Last week’s posts really brought the crackling lovers out of the woodwork! I received all sorts of great stories and literally scores of recipes. Here’s one from reader Brigitta: Your blog post brought up old memories for me! My mother was Hungarian, and she would occasionally render her own lard. She did it on the […]
READ ONChef James L. from Tennessee points out that true Southern Cracklin’ corn bread is made from white corn bread, ideally White Lily if you can find it. Yellow will work too, of course, but for that extra touch of authenticity, well, you know what to do. Like all truly great things to eat, this is […]
READ ONWhat’s a great use for cracklings? Brothers and sisters, here’s one of the best: cracklin’ corn bread. Talk about a definitively southern bread, this one has it all: lard, corn, buttermilk. Pleasantly coarse and rustic, you’d have found southerners eating something almost exactly like this 150 years ago. To give it that extra country flare, […]
READ ONYou can start by piling some onto a piece of toast, adding salt to taste, maybe a drop or two of tabasco sauce, and consuming them greedily with beer. However it is possible to get a bit more creative…
READ ONTwo primary applications spring to mind: pie crusts and southern biscuits (though there are dozens more in baking and probably hundreds in cooking). What makes lard so desirable for pies and biscuits? Simply, because unlike butter, it’s all fat. Butter contains roughly 12% water, and that water causes trouble in a pie or biscuit dough. […]
READ ONThere’s something so elementally satisfying about the process of rendering lard, I…I don’t know how to fully express it. A sort of manly do-it-yourself pride combined with the boyish thrill of breaking a food taboo. As George Patton might have said: God help me, I do love it so. The obvious question is: why? After […]
READ ONI missed this announcement over the weekend, but the Nestlé company is recalling all of its cookie dough products due to fear that they might be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7. If you have any of them in your pantry, throw them away.
READ ONThis is a very American scone. It’s big, it’s triangular, it’s rich. Note, however, that it’s possible to do a lot of different things with this dough. I generally favor small scones, and indeed I normally make 12 little triangles with this recipe instead of eight large ones. You can use round cutters if you […]
READ ONJenni over at Pastry Methods and Techniques wrote in with this interesting tidbit on Friday: So, get this: pain au chocolate is filled w/chocolate that has seized! This is keen, because it gets melty but doesn’t run all over the world. So, if you ever accidentally seize some chocolate, save for these little guys. 🙂 […]
READ ONThere’s a new doughnut shop opening in Saigon this month, featuring cake doughnuts made with the Joe Pastry recipe! Above is a picture of some of the first production, and I’ll be darned if those don’t look exactly like my doughnuts! I couldn’t be prouder if I was a peacock. Best of luck to you […]
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