Bread Starter Test

Way back in July (7/21 to be precise) Michael Ruhlman posted about a method of kick starting sourdough starter. The method, which he learned from Carri Thurman of Two Sisters Bakery in Homer, Alaska called for the addition of a red cabbage leaf to a mixture of flour and water.
Both Ruhlman and Thurman, as well [...]

Brine Dilution

A couple of weeks ago I told you how I started a batch of pickled onions. At the time I expected the onions to be ready in about 10 to 14 days. Well, I am happy to report that after about 16 days in the aging room they were almost done. On the day [...]

Pickled Onions

Get a gander of my latest adventure in lactic acid fermentation: pickled (or more precisely “pickling”) onions.
I started this project last Friday morning as I pulled into the farm and immediately began yanking onions out of the onion field adjacent to the parking lot. After about an hour of yanking, I rinsed them off [...]

On the Need to Know

I never thought I did an especially good job of leading my students at The Culinary Institute of America to understand that knowing why food behaves in the ways that it does when we manipulate it, is just as important as knowing how to cook. I think at best I probably reinforced the belief [...]

Give me some skin

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but there was a time in the early 1980’s when I used to pull the skin off of chicken to make stock. I seem to recall thinking that removing the skin would make it easier to degrease which, of course, is true. However, skin is [...]

Slow Salami Sunday UPDATE

Last Sunday I wrote about how I acted on an urge to make a batch of Tuscan style salami. The post outlined the process up to the beginning of the fermentation of the meat. Today’s post picks up the process on Wednesday when I retrieved the meat from the refrigerator in my garage and ground [...]

Recipe Pro-Tool

Michael Ruhlman’s recent post about cookbooks that teach got me thinking about how much I used to love cookbooks. Back when I was a novice cook, books like “The Joy of Cooking,” “The Professional Chef” (the basis of The Culinary Institute of Americas’ “The New Professional Chef”), Henri Pellaprat’s “Modern Culinary Art,” almost anything by [...]

Roast Beef Recipe Circa 1955

Here’s a roast beef recipe that is sure to raise an eyebrow. It’s from comedic genius Gracie Allen. I’ve included a YouTube video of the The George Burns and Allen Show that contains a reference to the recipe @ circa 25 minutes into the show.
FW: Gracies kitchen magic
Gracie Allen’s Classic Recipe for Roast [...]

Ratio This!

See Michael Ruhlman on The Early Show (CBS) as he promotes Ratio, his- to my mind sucessful- first attempt to bring Platonic order to the fundamental preparations of western cooking.
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The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Sunday Dinner @ Saturday

Last night (Friday) we celebrated our daughter’s 15th birthday by hiding in our bedroom with the door locked while she and four of her friends had a “sleep-over” party. Actually, I’m kidding about hiding in the bedroom. I thought about doing something like that all week but it turned out to be unnecessary because the [...]