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This week I do a little brain dump about saffron, a treasured ingredient that feels fitting for spring. How to buy, what to cook with it, and so on. Plus an easy saffron recipe. Ambient noise of the week: subway. (Sorry.)
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This week, I talk about that magical ingredient, butter–salted vs. unsalted, various types, when to use a lot, when to use a little….
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This week, I talk about three very common terms that have a particular meaning in recipes, but–because they’re so common–are rarely thoroughly explained. Listen to hear what zest, fold and deglaze mean. (Episode 11 was a video; you can see it here.)
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This week, I read through a recipe a friend brought me. She had eaten the dish and gotten the recipe, but it seemed very complicated. In this episode, I go through line by line to see where shortcuts can be taken, then compare it with another bread pudding recipe to show how the techniques differ–and which one is better for home cooks.
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This week, I talk about the differences in three overlapping terms used frequently in recipes, and discuss what exactly you should do when a recipe says to brown, saute or caramelize something.
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This week, I explain some of the most common mistakes new cooks make–and how you can fix them. It’s surprisingly easy.
There are a handful of very simple-to-correct mistakes that novice cooks make. In this episode of the podcast, I discuss seven common blunders. They’re taken from a cookbook I’ve written with Tamara Reynolds, called Forking Fantastic! Put the Party Back in Dinner Party. It will be released October 6, 2009. And although the book focuses on parties–unlike Cooking in Real Time–there’s still a lot of great advice that new cooks will find helpful, as well as a lot of very accessible recipes.
One of the blunders is using the wrong knife for the job. Many new cooks are a bit scared of big knives, but they’re really the only good way to get the job done. Big knives can also be scary because they’re expensive! Victorinox, though, makes a very good starter knife that’s lightweight but sturdy, and easy to care for. It’s an easy investment in vastly improved cooking!
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This week, I talk about that magical ingredient, butter–salted vs. unsalted, various types, when to use a lot, when to use a little….
Butter is one of those great ingredients that makes a lot of things taste sensational, but a lot of people are unreasonably afraid of it as well. Yes, restaurants are often guilty of applying it gratuitously, for a quick-and-easy taste sensation, but at home, you can use it judiciously, and you shouldn’t skip it just because it seems like it might be bad for you.
To convince you that maybe butter won’t kill you, check out Jennifer McLagan’s excellent cookbook Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient. There’s a whole chapter devoted to butter. Granted, it’s titled “Butter: Worth It,” so, yes, it implies it might be a bit of a guilty pleasure. But it also has a sensible attitude toward the use of it. I of course don’t recommend cooking everything in this book at once, but you’ll learn a lot.