Seems a shark has been spotted in the waters off Saint-Tropez. I’m not sure why this has caused such a panic or why it’s made international news (isn’t Saint-Tropez a salt water port?). However the solution to the problem seems rather obvious, no?
READ ONI’ve had quite a few people email to tell me that their RSS feeds haven’t been working since the changeover to the new format. All I can say is: I’m not surprised. My old software configuration was so old and buggy it was practically held together by wads of bubble gum and bits of tissue […]
READ ONSome people call them cookies, these days it’s hip to refer to them as “macarons”, but really they’re little almond meringues that are flavored with almond. Macaroons is probably more like it. I first tasted them as a kid when the neighbors who lived behind our house would take me into Chicago’s inner suburbs to visit their Italian grandma. In classic Old World Grandma style she’d feed us no matter what the hour, and amply. We dined crowded around the table in her cramped little apartment kitchen, since the dining room table was covered with doilies and only used for special occasions.
She was fond of serving us amaretti as soon as we walked in the door as a sort of tide-me-over until the real food hit the table: an antipasto starter, then pasta which I’d usually gorge myself on, forgetting that a meat course was coming next. By the end of the meal I’d be so engorged I practically had to be craned out the window.
READ ON
Bialys back in their turn-of-the-century heyday in Bialystok, Poland were very large, very flat affairs covered from one side to the other with chopped onion. After a few decades in New York bialys became both smaller and chubbier, with naught but a sprinkling of onion in the center. This is my attempt to split the difference to some degree. These sport the thicker torus shape but contain more onion because, well, I think more flavor per bite is better.
READ ON
The word “pudding”, it’s thought, comes down to us from the Latin word botellus which basically means “sausage.” Boudin is how the word occurs now in French. Pudim is the Portuguese version, pudín the Spanish. Sounding a little familiar now? Thought so. But did spotted dick and sticky toffee pudding really start out as sausage? Yes. Sort of. Here it helps to take a brief — and very general — look at early days of sausage making.
READ ONReader Helen writes with a very interesting problem:
I’ve had a pastry cream disaster that remains a mystery to me. I’ve been making it with no problems for a long time. Just made 4 batches 2 weeks ago. Today, I tried it 3 times and every time it curdled as soon as it came to a simmer. I’ve never had this problem before and usually simmer it for 1-2 minutes to make sure to kill the enzyme in the yolks that thins out the starch as the cream sits. The only thing I did differently today was use all new ingredients (milk, cream, and eggs). I tasted milk and cream and they didn’t taste spoiled. I noticed that my corn starch expired 2 years ago, but it worked fine 2 weeks ago, so I can’t imagine it went bad all of a sudden. Here is my recipe and procedure: http://www.beyondsalmon.com/2014/07/pastry-cream.html
READ ON
I just had to pull the Joe Pastry train off to the side tracks for a moment to extoll the virtues of a truly amazing ingredient: xanthan gum. Oh sure, people demonize it, but usually without bothering to find out what it really is or does. The fact that it sounds “science-y” is enough to elicit derision from certain purist foodie types. They know not of what they speak.
Xanthan gum was invented in the heyday of corn sugar fermentation research, the 1960’s. At the time, folks in the USDA labs were looking for a thickener that was more versatile and efficient than corn starch and easier to produce than guar gum. One day, they allowed a culture of a bacterium by the name of Xanthomonas campestris to feed on a solution of corn-derived glucose. What resulted was a slimy, colorless substance that turned out to be one of the most broadly useful food ingredients currently known to man. For it turns out that in the process of digesting the glucose, the bacteria rearranged the individual sugars into longer-chain sugars (polysaccharides) with truly amazing properties.
READ ON
Not being much of a fan of The Powerpuff Girls or My Little Pony (apologies to any bronies in the audience), I feed the girls on a steady diet of classic cartoons come Saturday morning. Looney Tunes primarily, though we also have a few mixed disks containing 20th century Saturday morning staples like Casper the Friendly Ghost, Felix the Cat etc.. If you’re going to watch cartoons, is my thinking, it might as well be the good stuff.
READ ONThat question from reader Lee, and I’m glad he asked. I’m not normally one to get all choosy with ingredients. As I’ve said many times before — often to my detriment in terms of reader feedback — “good” is almost as always as good as “great” for most home baking needs. However butter is where I start to get a bit fussy. I like cultured “Euro-style” butters, especially when it comes to laminated doughs. On the one hand they perform better as they tend to have a little less moisture and are also generally firmer, with a broader melt point. That means they stay plastic longer when you’re folding your dough. On the other hand I think they have also have a better taste. The acidic tang is not only different, it reduces the “fatty” mouthfeel
READ ON
There’s a lot of lard on the average hog, though admittedly not nearly as much as there used to be. Demand for leaner and leaner pork over the years has yielded pigs with less fat on them than your typical high-fashion runway model.
READ ON