This is one of the main tropes to have emerged about corn from the pages of Omnivore’s Dilemma since its publication, and one which it seems we’ll be stuck with for a while. Indeed it’s hard to read a food blog or a major newspaper food section nowadays without coming across at least one instance […]
READ ONAs anticipated, a lot of feisty emails in my box — and it’s only Tuesday — most of them stuffed with arguments about that’s wrong with the modern food system. Let me clarify something: my purpose is not to argue that everything’s hunky dory with modern agriculture. There are problems — serious ones — as […]
READ ONThe thing I love so much about the paragraph from Omnivore’s Dilemma I quoted earlier is the insinuation that the sheer versatility of corn somehow makes it bad. As though processed foods, consumer packaged goods, and ugly retail architecture would all just disappear — or better still, would never even have been invented — if […]
READ ONWhy do we grow corn? I mean, I don’t eat a whole lot of corn on the cob. Do we really need that much? It’s a fair question, for indeed worldwide, we grow a ton of corn. More than a ton, in fact, much more. 700 million metric tons according to recent UN figures, with […]
READ ONBecause, as I’ve written numerous times before, the pastry maker is the natural enemy of the organo-nut. Just about everything we pastry types touch is tied to technology in one way or another: milling (flour), refining (sugar), shipping (chocolate), the list goes on. Even the tools we employ are often highly technological. We also produce […]
READ ONThe bad news is that I’ll be out of town on business again this week. The worse news is that I’ll still be blogging anyway. However, since I won’t be able to bake at all, this week will be devoted solely to information. What sort of information? Well, for those of you who haven’t heard, […]
READ ONIs a fry pan full of bubbling cake doughnuts not a joy to behold, my friends? If not, I put it to you that you are dead. Or vegan. Oh, I kid. You know, baseball players get a very bad rap. They’re not respected as athletes, though it’s widely claimed that the act of merely […]
READ ONI like sprinkles every bit as much as the next guy, but sometimes even the working man’s delight needs to be taken uptown for the day. Pictured above is one of my old best-sellers: the lemon-lavender doughnut. Lemon and lavender were a hip combo six or eight years ago, but I’m pretty sure I was […]
READ ONFor today is NATIONAL DOUGHNUT DAY. You heard me right! What does that mean for you? It means a free doughnut at your closest Dunkin’ Doughnuts or Krispy Kreme store. Rock on! You know, people say this country has a lot of problems, and we do. But it’s days like this that reaffirm my faith […]
READ ONInfusions are highly useful things in the world of baking and sweets. If you’ve ever wondered how your local pastry shop gets the flavor of thyme into a tea bread icing, or how confectioners introduce the flavor of earl grey tea into a truffle, infusions are the answer. They allow a cook to import a […]
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