I bet many of you, like me today, are picking up corn at the farm stand or farmer’s market, which is a good thing, because corn close to the source (as opposed to trucked miles from the farm) is fresher. But there is a problem with corn – the second…
This is not about my Napoleon complex. I really mean it -we little people work better with a bigger knife. Actually, mostly, big people chop more efficiently with a bigger knife too. Why? Well, Here are two chef’s knives, side by side, an 8-inch and a 10-inch: The 10-inch knife…
I am not much of a baker but I certainly would not bother at all if I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico or McCall Idaho, that is unless I owned this book: It is written by one of my most trusted baking experts, Susan Purdy, who spent years testing…
Southerners always soak their chicken in buttermilk before dipping it in flour and deep frying it – that is what I learned on my live call in show on the food network. I thought it was a just a Southern thing, I didn’t realize it was a science thing. I…
Love fish but wish it didn’t smell quite so fishy? And how about gamey venison or livery calves liver? How do you turn that assertive aroma and taste down a tiny notch? Soak that strong tasting ingredient in milk! I learned this years ago when I worked at a 3 star…
Last Thursday I had a spectacular dish at INK in LA – Burrata with trout roe, garlic flowers, kataifi and much more Who says that cheese and fish don’t go together? But meanwhile, this trout roe reminded me how many new choices there are in the market in the fish…
When I was grating my beets for a quick saute for The Husband I happened to taste a little bit of the shredded beets in the raw state shredded gold and red beet salad and discovered that they had a very fresh, mild beet flavor with a lovely crunch.…
I’m a big fan of the wonderful Italian pastry called cannoli – especially the filling of fresh ricotta, candied zest and chocolate. My dessert swaps the cannoli’s crunchy cylinder of deep-fried dough for a large succulent strawberry. I’ve also replaced the ricotta in the filling with low-fat cream cheese, because…
The Husband loves beets. Me, not so much. I think they taste like dirt. They take forever to cook – 45 minutes to boil or to steam, and if you steam them you have to keep adding water. They take a whopping 1 1/2 hours to roast, which is the…
It is not only edible but also dense and tasty just like the artichoke heart. Last night I was preparing some monster artichokes for my son Sam’s birthday chez us, when I decided to get out the camera and film the process of trimming the stems. I actually learned this…