Regular contributor (and critic), Jim C. of Chez Jim weighs in on Chantilly cream: Creme Chantilly doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere around Vatel’s time (late 17th c) but in 1780, Bertrand described “Chantilly ices” made with cream which had been flavored with sugar and orange blossom water, then whipped, the foam then served in […]
READ ONSeveral readers have alerted me to a movie about François Vatel, and presumably his fatal fish episode. It stars Uma Thurman and Gérard Depardieu. Might be worth a look!
READ ONTechnically a soufflé is a cake, however Julia Child defines it as — and I’m paraphrasing — a sauce to which a flavoring has been added, lightened with whipped egg whites and baked in the oven until browned. I prefer that definition because it highlights all the various process steps, each of which are important […]
READ ONEvery year I make a commitment to do more savory baking, and this year I’m actually getting a few licks in, as it were. Soufflées can go either way, sweet or savory, but let’s start with cheese and see how things progress from there, shall we?
READ ONReader (and botanist) Ford writes: Folks get all off about fruits, thinking that we botanists are trying to mess with their minds. We’re really not. Almost everything that folks normally call a fruit is, in fact, a fruit (as are a lot of vegetables, not just tomatoes — think eggplants, cucumbers, squash, green beans). There […]
READ ONStrawberry shortcake was a plated dessert in America before Americans even knew what plated desserts were. Here I’m continuing in that tradition, though I respect the single “big biscuit” approach that grannies all over North America have been employing for generations. You can adapt this recipe to make a single, large shortcake if you wish, […]
READ ONThe strawberry is one of those (faux) fruits that humans in the northern hemisphere have been eating for a long, long time. It makes sense since it’s indigenous to just about everywhere north of the equator and south of the arctic circle, from eastern China all the way around to the California coast. Some linguists […]
READ ONIt seems I’m not the only one smarting from fruit’s seemingly endless duplicity.
READ ONChantilly cream is a tremendously useful variation on standard whipped cream. Not only is it sweeter and more aromatic thanks to the added sugar and vanilla, it holds up much better than ordinary whipped cream. If you imagine an individual bubble in a whipped cream foam, that bubble’s skin is made of water reinforced by […]
READ ONReader Staci asks: is it anything like marinating? In fact it is almost exactly like marinating, though instead of imparting flavor to the thing that’s being soaked or steeped, the idea is to soften it. That’s what the Latin word maceratus means: “to soften.” Though meats and vegetables can be macerated, the technique is most […]
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