Cooking
gregladen | June 21, 2016My local grocery store just came up with some Vidalia onions. They are the best onions, and I'm cooking with them every day so I can eat them all before any go bad.
When you cook onions to the point where they brown, they become sweet tasting and great smelling. That is the Maillard reaction. Cooking meat enough gets you a similar effect. Toast. All kinds of foods.
"All sorts of things happen in this reaction. But eventually, you get to flavor town."
Here's a short video that gives you the science of the Maillard reaction:
How do you pronounce it? Mai yard. More or less. Skip past the…
gregladen | December 15, 2014Are you done with your Thanksgiving leftovers yet? You might think so, but not quite. We have one more helping of Turkey for you.
This is "Another Helping of Turkey," the second of two installments of Eat This Podcast with Jeremy Cherfas:
The domestication of the turkey probably first took place around 2000 years ago in south central Mexico, possibly for their feathers and ritual value rather than their meat. Their rise to the top of the American festive table came much later, not with the Pilgrims but with Charles Wampler, whose efforts to promote turkey raising started Rockingham County,…
gregladen | November 26, 2014These are important questions, though I must say it is a little late for you to be asking considering that Thanksgiving is right around the corner!
Thanksgiving is a feast, and feasting is something humans do in many cultures (but not all, probably). A while back I wrote a piece of feasting that you should read to prepare yourself for Thursday:
The Feast (A Thanksgiving Day Story)
There's a lot of ways to cook a turkey and everybody has their favorite. But this way is the best:
How to cook a turkey
In case you were wondering about the origin of the turkey, here's the info on that:
The…
sastyk | September 23, 2014Writing books and essays about food, I hear a lot of stories about what people ate growing up. Because cooking was mostly women's work, those stories are almost always about mothers and grandmothers, and how the food made them feel - and how the memories of that food still do make them feel. There's a longing for the reclamation of the food of our past and our childhood. The food of love roots deep in us - the food we were given as acts of love by others sticks with us, gradually releasing nutrients that feed us deep inside for years, decades afterwards. I call it Mama food, even though…
sastyk | June 13, 2014p>There are a number of possible answers to that question, but my current summer favorite is chicken-tortilla soup. You can do this with bones, bones and meat, a whole chicken, stock and some breasts, whatever you have, but since we have some smaller whole chickens available from some roosters that went in the freezer and need using up, that's what we are doing.
Make a big pot of chicken broth with bones or a whole chicken. 10 quarts is good. 12 might be safer, though ;-).
Sautee onions, carrots, some peppers if you have them, maybe a finely diced sweet potato or two and fresh chiles…
gregladen | December 24, 2013How to make pumpkin pie
This makes one pie. You probably want two, so double everything.
PROCEDURE
PREHEAT oven to 425F. Set the rack to above the middle of the oven but not too high up.
Mix dry ingredients in one bowl.
Mix wet ingredients in a different bowl.
Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.
Put a pie crust in a pie shell. Make the edges all fancy looking by using a fork.
Stir the ingredients up one more time and put it in the pie shell.
Place the pie in the center of the rack.
Bake for 15 minutes
Remove pie, shut oven.
Put strips of aluminum foil around the crust to slow…
sastyk | November 15, 2013It is only on really stressful days when I refer to them as my unholy army of the night. The rest of the time, at least at meals, it is just "my army" and we really do go through a stunning amount of food.
For example, in late August, right around the time this photo was taken (I can't usually post pictures of my kids, but this one, with no faces visible is ok - from left, R., Q., Z., and K., our four little ones who at the time ranged from 13 months to 3 1/2), I counted - we went through four large watermelons, 20lbs of peaches, 10lbs of apples, 6 quarts of plums, 4…
gregladen | February 8, 2013... which I imagine is a lot of people. It is brilliant. Yellow, so you can find it among your other utensils and remember that it is for bananas. Banana shaped, which makes it godly, almost, as you all know. Safer than a knife. But what is most wonderful about the Hutzler 571 are the product reviews on Amazon's site, which rival (almost) the product reviews for Bic's "pens for her" (remember that?). Check it out!
gregladen | December 1, 2012Does grinding your own meat make a better burger? How does adding fat to your eggs create the perfect tender omelet? Why should you have patience before carving your roast?
Discover the science behind everyday cooking with Christopher Kimball from America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated. Join us as we explore the fundamental science explaining how — and why — your recipes work.
sastyk | November 25, 2012I've been making a lot of quick breads lately - partly it is the season, and they freeze and store well. They make good gifts, good afternoon snacks for the kids, good "Oh, crap, we're just about out of bread and I need it ASAP" solutions and other happy things. Quick breads, for those of you who don't bake them, are any kind of bread that doesn't require a long rising time. Most of them use baking soda or yeast. They include sweet breads like cranberry and pumpkin, soda breads, biscuits, muffins, scones, etc...
There are tons of recipes for these, including some great ones here (raspberry…
sastyk | November 20, 2012So what's on for Thanksgiving dinner at your place? Wanna pass on that favorite recipe that you simply can't get away with not making?
Here's the (still slightly tentative) menu for us - w e just added a few more guests at the last minute, and I might find myself compelled to add more food, even though it probably already excessive. But hey, this is my favorite cooking project of the year!
Provided by our friends of Chinese heritage who feel that turkey is a poor substitute for duck:
Chicken bao (chinese style dim sum buns)
Peking duck
My portion:
Turkey roasted with 100 cloves of garlic…
gregladen | November 18, 2012I previously posted on a way to make a turkey that would leave you with the bulk of the bird's uncooked skeleton, and I promised some tips for how to make good stock.
Making stock involves cooking, in water, stuff that imparts flavor, such as meat and vegetables. But there are a few guidelines that will produce better stock. Here they are:
If you wouldn't eat it by itself, consider not using it in the stock either. This does not apply to things such as onion skins, which are a great addition to stock. But don't use anything that is off.
Use excellent water preferably clean tap water.…
gregladen | November 18, 2012You've got your turkey all planned out, and you've got some stock. Now, it's time to explore the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Gravy. (And maybe something to put it on.)
I will tell you how to make excellent gravy with no stress and guaranteed success. Without lumps.
I don't do recipes. I do theory. But this theoretical approach will get you through. Its very simple.
You are going to need the following:
A stick of butter or two, and an equal volume of regular flour. You can use special fancy dancy flour if you want, but that is not necessary.
Several cups of a liquid such as stock.…
gregladen | November 18, 2012First, consider cooking something other than a turkey
Cooking turkey is actually kind of a dumb idea. Most people don't ever cook turkey. Turkey is like chicken ... it's a domestic bird that is familiar to all Americans ... but it is very difficult to cook in a way that does not ruin it. So once a year, you cook this huge bird and try not to ruin it, and invite everybody that is important to you over to see if it worked.
As a result of this the truth is that many people have never had good turkey. They've only had ruined turkey. And for each of these people, what they think turkey…
gregladen | September 12, 2012It has been a while since we've done a recipe. And, it has been a while since we had a huge internet fight over something. Therefore, we will discuss:
how to cook corn on the cob!
First, you have to get some very fresh corn and do everything you can do to minimize the time from picking the corn to cooking the corn. Or, just go to the grocery store and get Genetically Modified Frankencorn. It will taste fine.
Then, decide which basic method you want to use. You can steam it (I have no idea how to do that), you can roast it (which we will not cover here, but it is a great way to cook corn on…
gregladen | June 22, 2012Tip 1: Get some corn-on-the-cob and a large pot for which you have a tight fitting top. Husk the corn while you boil a large amount of water in the pot (salted if you like, for flavor). Put the corn-on-the-cob in the water and leave the heat on only for a minute, put the top on and turn off the heat. Since there is no more boiling the corn will not likely overcook. In ten minutes or so it will be ready, but it will sit there in the hot water for a long time (did you remember to keep the to on?) as long as you keep the top on.
Variation: If you have a smallish pot, microwave the corn for a…
sastyk | May 28, 2012For some reason the steamed and boiled fruit pudding never properly took permanent hold in the New World. It was, by and large, the dessert of choice in Britain for centuries. You could certainly find it in the early days of the colonies, and into the early 19th century, basically as long as open-fireplace cooking was the norm, it was around. But despite its many virtues, almost no one makes them today. They do have virtues - it could be cooked along with a soup or stew so was quick and easy to mix up and prepare, it lasts forever (you can make a traditional plum pudding today and eat…
sastyk | May 11, 2012I get a lot of books for review, and for the most part, they are wonderful surprises. Because I receive and read so many books, I rarely sit around saying "Hey, where's my review copy of...X?" Generally I've got a giant pile of books that I need to get to anyway, so I'm much more likely to say "Oh, I didn't realize X was out." So let us first note that I was so anxious for my review copy of Sandor Katz's _The Art of Fermentation_ that I actually sent emails to beg for a copy - only to find that UPS had stuffed this book and another in a really weird place and it had been waiting for me…
sastyk | May 8, 2012So here's what we actually ate yesterday. In addition to the list below, btw, C. and K., the new guys ate a fair number of totally non-local oranges and bananas, as well as some local apples. Because they've experienced real hunger, they have a bowl of fruit in their room that they can eat anytime, so that they never need to worry there won't be food. The first night they were with us Eric took them shopping and let them pick out some junk food to put in the bowl (sugary granola bars and fruit-roll ups), but when we ran out of that stuff, we moved on to just fruit, which is going very well…
sastyk | May 8, 2012it has been quiet around here because late last Tuesday we got a placement of two boys, C., 7 and K., 8. In the chaos of getting everyone settled, dealing with all the legal requirements, paperwork and appointments that a foster placement entails and getting them back to school, the blog has taken a backseat, but I'm more or less back. The boys are doing great, and are truly sweet, wonderful kids. They've had a really rough time, but everyone is really getting used to each other and having a blast. They'll be with us until at least mid-June, so we are in for some spring fun with six boys…