Looks like it’s going to be a good weekend. Ya know, one thing I’ve discovered this past week is just how difficult ice cream photography is. No wonder the pros use colored Crisco (how long would the real thing last under all those hot lights, I ask you?).
READ ONYou can’t have much street cred in the food world nowadays unless you’re a card-carrying Emeril-basher, and I find that a little bit sad. “Clown”, “show off”, “know-nothing” are just a few of the charges I’ve heard some very accomplished chefs level at him (Anthony Bourdain recently said he’d happily strangle the man). Me, I’m […]
READ ONIt’s hard to beat the simple elegance of fresh frozen fruit (plus sugar). The mangoes that the wife found for this sorbet were flawless, perfect. And she knows mangoes. She spent two years of her life in the Peace Corps in New Jersey. No wait that’s not right, it was the Dominican Republic. But the […]
READ ONInteresting article in today’s New York Times dining section about pastry chefs. In essence, it discusses how many of Manhattan’s star pastry makers, fed up with their side-kick status in traditional restaurants, are becoming entrepreneurs. Not content with the typical bake shop, some of these folks have launched their own dessert-only restaurants, or more interesting […]
READ ONWhile we’re on the subject of things Marco Polo didn’t bring back from China, what about ice cream? And anyway, the wife is anxious to break in the new ice cream maker I gave her for Christmas. What with a new baby and a new house, she hasn’t even read the owner’s manual yet. But […]
READ ONLeftover puff pastry is indeed a many-splendored thing, and another reason to never, ever throw anything with that much butter in it away. I keep a scrap ball in a sandwich bag in the freezer. It starts out the size of a walnut, and in a couple of months is usually about the size of […]
READ ONWell it’s been a fun week making and blogging about pasta, my first official non-sweet (or baking) topic here on joepastry.com. I didn’t even come close to doing it justice, sadly, the topic is so incredibly broad. But then life is long, I’ll probably find my way back to it one day. There’s only one […]
READ ONWhich sauces go with what pastas? That there, my friend, is what you call your can of worms. A question that’ll start a fist fight in any trattoria this side of Brindisi. And in fact selecting accompaniments to different shapes of pasta is more an art than a science. The best maxim I’ve ever heard […]
READ ONI remember the first time I consciously sat down and ate an authentic Italian sugo. It was at a restaurant in Chicago and the menu entry said something like: Papparedelle in Meat Sauce: wide-cut semolina pasta served with our own hearty meat sugo. Sounded like just the thing on a cold Chicago night. I was […]
READ ONEver wonder how, in an era like the Middle Ages, an army could take over most of the known world in just a couple of decades? Well I have dammit. World events moved at a snail’s pace back then. France and England went to war for 116 years without deciding much of anything. The papacy […]
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