Use of salt is one of the major paradoxes in cooking. On one hand, any doctor worth their salt will tell you to limit your salt intake or all sorts of medical badness will surely arise: heart disease, high blood pressure, and waking up in the morning with a really dry mouth. On the other…
No don’t run away. Please! This post was inspired by my friend Brian who, with the air of a man heading to the executioner, told me that he was going to his parent’s to eat meatloaf. There is perhaps no other main dish so maligned in all of culinary history as the meatloaf (fruitcake takes the…
I read a post on Sue’s blog the other day as she was making pithy observations about Ingrid Hoffman, a new Food Network show host. At one point, she makes an entertaining and educational (yes…edutaining) digression into the use of salted vs. unsalted butter. Her feeling is that one should never use salted butter except when buttering toast as unsalted butter…
I had a moment tonight when I felt like I was in Kitchen Stadium competing in Battle: Really Need to Go to the Grocery Store and Stock Up. In my mind, the Chairman said did his karate chop over a steel lid (or in my case the fridge) and revealed the secret ingredients: a few onions, potatoes, ears of corn,…
As part of the overabundance of fruit from a week ago, I decided to poach some of the apples and peaches I had left from Waverly. I found that poaching was very similar to the process I used to make pickles where I produced a flavorful liquid, put the fruit into the liquid, and made a fantastic…
I am in the process of watching the inaugural episode of The Next Iron Chef and I am not entirely sure what I think. It is not that I am not enjoying the show, but I just do not have a good feeling for what the show is trying to accomplish. Part of me wonders, what…
Last weekend, we took a trip to a few of the apple orchards outside Kansas City. A late freeze decimated the local apple crop, but I did purhcase a nice ten pound bag of Fujis outside of Waverly. After a week, I can say definitively, the problem with buying a ten pound bag of apples is that…
Warning: In this post, I talk about who won the Top Chef finale. Another season of Top Chef has come and gone. This was my favorite season right up until the finale. It occurred to me that Season 3 was a lot like Season 1. Both were loaded with talented chefs who did not exactly…
Okay, due to a scheduling conflict, I am just now firing up the Top Chef season 3 finale. I am voting for Hung, but cheering for Casey. So that means Dale will obviously win…
During the Top Chef Season Three Finale (Part One) , Chef Eric Ripert made a comment I found jaw dropping. Brian Malarky had prepared a braised elk dish that he served with a a number of garnishes including the choice of either gorgonzola or rochefort (forgive me if those are wrong, I am going off…