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Bao buns, encasing a filling of char siu pork, are a popular dim sum item in Cantonese restaurants. Old-timers usually steam them until fluffy white. Immigrant chefs who came to America discovered that when baked, the buns turned golden and pleased the locals. What they got was sort of an Asian hamburger.
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There are an entire world of rustic ethnic breads that are easily reproduced in your modern home kitchen. These are breads that were once only available regionally, tasted by the adventurous traveler. But no more. The invisible family boundries are down and the light is rushing in. What is old is now new. What was hidden by geography and religion, is now open to interpretation. Bakers are pushing the envelope. They want to master the techniques.
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Every holiday season I make lots of this bright cranberry chutney to serve with turkey and as a spread for sandwiches. I got it from extraordinaire food writer and recipe developer Peggy Fallon, a cranberry lover, who serves it as an accompaniment to a savory cheesecake for winter entertaining. This is one of my all time favorite cooked sauces, one I prepare every year and often give as gifts. Serve it as a condiment, or dabbed on unsalted crackers with soft cheese.
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Cranberries and blueberries come from the same botanical family as rhododendrons and heathers. They are native to the bogs of New England, but great fruit comes from Oregon and Washington, all grown organically. Fresh cranberries arrive in stores in late fall and can be frozen in their original wrapping (don’t put frozen cranberries in the bread machine; defrost first) for use in the spring and summer. Use bags of fresh cranberries within two weeks of purchase so that they won’t get mushy or shriveled. My mother got this recipe from her antique dealer, Alan, who is a genius in the kitchen. For so few ingredients, the results are tart and satisfying with all sorts of roasted meats like poultry, pork loin, and ham. This method of preparing cranberry sauce with the ginger juice fast became a yearly ritual at Thanksgiving and Christmas in my family.
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There are interviews and there are interviews. I do a lot of print and radio spots and it is one of the perks of a most often solitary job of testing recipes then writing them down, which can take hours per recipe. Interviews give me the chance to get out into the community and interact; to chatter with like minded foodies about what I love. I get really inspired when an interviewer has unique and well thought out questions that make me think and dig deep into my wellspring of knowledge. Here is an interview I did last year on baking bread and its renaissance in the home kitchen.
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Grissini is the Italian word for breadsticks. After making the dough and letting it rise in the bread machine, they are hand shaped by rolling the dough out to a desired length and then baked at a high temperature in an oven. They look very different than machine extruded breadsticks which all look exactly alike; they are charmingly nobby and irregular. You want to bake these until they are crisp, otherwise, if they are soft like bread, they will bend and break when you stand them in a crock to serve. If you are unsure about freeforming, use a bread stick tray, which is a series of very thin cradles. Eat as an appetizer buffet, eaten either plain with butter, or wrapped with smoked turkey or proscuitto.
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Blame it on the pita. Or maybe it was the tortillas. Certainly focaccia had something to do with it. Flat breads have become the new darlings of the bread world. Breads once considered exclusively ethnic or regional foods and eaten on holiday, have crossed all borders and become international. Flat breads can be leavened with yeast or baking powder, or unleavened, akin to the oldest breads made, patted out and cooked on hot rocks in the sun. They can be chewy and crisp, soft and melt in your mouth, plain or embellished.
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When asked about a bread that typifies Muslim Northern India and Afghanistan, naan, which is also the generic word for bread in those areas, is the first one that comes to mind. It is also trendy; every Pacific Rim restaurant offers it because of it’s buttery flavor and moist texture. The long oval breads are baked in a tandir oven, which is a deep clay floor oven. The shaped dough is placed on a gaddi (cushioned pad) and baked by slapping them onto the walls of the oven while one end hangs out over the fire, making a pretty teardrop oval about 20 inches in length.
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Roman bread is the house bread at the Casa Vieja restaurant near Arizona State University. It is a lovely uneven shape baked on a baking sheet and essentially a foccacia. The onion is added with all the other ingredients, so that it is incorporated right into the flat bread dough. Sprinkle it with grated Parmesan or Asiago cheese in place of the salt, or another herb like dried basil, before baking. There is never any leftover, but if so, it is good for stuffings.
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Even if you have never made bread before, you can make these rolls, known as petits pains in French. It is a simple and straightforward dough, even indestructible as long as you don’t kill the yeast. In recent years I have come to use doughs that are much more wet and sticky than this one, but I always come back to this basic recipe that was originally patterned after James Beard’s Cuban Bread.
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