Let's get this out of the way right now: white people, it's me, your brother in lack of melanin. Please stop telling people with more interesting culinary heritages that bay leaves are pointless. If you think bay leaves are pointless and have no taste, at least one of two things is true: 1) your bay leaves are older than dirt and thus taste like dirt; 2) you've never experienced the bay leaf flavor up close and personal so you think it doesn't add anything. As I am about to do, try chewing on one and see if you get no flavor from it. I bet it'll surprise you. Rant over. Please stick around to find out more about bay leaves. Bay leaves are widely used in dishes from all over the world, but most people don't do more than add one when the recipe calls for it, and if that's you, you're missing out. You can sometimes find fresh ones in international markets (or maybe even your local grocery store if you're lucky) which pack a major punch. India in particu...

I'm shamelessly stealing elements of this recipe from America's Test Kitchen, who did a version of tamale pie a while back that looked delicious but was, let's face it, too small. But they took garden-variety tamale pie, which is a bunch of cans dumped into a casserole and baked, and elevated it. I'm going to take it back down a few notches because let's face it, tamale pie doesn't need to be elevated that much. It's hearty and delicious, but there's no reason we have to content ourselves with garden-variety. You Will Need: Beef? Beans Tomatoes Onions Cilantro? Spices Oil Cheese Cornbread Beef? You can make this vegetarian and it won't lose much. Much. But it's better with beef. You could also make it with ground chicken or turkey, but you may need more oil to bloom the spices and keep things from drying out. I used pre-portioned frozen hamburger, 80-20, because I had that available. Frozen absolutely works, and don't let anyone tell you diff...

You may notice that the plate isn't clean; I couldn't wait to eat these, so this is the second batch.   Falafel is delicious, relatively easy to make, and a good way to get people to eat beans. These patties are adjacent to falafel in that they're delicious, relatively easy to make, and a good way to get people to eat beans, but they differ in some aspects, including the need to deep-fry and the need to soak beans overnight. They also include some other ingredients besides chickpeas, so they're a complete meal instead of a thing you need to make sandwiches out of, though you absolutely can make sandwiches out of them. The main reason I created this recipe is because soaking beans is a pain, and falafel really should only be made with soaked dry chickpeas. If you feel like preparing something in advance, by all means get yourself some dry chickpeas and make falafel. Come back here when you've got to prepare a meal in a relative hurry. You Will Need: Beans Rice Spinac...