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
Latest Headlines
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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 Amish [...] -
Sauteed potatoes and toasted pine nuts
I’ve been trying to find new and creative uses for pine nuts since buying a bunch of them a few months ago. I think I’ve finally found my favorite use of them, and it wasn’t where I expected: with potatoes. Pine nuts, especially when they’re toasted, give a hearty, nutty flavor to a dish. They’re a [...] -
Mood Cooking – Hot Stir-fry
I came home from work the other night as, what some of my coworkers would say, an angry bird. For some unknown reason, I was in a bad mood and I decided to take my mood out on some stir-fry. -
Fear not the chorizo
I don’t know why Mexican chorizo isn’t a staple in the typical American household. After all, it’s a versatile protein that can add wonderful heat to any dish. Want to make great tacos without buying expensive (and generally tasteless) taco seasoning? Just saute up some Mexican chorizo. Want to replace ground beef in (some) recipes [...] -
One-recipe review: ‘Cooking Know-How’
In honor of Jessie’s birthday, I wanted to cook a grand meal tonight. I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to try a meal (and, hence, do a traditional one-recipe review) from Cooking Know-How by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. We were fortunate enough to meet the authors and attend a cooking demo of theirs [...] -
Mashed tater tots. Yeah, that’s right.
When Jessie came home from work this evening, I told her I was going to try something so devious it would either be the greatest thing we ever ate or a waste of tater tots. -
Foil-baked potatoes on the grill
It was fairly nice out this afternoon, so I decided to grill out on the back deck. I won't go into details about everything you see on the plate above (the buttermilk biscuits were left over from breakfast, and I warmed them up on the top shelf of the grill - delicious), but I was really pleased with the steak and potatoes. -
Will Drive For Groceries
Yesterday, Bryan met me in Chicago and we went to a few of our favorite grocery stores, including World Market (in Evanston), Trader Joe’s and Whole Grain Fresh Market, which is an Asian market (both in Hinsdale). We picked up some new things to try, so we should be posting more shortly. -
Tater Tot Hot Dish
Comfort food is an important part of our lives. Yes, we can make some elaborate dishes, but sometimes comfort food is all that we want. After a few nights of missing dinner at home for work, I was able to cook later in the week and I had one dish in mind. Over our various [...] -
Matzo ball soup with carrots and daikon
First off, we're not Jewish, we just decided it was time to try different things. Secondly, this recipe uses more mixes and prepared things than I normally like to use, but since the end result was delicious, and because I included my own little touches, I decided to share. -
Cherry Tomato Pizza Margherita – Recipe Review
My parents were here last week, so we went to a few of our favorite local restaurants over the weekend. On Monday night, we decided to have homemade pizza. We made a hot sausage pizza with garlic and cheese as well as cherry tomato pizza margherita. We started with the recipe from Bon Appetit, found here, [...] -
Easy steak in brown ale sauce
I’ve been extremely busy with work lately, and haven’t had as much time to experiment in the kitchen as I’d like. I’ve mostly just been sticking to my tried and true favorites. But tonight I decided to try something new again. We had some beautiful grass-fed flat-iron steaks from Amish country, and I thawed them out [...] -
Asian Stir Fried Noodles
I don’t know about you, but I love a good lo mein. Combining noodles, fresh veggies, garlic and soy sauce in a wok is easy and can yield some flavorful dishes. I found a recipe on Blue-kitchen.com for Asian Stir Fried Noodles with Cashews and thought I’d give it a try. Reading through the recipe, [...] -
Pork with Riesling and shallots
I’ve cooked a lot of pork in my day, and this might be my all-time favorite creation. This was an ad-libbed meal using what we had sitting around in the freezer and the fridge, and I can’t wait to try the sauce on other proteins (especially chicken). If you’ve ever made Bifteck Bercy (see “Mastering [...] -
HouseOFoodies Pantry Must-Haves
Tonight Bryan made one of our stand-by pasta dishes since it was a long work week and we were hungry. He was able to do so because we tend to keep our pantry full of our favorite ingredients. I thought we should share some of our favorite pantry must-haves in case you’d like to add [...]