Toy with a Thousand Uses III
Reader Laura further suggests that a sous vide cooker would be a great place to culture yogurt. Indeed so. Great thinking, Laura — keep’em coming!
READ ONFlour Tortilla Recipe
Flour tortillas get a bad rap, widely thought of as “Americanized” tortillas, but they are a staple in many regions of Mexico. Yes they contain fat and yes they contain white flour, but then so do more than a few commercial yeast breads. Combined with some rice, beans and a few pieces of pan-fried plantain, […]
READ ONToy with a Thousand Uses II
Reader Laura writes, calmly: What!! No pastry application!? Sir, I quote from your own blog: The first method simply involves slowly melting previously tempered chocolate at a perfect 89 degrees Fahrenheit (the melting and forming point of the ideal “Beta V form” cocoa fat crystal), maintaining it at that temperature, then applying the chocolate as […]
READ ONToy with a Thousand Uses
Reader Nicole writes, helpfully: Congratulations on your new toy! Reading your description of the precise temperature control made me wonder – do you think you could use this to pasteurize whole eggs? If the eggs sit in 140 F water for long enough for the yolk to reach that temperature and stay there for 3 […]
READ ONThis Week: Tortillas
I’ve been fielding requests for homemade tortillas off-and-on for a couple of years, but haven’t done them for some reason. Now, it seems, is the right time. We’ll do both corn and flour tortillas, since they each have their place on the dinner table. Since not everyone will have access to the most authentic ingredients […]
READ ONJoe Takes the Plunge
For several months now I’ve been saving the half- and quarter-pennies from my ad banner clicks with the goal of buying a sous vide cooker. I’ve wanted one for quite a long time now because, well, I’m a nerd. And let me tell you, there’s no nerdier way to cook than by vacuum-packing food in […]
READ ONCarrot Cake
Since childhood I’ve been amazed at the way carrots transform themselves when baked into a cake. You don’t even know they’re there. I remember thinking when I was a boy: someone’s gotta be pulling my leg. This carrot cake is a far cry from the overly dense, overly moist cakes that I ate as a […]
READ ONOn Harvesting Carrots
Reader George wrote in to tell me he made the carrot cake with carrots fresh from his garden. Indeed, part of the reason this week’s project made so much sense for me is because I had quite a few carrots left in my garden as well (my girls weren’t nearly as enthusiastic about eating them […]
READ ONMaking Cream Cheese Frosting
This really couldn’t be much easier, but heck, a couple of photos can’t hurt, right? Just combine all your ingredients in the bowl of a mixer with the paddle attached… …and beat for about 45 seconds until the frosting is smooth and uniform. You might need to scrape the bowl once to make sure all […]
READ ONSorbet Flashback
Nancy Baggett of cookbook and Kitchen Lane fame writes in with a great tip on making sorbet mix: A technique I use all the time is to boil together the sugar, the water and the peels of peaches or plums, then strain the mixture to form a flavored and colored simple syrup base. This produces […]
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