A big weekend at the Pastry household. A friend came by and helped me pour the pad for our future brick oven. Doesn’t look like much at the moment…but I can already taste the pizza. I’d never smoothed concrete before. Not unlike icing a big layer cake, the same basic skills apply.
READ ONObviously the homemade stuff turns out a little more, how shall I say…textured than store-bought. But the flavors are vastly superior (and it’s also about a quarter of the cost). It has a much deeper toasted nut flavor, and the good, honest aftertaste you get from zero additives. Working through this recipe, it was very […]
READ ON…is a task that’s dreaded among bakers. Probably why we tend to save hazelnut desserts for really really special occasions. I myself remember my twin sister making a hezelnut torte when we were high schoolers. She peeled each individual toasted nut by hand. Ouch. Happily we’re older and wiser now, and much better at peeling […]
READ ONSince every culture on Earth can lay claim to some version of the pancake, it takes quite a bit of moxie to declare that pancakes of the very, very thin variety are singularly French. Of course they do it, and just maybe they have justification. The French invented those very shallow crêpe-flipping pans and the […]
READ ONThe 2007 James Beard Awards were announced this past Monday. I’ve refrained from commenting about them, partly out of laziness, partly out of sour grapes. A good friend from here in the Midwest who was nominated in the media category lost out to — surprise! Another nominee from New York. This week’s NYT food section […]
READ ONDoing a cursory web search I discovered that Rich Mehlman of Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants in Chicago has revived The Magic Pan! It’s up at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, which has never been my favorite place, though I hear the new shark aquarium is amazing.
READ ONIn the words of the character Jean Girard in the movie Talladega Nights, “they are like really thin pancakes”. Which pretty much sums it up. Those among us who have crested the 40 mark may recall the short-lived crêpe fad in the 70’s. I personally remember a restaurant chain in the Chicago area called “The […]
READ ONJust because Americans weren’t subject to the same kind of harsh rationing that the Europeans were doesn’t mean World War II didn’t create some unique American chocolate products. The American army was and is unique in the world in that it supplies chocolate to its troops as part of a standard military ration. Indeed since […]
READ ONUnlike the Italians (and the British, and the French and the Swiss, and most of the rest of Europe), American chocolate fiends had it relatively easy during World War II. Though chocolate was technically rationed, Americans never experienced the kinds of shortages that occurred in much of the rest of the world. This makes sense […]
READ ONNutella itself is an interesting story since it, like many other foodstuffs in the history of man, is the product of a war: World War II. It was an Italian businessman by the name of Petro Fererro who first conceived the idea of a chocolate you could eat in sandwich form. The trouble was it […]
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