The cardinal rule of any professional kitchen is: waste nothing. For anything edible that finds its way into the trash or down the drain is thrown away profit. Don’t throw out those radish tops! Put’em in with the salad greens and they’re mesclun. Make sure you refrigerate those pork trimmings! We’re making pâté de campagne […]
READ ONYou can’t be uptight when making a galette. It’s just not that type of pastry. Unlike pies, galettes aren’t made in pans, so they have no set shape. Depending on how you roll your dough out, they can be roundish, squarish, pretty much whatever-sh. They may have no cracks or several, they may contain their […]
READ ONYa gotta love those fall fruits, eh? And what is fall without a little warm pear something-or-other after a nice weekend dinner? This week’s recipe has become one of my go-to’s when the cry goes up from the starving faculty and grad students over at U of L. They can’t get enough of it, and […]
READ ONI finally had a chance to take a good hard look at Dorie Greenspan’s new book, Baking: From my Home to Yours over the weekend. If you don’t know Dorie like I know Dorie, she’s a cook, baker and author best known for her collaborations with others: Baking with Julia with Julia Child, Chocolate Desserts […]
READ ONA very funny comment came in via email this weekend. Or at least I thought it was funny. The meat of it went like this: I don’t understand how you can be so inconsistent. Just Friday you defended commercial agriculture in one post, then talked about how you only like to use fresh, local produce […]
READ ONCorn gets a mighty bad rap in some quarters these days, and that seems unfair to me. For as far as I can tell, the most corn has ever done to us is prove itself incredibly useful. It must be, since we in America grow about 10 billion bushels of the stuff every year. We […]
READ ONI know what all of you are thinking out there, don’t think I don’t. You’re saying to yourselves: in order to get a carbon dioxide-producing leavening reaction you need both an alkaline and an acid. I only see soda (an alkaline) in the ingredients list. Where does the acid come from? I’m glad you asked […]
READ ONThe apple fritter may be an Old World classic, but the pumpkin-corn fritter, that’s a strictly New World concoction. Could the early settlers have made such a thing? Well, looking over the ingredients list, there’s almost nothing here they wouldn’t have had access to. Maize, that’s a for sure. Pumpkin, no doubt there either, the […]
READ ONThe apple fritter may be one of the oldest fritters known in Europe, but since the term “fritter” refers more to a technique than a food, it’s easy to see where there’s been quite a bit of variation. Medieval and Renaissance tables featured all manner of fritters, from fruits to root vegetables, pieces of meat, […]
READ ONI did tell you how amazing a home-made caramel fondue is, didn’t I? No? Well it is, though you don’t see it too often (that napalm thing probably). But caramel sauce, slightly warmed in the microwave, is a delicious and safe (if messy) experience. Tart apples, bananas, pineapples, even bits of fudgy brownie if you’re […]
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