Foodborne illness can come from just about anywhere. It can even be caused by a drink as seemingly wholesome as fresh-squeezed apple cider. Typically, the microbes involved are the usual suspects: Salmonella and Cryptosporidium, but on rare occasion the dreaded E. coli 0157:H7 rears its ugly head, and that can cause rapid serious illness and […]
READ ONIt’s the fickle nature of the apple, as much as anything else, that makes it the perfect fruit for juicing. For you see, apple trees are heterozygous organisms, which means they reproduce sexually and their offspring are rarely (if ever) perfect reproductions of one or other of the parents. That means that whenever you plant […]
READ ONThis, friends, is one serious piece of apple squeezing hardware. An original “Kentucky Buckeye” cider mill, made by the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company here in Louisville. It dates to probably the 1890’s. At that time, just about every family who lived in rural territory east of the Mississippi owned (or at least had access […]
READ ONIn the rest of the English-speaking world, the term “cider” means an alcoholic beverage made from fermented apple juice. It’s only here in America that “cider” has come to mean fresh-squeezed apple juice (a thing known as “sweet cider” elsewhere). The reason for that is something we’ll get into a bit later, for now the […]
READ ONIt’s that time of year again here in Kentucky: cider squeezing. And happily for the Pastry family, this past Saturday we were again invited to the hilltop home of my good friend Mose for his annual cider making party. He has a cider press that’s been in his family for maybe 100 years, and every […]
READ ONReader Jo writes: Perhaps you already knew this, but I just discovered for myself that the same technique you showed for fixing siezed chocolate (mixing in a little water) works really well for rescuing split mayonnaise as well. I had only ever encountered the standard advice about using another egg yolk to save split mayonnaise, […]
READ ONI always put my foot in it when I express opinions. An email or two asking that essential question floated in overnight. The answer is I don’t buy food magazines all that much. When I remember, I’ll renew my on again-off again subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, the content of which, as you can probably guess, […]
READ ONI’ve received several notes from readers over the last ten days asking me if I had any comment on the demise of Gourmet magazine. One in particular asked if, as a member of the “new food media”, I felt in any way guilty about it. I confess that was a bit of a laugher, though […]
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