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Posted by William on March 11th, 2010, at 3:22 pm
A few weeks ago I posted about how great crème fraîche is and how easy it is to make. I mentioned how terrific it is whipped and served with strawberries or used in pan sauces and soups. Here is a different way to flavor a dish with this cream. This recipe showcases the savory side of crème fraîche rather than the sweet one. One things can be both sweet and savory? Ah, what a wonderful and versatile ingredient.
 Pork Sandwich This is a great way to bring in the Spring season with some simple vegetables. I used zucchinis, you can add squash as well or any other soft spring vegetables. Serve it with the sauce and vegetables on a bed of rice. The leftovers are perfect for use in sandwiches. This simplicity of this dish belies the amazing flavor. Apart from the apready mentioned crème fraîche, vegetables and pork, thyme, a little garlic, salt, and pepper are all the remainder of the ingredients. Simple is good.
 So Good Not only are the ingredients straightforward, but the cooking process is simple too. It’s basically a two step process. The first step involves browning the tenderloin to boost the flavor. A minute or two in a hot skillet and you’re done. The second part is wrapping everything in a big sheet of parchment paper and baking it in the oven. That’s it. Not terrible difficult, and the parchment paper makes clean-up easy too.
Click through to keep reading Zucchini Pork Tenderloin →
Posted by William on March 4th, 2010, at 3:38 pm
So, we still are getting some cold weather. (I snowed a bit the last couple days in North Carolina–silly groundhog and his silly shadow. I wonder why we get our meteorological advice from a rodent in this day and age.) My potage ran out as did my simpler butternut squash soup. I needed more soup to keep me warm, but the cold is doing a good job of convincing me to keep my more complex recipes to a minimum and stick to the simpler, quicker things. This tomato soup looked perfect. Rich and flavorful, but simple enough to keep ingredients to a minimum and the involvement low.
 Tomato Soup My deep dish pizza recipe already cribbed from Cook’s Illustrated, so why stop on Tuesday. This is their version of a creamy–creamless–tomato soup, and boy did they nail it. It’s a smooth, thick soup that puts the tomato flavor front and center. The thickness comes not from cream, but from torn pieces of bread that disintegrate into the soup and are then further blended into it. Not entirely unheard of, but still clever. All this makes for a delicious, but still low-fat and low-calorie soup.
A quick note though, this may be a tomato soup, but this is not vegetarian. Cook’s Illustrated uses chicken stock create a richness and depth to the soup. Vegetable stock would work to make this vegetarian and vegan friendly. The only thing that would be missing is the gelatin normally found in small amounts in real chicken stock. Go nuts though, there probably isn’t much gelatin in the store bought stuff anyway—just another good reason to make your own.
Click through to keep reading Tomato Soup →
Posted by William on March 2nd, 2010, at 3:00 pm
Deep dish pizza is kinda an anomaly in the pizza world. It doesn’t follow the same rules as its brethren. The similarities to pizza begin and end with the ingredients, but then again that’s not saying a whole lot, many Hot Pockets share the same ingredients too. But this is no Hot Pocket. This is a killer pizza recipe.
 So good! I’m a big fan of pizza and I’m really pleased by my standard pizza recipe. This deep dish dough is a little more difficult than a basic dough, but the pay-off is worth it. The dough doesn’t get soggy or crumble apart under the toppings. As I was eating this, I realized that this was almost taking the expression of “pizza pie” literally- it’s even baked in a standard pie pan! There are a few tricks that Cook’s Illustrated used to make this dough hold up to the sauces and ingredients piled onto the center. I’ll get into those techniques a bit later.
 I know you can't tell, but under that delicious Parmesan topping is sausage and goat cheese. You'll have to click through at the bottom of the post see... When it comes to choosing toppings for the deep dish pizza, my standard strategy of “less is more” doesn’t hold as true. A heavy dose of toppings, sauce, and cheese is almost required to fill this monster pie. Use anything you want, I suggest sausage and goat cheese, or spinach, onions, and ricotta.
Click through to keep reading Deep Dish Pizza (Chicago-style!) →
Posted by William on February 26th, 2010, at 8:38 am
I’ve covered several chocolate chip cookie types so far and thought that now would be a good time to review how to tweak the ingredients of cookies to make different styles. The first cookie recipe we tried, the Nestle Tollhouse cookie, was a good start, and it got even better with a bit of tweaking. For the changes to the original recipe, we turned to Alton Brown who used that recipe as a base for three variants: chewy, thin, and puffy.
 Cookies: Chewy, Thin, and Puffy.
It’s great that we now have three more recipes in our arsenal, but how and why do these changes matter? It’s all based on how the ingredients react to one another during the baking process. This science is applicable to all baked goods, not just cookies; so it’s good to know the magic behind baking if you like tweaking recipes.
Changes in brief
The modifications were kicked off with a dangerously chewy chocolate chip cookie. The important changes to the recipe were to use bread flour, melted butter, one egg plus one yolk, more brown sugar than white, and to chill the dough before baking. These changes allowed the cookies to stay moist and chewy.
The super thin cookies (a favorite of mine) developed both a pleasing crunch and a slight chew. This was achieved by using all-purpose flour, softened butter, one egg plus milk, and more white sugar than brown. These cookies were not refrigerated, which meant that they spread and ‘melted’ as they baked.
The puffy cookies were last. The distinction here was to use cake flour, shortening (not butter), two eggs, baking powder (instead of baking soda), and chilled dough (like the chewy cookies). These tweaks allow the cookies to rise and puff as it baked.
But whyyyyy? Click through to keep reading Chocolate Chip Cookie Recap →
Posted by William on February 23rd, 2010, at 4:33 pm
I recently revisited my butternut squash soup with a much simpler take on it. I was pleased the original, but it did have a lot of ingredients and was a little involved to make.
Driven both by laziness and opportunity, I stripped the ingredients to the bare minimum. All that is really needed is butternut squash. Everything else is basically optional.
 Butternut Squash Soup with Chorizo Well, almost optional. The inclusion of the chorizo adds a wonderful spicy meatiness that I wouldn’t give up. The wealth of ingredients that make up the chorizo (at least, compared to the soup) provide a great contrast and the strong, meaty flavor compliments the soup nicely.
If you are curious about winter squashes, you can head to my post about types of squash and proper preparation and storage. The more you know!
The recipe also calls for cream, but this can be reduced or eliminated. I’ve had this soup both with and without this addition. The cream contributes a luxurious smooth finish and gives it a richer flavor. Even without the cream, the butternut squash soup is still thick and rich but it feels like a much more elegant meal with it added. Either way you chose, I feel like I have to say again not to skip out on the chorizo.
Click through to keep reading Butternut Squash Soup with Chorizo →
Posted by William on February 18th, 2010, at 2:23 pm
Remember that little back-story I gave about me being a BLT at birth? It turns out that that photo was actually published by the local news paper!
A new goal was set: obtain a copy (or a scan, at least) of that page of the newspaper. It took some sleuthing, and some shuffling around to get to the right people, but I got it.
 I love the Soviet reference off to the side. Oh, before you continue, someone commented that they really wanted to see a BLT and were so disappointed by not seeing one. So go here to see my BLT.
Obviously, my first stop was to contact that newspaper, The Hour. With all the news of the demise of the print media, I didn’t even know if they were still in business. Fortunately, I found a website and some contact information. The Hour is still alive and printing news for the residents of Norwalk, CT. A few emails back and forth and I managed to convince them that a photo of a (ridiculously cute) baby with lettuce on his head was published at some point in their history. Probably a bit skeptical, but extremely helpful, they told me that they didn’t keep records that old on site, but they gave the the contact information of the library that did.
Once in contact with the library, I gave the reference librarian the information I had and the reference librarian got to work. A little later, I had an email with scans of the microfilm attached. Now I get to share the glory of me in newsprint form with all of you fine readers.
 I'm not responsible for that headline.
Posted by William on February 11th, 2010, at 2:58 pm
Crème Fraîche is a cream that is thickened and rendered slightly acidic by the bacterial cultures present (imagine a less thick and tangy sour cream). As you can guess by the name, which translates to “fresh cream”, this was originally a French specialty, but it can now be found all over the world.
There are two huge benefits (apart from the lovely flavor) of crème fraîche, one, it can be made into whipped cream or butter (uh, yes! more on that in a few weeks), and, two, it doesn’t break (i.e., separate/curdle) when heated. This makes it an ideal treat whipped with sugar and served with strawberries or dolloped in soups and stews (much tastier than sour cream). Anything sour cream does, crème fraîche does better.
 Strawberries and a half liter of crème frâiche, by flickr user testastretta-999 Basics
The main flavors in this thick velvety cream are a slight sour tang and a mild nuttiness. The thickness of most brands available in the US is similar to that of sour cream, but the texture can range from that of a heavy, slow-moving cream to a shortening-like paste.
It gets it’s distinct flavor and texture from the lactobacillus cultures found in nonpasteurized dairy products. This “good” bacteria is allowed to develop until the cream thickens and acidifies. Once it reaches the correct consistency, many commercial products are commonly pastureland to halt the process. (If you make it at home, all you can do is slow it down by refrigerating it.)
Don’t be concerned or get squeamish by this talk of bacteria in the cream. It’s actually because of this bacteria that the cream does not spoil. It’s the same principals that keep sourdough cultures from going bad. Essentially, the good bacteria crowds out the bad.
 Homemade crème fraîche, by flickr user flit. Uses
I’ve already given a few ideas for how to use it (whipped served with fresh fruits or dolloped in soups), but there are many more. Consider serving it with smoked salmon (instead of the customary cream cheese) or using it to thicken pan sauces. You can try replacing some of the butter in mashed potatoes with a bit of creme fraiche. Essentially any place where you see heavy cream, sour cream, or even butter used, you can replace some–or all–of it with crème fraîche.
Click through for details on how to store, make your own, substitutes, and more.
Posted by William on February 9th, 2010, at 11:03 am
I’ve long been a fan of hot cocoa. A hot bowl of this was my morning ritual for many, many years. My technique for drinking it may have been a bit odd but it was not without reason. I would use the same specific bowl each morning–never a mug. Never.
Unfortunately, this bowl is no longer with me. It’s not lost or broken, it’s at my parent’s house. So I can’t drink my hot chocolate from it with any regularity. These days I’m forced to use a mug, but I still hold onto the same technique…
 It's a good mug, but it's not my bowl :( ... The hot chocolate is good though, so I'll live. You see, this bowl had “ears” and a lip on the rim. I could easily lift the bowl to my mouth and take long sips while the steam rose and warmed my face… But that wasn’t my preferred method.
What I would love to do is to get a piece of freshly buttered baguette, preferably still crispy, and dunk that into the bowl. Most mugs would be too narrow to successfully dip a big tartine into. Using a bowl allowed me to enjoy a combination of several of my favorite things: fresh baguette, good butter, and chocolate. But that still wasn’t how I normally started drinking the cocoa.
I would start, quite simply, with a spoon. The still scalding cocoa was much too hot for me to drink by the mouthful. It was even too hot to dunk the bread into (besides, the butter would melt to fast!). But I was impatient, I wanted to drink it now! Waiting for it to cool would have shown too much restraint, and I had scalded myself one time to many already. I devised another way that would allow me to drink it immediately. I would take a large spoon, fill it with the hot cocoa, and sip from that. The logic was that the smaller quantity would cool faster than the large amount of liquid in the bowl. This allowed me to begin my chocolate before anybody else!
 Another cup please. I sometimes drank my entire bowl one spoonful at a time. I relished the idea that my hot cocoa could last so long. Every sip was a chocolaty pleasure that would bring a grin to my face.
I have more to say! Keep reading for two recipes and some details.
Posted by Kyle on February 4th, 2010, at 5:39 pm
 Scrambled Eggs Glad to be back after a school related lapse. I will be continuing my trek through the Good Eats episodes with scrambled eggs from the first Egg Files episode. After going through life with mediocre scrambled eggs, I jumped at the opportunity to try a recipe different from my parents’ recipe. As it turns out, the key to great scrambled eggs is to induce steam and fold them instead of stirring them. This allows for a perfectly light texture that is still moist. That brings me to the main lesson of scrambled eggs: if the eggs look done in the pan, they will be overdone by the time they make it to the plate. This means that your eggs should still look moist when you serve them to the plate, because they will continue to cook.
So even if you think you don’t like scrambled eggs, I would urge you to give this recipe a try. Maybe you were like me and had mediocre scrambled eggs all your life. This recipe is simple, and once you get the guidelines you can do it without a recipe on hand. So give this recipe a try, and the next time you have guests for breakfast, you can wow them with the best scrambled eggs they’ve ever had.
 Eggs with a Side of Bacon Click through to keep reading Scrambled Eggs →
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