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Our Food is Everyday Food. It is Food to Fill Your Soul.

Good Magazine interviews Roy Choi, a law school drop out who founded the Kogi taco trucks and jump-started the food truck trend.

G: In the beginning, Kogi parked outside of nightclubs to attract customers and some trucks still show up near clubs. What is the best or worst part about catering to inebriated club-goers? Any fun stories to share?

RC: Our food is everyday food. It is food to fill your soul. We are not trying to make a statement with the food. When you are drunk or stoned you get hungry. You have limited choices (diners, fast food, dirty dogs, korean joints) we just wanted to add another flavor to your night. The first night to see people's faces was funny, drunk, horny, sweaty, hungry, full of energy creeping up on the truck and yelling to their friends "Yo, there are mutha fuckin' Asians in this truck cooking tacos?" "You want one?" "Yeah, sure, fuck it." Then silence, and, "Can I get another?"

Sigh, I still have yet to experience this taco revelation.

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Hundred Layer Lasagna

I'm absolutely drooling over Del Posto's new 100 layer lasagna.

Yes, that’s 100 layers: 50 practically transparent sheets of handmade pasta, alternating with 50 layers of sauce (Bolognese, besciamella, and marinara). Each 80-portion pan has to go into the oven by 1:30 P.M. every day. Otherwise, it doesn’t have enough time to cool and coalesce by dinner and completely collapses when you try to slice it. It takes three kitchen stations and many hands to put it together. Skewers hold it in place while it sets. You need a special spatuala to serve it.

This is why we're fat. And I'm okay with that so long as it involves 100 layers of lasagna.

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Shake Shack Burger Recipe

If you don't already know, the Shake Shake burger is practically a religion for some New Yorkers. One blogger at Serious Eats reverse engineered the burger, including the all important special sauce.

I walked back into the restaurant, went straight up to the manager, and asked point blank: "Is the Shack Sauce a secret, or can you tell me what's in it?" A little laugh, and then, "It's mostly mayo, with some ketchup, mustard, a few spices, and pickles blended in."

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How to Wield a Knife

The Atlantic Monthly on how to properly use knives in the kitchen.

The first element to avoiding your blade is keeping it in your hand. As Fleisher's Aaron Lenz describes it, you should hold your knife like the butt of a pistol, fingers wrapped tightly around the grip "like someone was trying to take it away from you." Some people hold a boning knife like a conductor's baton during a particularly slow part of Pachelbel's Canon. This is wrong. You will either drop your knife through your fingers, causing you to cut your knife hand with your knife, or, more likely, lose track of it in your brain's motor control center and cut the hand holding the meat.

[Via]

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Matt & Mark

A friend of mine who works at a publishing house mailed me Mark Bittman's  "The Minimalist Cooks Dinner" after hearing about my 2010 resolution.

I'm thinking of starting a project titled Matt/Mark where I will blog my effort at cooking every single recipe in Bittman's cookbook this year. I will then obviously get a book deal out of this project, which will then be optioned by a movie studio and then eventually made into a movie with Meryl Streep playing me. I will then hire a full time cook with all the money I've made and never cook again for the rest of my life.

Thoughts?

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Cooking in 2010: Farfalle With Gorgonzola, Arugula and Cherry Tomatoes

My resolution, again, for 2010 is to learn how to cook. After a slight delay involving not owning a measuring cup, I finally put on my chef's hat tonight and cooked "Farfalle With Gorgonzola, Arugula and Cherry Tomatoes," a featured recipe by Mark Bittman of the New York Times. Thanks to Mun for recommending this recipe. Needless to say, tonight was also the first time I've pronounced the words "Farfalle," "Gorgonzola," and even, "Arugula," so I have to thank Mun again for her help over the phone when I was attempting to track down these ingredients at the grocery store.

So, how did it turn out?

The recipe. Note how I underlined farfalle because I didn't know what it was, and I wrote "measuring cup" as a reminder to pick one up at the grocery store.

The end result. It may not look very tasty or fancy, and I may or may not have dropped some stuff during the (frenzied) process, but in the end I dominated this recipe. It was so yummy.

I finished off dinner with dessert, which was a bowl of refreshing and healthy homemade apple sauce. Okay, maybe it was homemade in a factory somewhere, then packaged in a glass container and sold in a store near my apartment...

Stay tuned for future episodes of Cooking in 2010. Feel free to send along delectable yet "EZ" recipes for me to try.

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14 Surprising Uses for Your Microwave

1. Disinfecting and Deodorizing Sponges Don’t throw out the kitchen sponge that smells like last night’s salmon. Soak it in water spiked with white vinegar or lemon juice, then heat it on high for 1 minute. (Use an oven mitt to remove it.) This will also disinfect any sponges you used to wipe up the juices from a raw chicken.

Read rest here.

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