Why not rice pudding?

Reader Dash writes:

Joe, I have a special favor to ask. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been trying to make rice pudding and have had a terrible time with it. I know you normally do “interesting” things, but can I prevail on you to please whip up a quick rice pudding for me, just because I can’t seem to do it?

Dash, there are many who would dispute that my projects are interesting. But I love rice pudding and would be happy to make up a batch. Mrs. Pastry has been addicted to rice and beans ever since she spent time in the Dominican Republic in the Peace Corps, so we always have a little leftover rice hanging around. Let’s go!

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Making Palmiers

Under normal store-bought pastry circumstances palmiers are a very nice way to use up extra dough. When that dough is homemade, however, palmiers are poem-worthy. No other cookie is as light and lovely and delicious. Even “failed” puff pastry can find a welcome home in these delights. You can use whatever quantity of leftover dough you have. Roll it out into a rectangular sheet.

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Making Vol-au-Vent

In the long list of reasons why you should consider making your own puff pastry, vol-au-vent may not be number one (that distinction goes to cheese straws), number two (tarte tatin) or even three (Gâteau St. Honoré), but it’s definitely in the top five. It makes a killer first course to a dinner: light, buttery, crunchy and lovely to look at. Made with your own pastry it almost is almost as light as “a waft of wind”…which is what the name means in French.

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Farewell to the Ding Dong

I haven’t eaten a Zinger, Ho-Ho or Twinkie in years, but I just returned from the grocery store where I bought a box of each, as archetypal American snack cake maker Hostess is shutting its doors as of this Tuesday. What a downer to end the week! Oh sure, some large packaged goods maker will probably come along and pick up the brands at some point. But then maybe they won’t. And riddle me this: can the kitsch bakers who’ve made good off of upscale Twinkie and Ding Dong knock-offs survive for long without the real thing? When no one will get the joke anymore? I think not. There will be a large ripple effect from today’s announcement, my friends. Very large indeed.

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It’s All About Steam

Reader Jayne wants to know how puff pastry can rise without any yeast, which is present in other laminated doughs like Danish and croissant. Jayne, I love your question and I thank you for asking it. The answer is: steam. Puff pastry needs no leavening agent because it’s comprised of hundreds and hundreds of individual layers of dough, all of them separated by layers of butter. When the pastry is inserted in the oven the butter melts, freeing and lubricating the dough sheets so they can separate from one another.

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Sneaky J

I stole away for a quick business trip while you weren’t looking. I’m back now with a renewed focus on the things that really matter. Like butter.

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Ze Food is Ze Life

Carême wasn’t without his critics. One of them was another of the world’s great food innovators, Antoine Beavilliers. Beauvilliers is credited with inventing the first “true” restaurant, which is to say, an eating establishment that combined food with décor, expert service and a top-notch wine cellar. His restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres was the place to be seen in Paris both before and after the Revolution (it was closed during it), and was frequented by Brillat-Savarin, the gastronome and writer whose famous quote “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are” appears at the beginning of Iron Chef episodes.

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Sauces à la Carême

One of Carême’s great legacies was the hierarchy he developed for French sauces. Prior to his arrival on the scene there were literally hundreds of sauces in the French culinary canon, many of them absurdly elaborate, containing dozens of ingredients. At Talleyrand’s urging, Carême took on the project of organizing and simplifying them. The result was a system based on four “mother sauces” from which all others were derived. They were:

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