Equipment | Not Your Mother's® Cookbook

Steamed Vegetables Any Season

I picked up a new bamboo stacked steamer at the Asian market. I have an antique set, but I keep that for decoration.So I was off and running looking for things to make in the new steamer baskets. Steaming fresh vegetables helps to retain the texture, color and flavor of the vegetable while keeping its nutritional value intact. It is considered one of the way healthy ways to prepare veggies.

My Best Sauces: Pan-Seared Sirloin Shell Steak with Food Processor Béarnaise Sauce

Béarnaise sauce, a sharp buttery sauce with red wine vinegar, shallots, egg yolks, and tarragon, is truly a special occasion sauce. But one to look forward to. It is THE sauce for grilled and sautéed meat or fish, much less a foundation sauce in French cookery.

The Culinary Traveler: La Piadina-Italian Bakestone Bread

An Italian version of a flour tortilla or Indian chapati, piadine is one of the oldest hearth breads made in the world today. It hails from the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy on the Adriatic Sea, the site of old Etruscan cities, and the most fertile wheat-growing area in the country. This was a staple of the tenant farmer’s diet.

The Culinary Traveler: The Forgotten Cereal of the Ancients: Quinoa

Quinoa translates to “mother” in Quechua, one of the main languages of native Andean peoples and Incan descendants. It was a staple highland grain of equal importance as maize, and considered a premium food source of strength and endurance for working in the thin mountain air.

Catering Stories: Two For One-Part 1

January 1988 started what was to be a good year for catering. It was an election year and Reaganomics had the country in the lull between Iran-Contra and the end of the Cold War. People were entertaining at home nonstop. I had a lot of private parties scheduled way into the summer. January is a great month to entertain since people are looking for some excitement in the dreary cold month following the Christmas holidays.

The Baker: Food Processor Italian Whole Wheat with Marinated Goat Cheese

I took a bread baking class at a virtually unknown cooking school, long gone and forgotten now, with my mother in the 1980s and learned this Italian whole wheat bread. It is called a traditional pane integrale.

Holiday Baking: Christmas Butter Cookies

Butter cookies are good for company, for Christmas Eve, after mass, after dinner. They are a gloriously simple rolled cookie. And this recipe is the one perfect recipe to have in your stash of Christmas cookies for giving and sharing,…

Gorgeous Bundt Cakes- Cranberry Orange Pound Cake

Ever since its debut in the 1950s, the bundt cake pan has become de rigeur in every baker’s equipment stable. Originally a whimsical alternate to the smooth angel food cake tube pan, the bundt mold with its fetching large-lobed flute design transforms a simple tube cake into a gourmet gateaux by visuals alone.

Vintage Glamour Wedding Cake

Here is the recipe for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s vintage glamour wedding cake, which includes the instructions by Fiona Cairnes for making the tamarind fruit cake batter, icing, cake decorations and assembly, so now you can recreate the royal wedding cake in your own home.