Hi. I’m Woody Smith. I like to cook simple stuff in a nice big kitchen.
I have a lovely brushed aluminum GE Profile wall oven and microwave, another excessively high-powered Sharp Carousel microwave that does certain things better than a normal microwave, an LG induction cooktop that serves as the “amaze your friends” star of the show, an LG side-by-side refrigerator that was a mistake I shall not repeat, and a Bosch dishwasher that cleans up nicely after my escapades (and is the very best appliance of any kind that I ever bought, gentle, utterly silent, and perfectly effective at cleaning even the most absurd goop and crud off my dishes). In the small appliance department I have one of those Kitchen Aid mixers with the lever that pulls the mixing bowl up onto the business part, a nice Quisinart four-slice toaster, that Quisinart coffeemaker that you see in practically every movie and TV show kitchen (and if you had one you’d know why), and a T-Fal Avante Elite toaster oven (meh…).
Of course, my stovetop pots and pans all must be made of some kind of ferric metal – the induction cooktop won’t even heat aluminum, anodized or otherwise. I lucked out and got some really quite nice non-stick stuff celebrity-branded by Rachel Ray REAL cheap, and one very nice ScanPan saucepan as a gift, but non-stick ferric pots and pans tend to be absurdly expensive and hard to find.
I even have a steel pressure cooker, a much underrated piece of cookware.
Some of my favorite home-built recipes include the heart attack scrambled egg sandwich, basic (well, thick) steak in the oven with only garlic salt and cracked pepper, a basic bowl of (non-quick) grits but with an interesting twist, and everyone’s favorite, the pie cake, which I only do once every year or so to keep it amazing. I’ll share these recipes soon, which are notable mainly for their tastiness despite extreme simplicity.
I am a firm believer in the nostrum that “Butter makes everything better.”
Also, I like beer and wine and tend to be something of a snob with each (for moderately priced grocery store beer I recommend Molson XXX, and for cheap grocery store red wine I like Coppola Claret in that eye-catching little golden net). And, on Preakness day, I make the best Black-Eyed Susan that anybody ever tasted – it tastes like it’s just some nice citrus punch, but you’re plowed before you reach the bottom of the first glass.
Anyway, that’s me and my kitchen, at least as far as recipes are concerned (although I am a deep and complex human being in ways that have nothing to do wi… Ooh, doughnuts!).