I got a question last night as to whether cake syrup qualifies as an invert sugar. Talk about an early Christmas gift, that’s my favorite question! The answer is, in this case, yes. Not every sugar syrup is an “invert sugar” of course. Some are simply solutions of melted sugar in water (these will eventually […]
READ ONI chuckled more than a little last week reading an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Canned Gourmet Cuisine” (I’d link but WSJ is a pay-only site these days). It treated as a revelation the fact that some high-end restaurants use pre-prepared ingredients in their center-of-plate dishes. Of particular note, that Jean-George Vongerichten uses […]
READ ONIt struck me that it may might seem odd to a some folks in and out of Chicago that I didn’t reference Italians in the last post, since Italians are practically synonymous with the city (especially and of course with Mob activity). The reason is that Italians came on the scene a bit later than […]
READ ON…but I forgot to put up a post. I’ve been lazy to the point that I haven’t made pizza at home much the last month or so. Mostly because the deep dish crust has been boring me. Yet I have to say the potato thing has me re-engaged. It seems to be the perfect starch […]
READ ONThose sugar and/or corn syrup sprays I mentioned can of course be loaded up with food colors, which is how you get lime-green cherries and bright red chunks of pineapple.
READ ONAlso in this weeks’ New York Times food section (I’ve been giving them an awful lot of plugs the last couple months, haven’t I?) a cover story/announcement that the father of popular food science and author of the landmark On Food and Cooking, Mr. Harold McGee, will be penning a regular column for the Times […]
READ ONIf you’re interested in the no-knead bread recipe that’s been setting the world on fire this past month and have access to the New York Times site (I think it costs money these days) you might want to check out this week’s “update” to the original no-knead bread article. In it, Mark Bittman sets out […]
READ ONOn the silliest law to be passed since the Chicago foie gras ban. The prohibition of an FDA-approved, non-addictive, non-carcinogenic foodstuff that’s never been clinically proven to be harmful. Seems we can’t do cigarettes but we can do French fry oil. What’s next on the agenda? Beef jerky? Marshmallow peeps?
READ ONYou could never interest my father in much that happened in the kitchen, except of course when it got to be fruitcake making season, at which point his attention suddenly became focused on baked goods like a Labrador stalking a pheasant. Even now I’m not sure where my parents got their special secret recipe, though […]
READ ONHad a hilarious conversation with a good friend who’s involved in one of the dial-a-chef services I talked about a week or so ago. It’s funny how almost all of us, regardless of our experience, tend to romanticize things we read about in the newspaper or see on TV. When I read that WSJ article […]
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