin, popcorn, garlic and butter
Number of cookbooks we own: 57 and counting
Favorite kitchen tools: Shun knives, Le Creuset cookware
For more information, click here.
Techniques Archive
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Spicy lemongrass potstickers
Potstickers are really easy to make at home and the end result is far superior to anything that comes frozen from the grocery store (although we’re using pre-made potsticker wrappers, you can also make the wrappers from scratch and we have in the past. Google the recipe for the wrappers, it’s just flour and water). [...] -
Grilled pizza perfection
We’ve been on an ongoing quest to determine what method (apart from a wood-fired oven at 800 degrees, which we don’t have) will produce the best thin-crust pizza. We want cracker-crispy crust, perfectly heated and melted toppings, and the rustic, smoky flavor we get from the best pizzerias. Pizza is meant to be baked in [...] -
Sauteed asparagus with poached egg
I was home sick from work today and Jessie was busy with work, but we still needed to eat. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), we cook from scratch every night, so we don’t have a cache of frozen pizzas for such an occasion. Of course, with a little bit of thought, even a simple vegetable dish [...] -
Grills just wanna have fun
Summer feels like it’s here, so we’ve been itching to spend more time on the back deck with our beloved grill. Sadly, the photo isn’t of our grill or our backyard — we shot it at a house party in Aspen hosted by Mario Batali — but it doesn’t matter what kind of grill you [...] -
Veggies on the Grill and Radishes Two Ways
After what seems like the longest winter in history, we’ve been able to enjoy our grill back-to-back weekends. Last weekend, we tested some recipes for Third Coast Living and last night we broke out our grilling planks and made our entire meal on the grill. Bryan made juicy and delicious bone-in chicken breasts on a [...] -
Steak sous vide with corn-jalapeno hash
On night two of our great sous vide experiment, I decided to try using sous vide in a way that just about every contestant on Top Chef seemingly has used: steak sous vide. The benefit of sous vide cooking is since the meat comes up to temperature gradually, it maintains the same doneness throughout the [...] -
Fried sous vide egg yolk salad
Thanks to one of Jessie’s coworkers, we have a SousVide Supreme to play with for a couple of weeks. Neither of us has ever tried sous vide cooking before, and it’s a little scary. Fun, sure, but since we both have day jobs, we’re putting our dinner in jeopardy — after all, we can’t have [...] -
Cinnamon-glazed donuts
If you’ve never had a homemade donut fresh out of the fryer, you’re missing out on what a donut should be. There is no such thing as a “bad” fried dough (taste-wise, not health-wise), but making donuts from scratch, compared to donuts that are designed to survive long-distance transport, long shelf-life and uniform shapes, yields [...] -
Greek yogurt totally from scratch
OK, if you want to make Greek yogurt (think brands like Fage and Chobani), the simple way to do it is to drain plain yogurt overnight. But if you really want top-notch Greek yogurt that not only tastes better but costs a wallet-load less, you’ll want to start from scratch. Fear not – the bacteria [...] -
Roasted Banana and Coconut Ice Cream
Sorry for the lack of posting recently. Our jobs have taken up a lot of time. We haven’t stopped cooking, or inventing and trying new things — far from it — we just haven’t found much time to write in the last month or so. Lately, I’ve been baking a lot, and Jessie’s been making [...] -
Bison tenderloin in bourbon sauce
If you’ve been eying the frozen Bison meat in your supermarket but are afraid of cooking with it, fear not. A good cut of bison is as hard to screw up as a good beef steak, and if you take a few extra steps to impart as much flavor as possible, it’s a great “special” [...] -
Take that, Double Down.
I didn’t intend to cook a take on the KFC Double Down sandwich the other night, but about midway through I realized I was. One of the things I love most about cooking is that you can improvise as you go, as long as you know the basic techniques. This recipe is far from technique-intensive, [...] -
Fresh take on grilled corn: Tequila
Jessie and I grill flank steak on a regular basis, and almost always grill sweet corn with it. Tonight, at Jessie’s prompting, I tried something a little different with the corn. First, here’s my typical procedure for grilling sweet corn: Peel back the husks, making sure to not remove them completely. Remove the silks (I [...] -
Stuffed peppers that go to 11
One of our local grocery stores had some gorgeous, huge Anaheim peppers fresh yesterday, so Jessie and I decided to throw together a quick and spicy take on chiles rellenos. The end result was just about right for our tastes, especially with a squeeze of lime juice, tablespoon of sour cream and a few dollops [...] -
Real ‘popcorn’ chicken
Tired of using breadcrumbs for the breading on your fried chicken? Try popcorn. Jessie made a tasty rice dish last night and asked for chicken to go along with it. Since I didn’t feel like doing the same old, same old, I tried an experiment with some freshly popped large-kernel popcorn we picked up in [...]