OK, now that’s just weird.
Cooked meat cologne? I won’t be looking for any in my stocking this year.
READ ONAuthor: joepastry
The 2,000-Year Game of Tug-of-War
Alsace is a unique little region in that it is perfectly suited for agriculture of the type that yields alcoholic beverages. The climate is ideal for growing grapes (particularly white grapes like Riesling), hops and a variety of fermentable fruit crops. Thus Alsace has been a center of beer, wine and schnapps-making for centuries. No […]
READ ONTarte à l’Oignon
That’s French for onion tart (I’m a man of the world, don’t you know). In Alsatian there’s a different word for it. What, you mean they speak another language in Alsace? I thought it was part of France! Yes, that’s true, Alsace is technically part of France. I say “technically” because it’s always been something […]
READ ONOh, the irony.
I’ve never been a supporter of organic anything, but that seems to be the only kind of advertising that finds its way onto my ad pane over to the right there. That’s the nature of web-vertising though, you throw open the window and whoever is willing to pay can come on in. Makes me feel […]
READ ONAnd now for something completely different.
We’ve been on fruitcake-like Christmas items for a couple of weeks now, and some of you are getting understandably impatient (downright ticked off in a few cases). So let’s switch gears, shall we? At the beginning of last year I resolved to do more savory baking on this blog. So far I’ve done zero. This […]
READ ONBattle of the Better Butters
Cook’s Illustrated, perhaps the only food magazine I read with any regularity, does great service to the food community with their regular evaluations of equipment and ingredients. This week a reader called my attention to their reviews of high-end butters. Their panel of tasters sampled 8 different products in all, among them heavy-hitters like Isigny […]
READ ON“Fruitcake isn’t made with nuts!”
A stinging rebuke from my father, Joe Pastry Senior, over the weekend, getting after me for my inclusion of nutmeats in last week’s recipe. “If fruitcake were meant to have nuts in it,” he said, ” it would be called fruit AND nut cake.” All I can say is that if he were to share […]
READ ONHow to Make Stollen
This is American stollen, mind you. Which is to say it tried hard to be the real German article, but not being truly German, it isn’t. My shape isn’t perfect (I left a little too much lip down below), and I used things like cherries and dark raisins which are verboten among the purist crowd. […]
READ ONLooks like there’s more to the citron than I thought!
A wealth of information comes our way via Mexico Bob. Apparently the citron has quite a pedigree. In the ancient world it was employed both as an emetic and as a mouthwash. Here’s this from Theophrastus: In the east and south there are special plants… i.e. in Media and Persia there are many types of […]
READ ONWhat the heck is “citron”?
It ain’t a make of French car, if that was your answer. It’s a fruit, the candied rind of which is frequently called for in Christmas fruitcake recipes. It’s a head-scratcher for many people, since outside of fruitcake-making, few people ever encounter it. But the reality is that outside of fruitcake-making, there are very few […]
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