It happens every time we go to Manhattan. The wife visits her favorite bagel shop (Second Avenue Bagels) and for the next six months I’m under the gun to produce fresh bagels at home. It’s funny, there are actually some pretty decent bagels made right here in Louisville (some truly awful ones too), but then […]
READ ONOne detail of my dessert trends tour that I failed to mention yesterday was a visit the wife and I paid to Jacques Torres Chocolate on Hudson Street in SOHO. SOHO (a sort-of anagram for SOuth of HOuston — pronounced HOW-ston — Street) was once a pop art mecca. These days the galleries are almost […]
READ ONI got so busy settling back in yesterday I forgot to pay tribute to Bo Diddley, who died yesterday at his home in Florida at the age of 79. Bo Diddley will forever be remembered for inventing the bomp bomp bomp a-womp-bomp rhythm that George Thorogood popularized with his cover of Who Do You Love. […]
READ ONWell I’m back from Manhattan, and none too soon. Any more decadent franchise foods and I would have popped. Normally New York isn’t like that for me. The wife is usually busy with something-or-other at NYU and I’m left to roam. Which I do, obsessively. I walk, walk, walk, up the island, down the island, […]
READ ON…is that an empty oven doubles nicely as a drying kiln. As those of you who’ve been keeping up with me lately know, I’ve been having trouble sourcing nice dry wood in the off season. These cut pieces are especially moist, since they probably came fresh from a tree-felling to my garage. To hear the […]
READ ON…because I’m not nearly confident that I have this oven-firing thing down yet. I have definitely become a better fire tender, though I confess I still emit the rank odor of the greenhorn. So then, in the interests of keeping those of you who are interested up-to-date on my oven adventure, what follows is a […]
READ ONSo then, having tried and tried and tried again to master this brick oven firing thing, I’ve gotten to a place where I’m mostly satisfied. There’s still plenty to learn, I’m certain of that, but at least now I’m in a zone where I can generate enough heat to get my Alan Scott-designed wood burning […]
READ ONIt’s been a long weekend of food, drink, merriment and auto racing, the highlight being the Indy 500, an event I attend every year. Though not technically a race fan, I love the spectacle of the thing. This year wasn’t as thrilling as years past, though there was plenty of drama with all the various […]
READ ONThe thing about wood is, size matters. Or to be more accurate, surface area. To get a wood-fired oven ready for baking, you want to get as much heat into the masonry as you can as fast as you can. Because the thing about heat is, it dissipates. Even in a big 8-foot-tall mass of […]
READ ONThere are some very skilled cooks and bakers who swear by this technique, by which you heat milk (and/or cream) to just below the boiling point (to where a skin forms on the surface) then cool it and use it as the basis of a custard mix. People swear it results in a better-textured custard […]
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