I gave up meat for Lent—all of Lent, not just Fridays. It's not easy as I am a MAJOR carnivore. Is there anything short of drugs that can make this more bearable for me?
—Pat O'Donnell, Mishawaka, Indiana
Why dismiss drugs? If I were you, I would be taking Adderall every day. It's amazing how easy it is to avoid eating when you're never hungry! But, operating within your parameters, and with a hat tip to your piety, I would suggest eating the meatiest non-meat foods you can find, like swordfish, skate, grilled salmon and char, escolar, and other greasy treats. For lighter eaters, eggplant makes a perfect stand-in—if you cook it right, you can't tell it from veal.
And don't forget: Butter doesn't count as meat! So use as much of it as possible. I know all this goes completely against the spirit of Lent, and that "the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life," but I'm not here to advise you on spiritual matters.
I can't cook for shit and the proof is that I can't even make a baked potato right. My boyfriend gives me all kind of shit about it, because it's supposedly such a bulletproof recipe, but it isn't. It always seems to come out too hard, or the skin gets scorched. (We eat the skin.) WTF?
—Mary-Lynn Dickinson, Somerset, Massachusetts
I share your boyfriend's incredulity, Mary-Lynn. Anybody can cook a baked potato. Just kidding. There's no food that cooks itself. Since you don't say how long or at what temp you cook it, I can't tell you what you are doing wrong, but it sounds as if you are cooking too hot. So here is the recipe for a baked potato: 1. Take a potato. 2. Run it under water for five seconds. 3. Stick it in a 400-degree oven for an hour. 4. Turn it over halfway through. 5. Take it out when the fork moves hard through the skin and easy through the potato. 6. Eat it.
Some people make little fork cuts in the potato to let it emit steam, but that's dumb, because the steam's heat and pressure is what helps to cook the thing. Turn it once to keep one side from burning. And—most of all—make sure to use Idaho baking potatoes that are long and narrow, rather than fat and ball-like. The former will cook faster and more evenly.
What pan do you use most in your kitchen?
—Don Selman, Virginia Beach, Virginia
I'd like to say it's my cast-iron pan, a totem of traditional cooking and of my own personal manhood. But given that 90 percent of the cooking I do during the day consists of petty tasks—reheating little pieces of roast beef; cooking fried eggs in the roast beef fat; making hot dogs and then griddling the buns in their fat; reheating coffee; slowly reheating pizza from the crust up—it would be madness to heat up a giant chunk of iron. So I'd say my copper-bottomed eight-inch saucepan, the kind that just holds a whole slice of white bread, gets the most use. It cooks fast, cleans easily, and fits under my pillow.
Do you like those steel French pans?
—Ryan LaMere, Astoria, New York
Do you mean the enameled iron pans and casseroles by Le Creuset? Then yes. Those things are the ultimate. They lack black iron's soulful crags and scars, its abyssal darkness, its weight and precolonial crudity. But boy, are they good! Basically, they're cast iron that nothing can stick to. They are heavy as engine blocks. And they all have perfectly fitting covers that are equally heavy, so that no amount of furious steam can dislodge them. They do come in pretty colors, but you can't hold that against them.
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I cook a lot of chili, and also meat sauce, and also taco meat and other stuff, and use a cast-iron Dutch oven for it. But everyone says that you can't use tomatoes in it because they will damage the pan and make the food taste bad. My question is: Is this a concern if the pan is seasoned? Or only if it's new?
—Kevin Cross, Reno, Nevada
To be honest with you, dude, I don't think it makes any difference whether it's old or new. I have been making chicken cacciatore in my black pan for years, and a million other acidic things, and neither I nor the pan is any the worse for it. Cook away.
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