The real question is where to begin?
A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus: Menus and Stories
Sugar Rush: Master Tips, Techniques, and Recipes for Sweet Baking
Years Past
Adventures in Doughnutland.
[email protected]
© 2005-2022 Ideas in Food
Writing and Photographs by Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot
Search
Affiliate
- All Amazon links on this website are part of an affiliate program. Ideas in Food will earn a small percentage on any purchases made by visiting Amazon through our links. Thank you for supporting Ideas in Food by making purchases through our site.
To Be Read
Martin, Melissa M.: Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou
Lee, Lara: Coconut & Sambal: Recipes from my Indonesian Kitchen
Chauhan, Maneet: Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets, and Railways of India: A Cookbook
McDermott, Kate: Pie Camp: The Skills You Need to Make Any Pie You Want
Lee, Lara: Coconut & Sambal: Recipes from my Indonesian Kitchen
Kimber, Edd: One Tin Bakes: Sweet and simple traybakes, pies, bars and buns
Clark, Letitia: Bitter Honey: Recipes and Stories from Sardinia
McDowell, Erin Jeanne: The Book on Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake Perfect Pies
Michael Solomonov: Federal Donuts: The (Partially) True Spectacular Story
Chris Cosentino: Offal Good: Cooking from the Heart, with Guts
Deb Perelman: Smitten Kitchen Every Day: Triumphant and Unfussy New Favorites
Samin Nosrat: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
Michelle Tam: Ready or Not!: 150+ Make-Ahead, Make-Over, and Make-Now Recipes by Nom Nom Paleo
Lee Brian Schrager: America's Best Breakfasts: Favorite Local Recipes from Coast to Coast
Jacqueline An: An: To Eat: Recipes and Stories from a Vietnamese Family Kitchen
Carolyn Phillips: All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China
Alexandra Stratou: Cooking with Loula: Greek Recipes from My Family to Yours
Meathead Goldwyn: Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling
« August 2014 | Main | October 2014 »
30 entries from September 2014
Gluten Free Orecchiette
To make orecchiette we sampled ourselves.
We gelatinized our What IiF flour. We whisked together 500 grams of water and 100 grams of What IiF flour. We put the mixture in a stainless steel bowl set in a pressure cooker with 2-inches of water in the bottom. We cooked the mixture for 20 minutes at high pressure and let the pressure dissipate naturally. Then we pureed the starch mixture in a food processor and let it cool. When it was cold we made pasta dough.
We combined 200 grams of the gelatinized starch puree and 200 grams of What IiF flour. We reserved the additional gelatinized starch for other applications. We kneaded the flour and the puree together, without adding any additional water, until it turned into a pliable dough. Then we rolled it into logs, cut the into 1-inch pieces, and shaped the dough into little ears. When we were done we made a quick butter and cheese sauce, spiked with black pepper. The orrechiette were tender and chewy, with a slightly sweet flavor, enhanced by the sauce. Now the doors are open for exploration.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
| |
|
Gentle Melting
We've played around with creative applications while melting cheese in the CVap. What we missed was the practical application of melting cheese in a uniform low temperature environment. In a recent workshop we adapted our butter burger. We cooked the burgers in the CVap for one hour at 55°C. Then we topped the burgers with slices of cheddar and American cheese. After 10 minutes the cheese had melted smoothly over the top of each burger. We were then able to briefly char the bottom of the burgers on the Kotaigrill. We created a perfect storm of flavor: perfecly cooked juicy burgers, silken melted cheese and the flavor of char from grilling.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
| |
|
Dogfish Head Sixty-One
It's no secret that Dogfish Head makes some of our favorite beers. It's a rare day when you can't find some 60 Minute IPA in our back fridge. So when we came across this Dogfish Head Sixty One at one of the local butcher shops, I immediately put it in the cart. Beer brewed with Syrah grape must, how could this possibly be a bad thing? Turns out Alex had already tried it. It was part of a dinner he did with Hari Cameron at a(Muse.) in Delaware last year. He told me that I definitely needed to get it and he was right. This is a complex flavorful beer that encapsulates the flavor of the grapes without being overly fruity or sweet. It is still very clearly an IPA with a nice hoppy edge of bitterness. I had it with runny cheese and wheat crackers and that definitely worked. It's not a beer I would drink every day, but it was a fun change of pace, especially for fall.
Years Past
| |
|
Guilty Pleasures: Instant Ramen
Instant ramen was probably one of the first things that I cooked for myself. As a kid, most of the things I learned to cook were for other people, making scrambled eggs for Mom or helping Aunt Marie cook dinner. Ramen noodles were something that I enjoyed and could cook for myself at an early age, even when I was home alone. I learned how to make them from my mom. We would buy them at the corner store. Then she would make them for lunch, always cracking an egg or two in the pot and slicing up a scallion to sprinkle over the top. It was one of the few things that she cooked and I quickly adapted it for my own.
Over the years I refined my technique. Choosing a favorite brand (which has recently disappeared much to my dismay) and figuring out the best way to cook them. I always add greens, baby kale or arugula or chopped romaine if that's all I have in the fridge. I add the vegetables when the noodles are about halfway cooked and then I add the seasoning, usually 2/3 of the seasoning packet(s). Finally I add an egg to the pot. The greens keep the egg from sinking to the bottom so the pot is easier to clean. I pull some noodles over the egg, cover the pot and turn off the heat. Then I let it sit for a minute or two. Finally I transfer the noodles to a bowl, being sure to be gentle so the not yet fully cooked yolk doeasn't break. It's important that the egg be completely covered with broth so it finishes cooking in the bowl. A sprinkle of finely sliced scallions is always a nice tough if you have them.
The first few bites are all about the noodles. If I've done a good job, they are light and springy, with a slightly sweet, wheaty flavor and a nice chew that is balanced by the sweet, silky texture of the greens. About halfway through I scoop out the egg with a spoon and cut it open. A perfectly cooked egg will have firm whites and a liquid, slightly viscous yolk. There's a little bit of magic in the way it washes across the noodles and doesn't quite emulsify into the salty broth. You can get a few bites out of each egg, savoring the way the flavors merge and separate in your mouth. When you get back to the noodles they have changed, softening and expanding in the soup. No longer springy, they are softer, though still pliant with a gentle chew. This works nicely because you're no longer ravenously hungry and the tender texture of the noodles is comforting against your tongue. It's a perfect lunch, easy, delicious, loaded with msg, and one of my favorite guilty pleasures.
Years Past
| |
|
The Odds and Ends of Chowder
You get what you get and then you make chowder. Our NH CSF has had its ups and downs. Instead of planning what to do with the fish ahead of time, we have found it smarter to see what shape the fish is in. Today our share was hake. It was fresh, and roughly handled. It needed more than its fair share of trimming. Instead of being frustrated, my usual approach to most things, I opted to look at what remained and figure out a delicious way to enjoy it.
We started with some linguisa that we sauteed in olive oil. Then we added onions and salt, and hard sweated them down. When the onions were soft we added half and half. Then we added Yukon Gold potatoes and shaved Tuscan kale. (It's not a contemporary approach without kale.) When the potatoes were tender we added the hake pieces we had brined in a 5% salt solution for 30 minutes. This was a longer brine than usual. We did this to rinse off surface proteins and to season the fish. We cooked the fish for 5 minutes, then turned off the heat and let the chowder rest.
The fish gently flaked into the chowder, flavoring and finishing it. Chowder, like soups and even many pasta sauces, is a functional medium to utilize odds and ends to create something seriously delicious.
Years Past
| |
|
The Littlest Pizza Chef
| |
|
Mic-Roasted Nuts
Oil can get really hot in a microwave. Nuts are full of oil. We wanted to see if we could roast nuts in the microwave. We started with raw walnuts and microwaved them on high in 1-minute intervals. We stirred them after each minute and tasted them after each stir. As they cooked, their nuttiness increased and the aroma of roasted nuts filled the kitchen. After 5 minutes we had crisp, aromatic nuts. They did not have the same dark color and intense flavor development that we have achieved with low temperature (250°F) roasting for about an hour. What these nuts had was a bold walnut flavor and light crunchy texture that was achieved in a really short time.
Years Past
| |
|
Butchering: two brilliant volumes
Adam Danforth has written two wonderful books on how to humanely slaughter and butcher animals for meat. There are two volumes, one on smaller animals: Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, Pork, and one on Beef. If cooking and eating meat is one of your passions you should get these books, preferably in hard cover. Thanks to Bryan Voltaggio for pointing us in the right direction. And if you happen to be in Baltimore, swing by Spike Gjerde's Parts and Labor, he has copies of the books for sale there too.
Years Past
| |
|
Flavor the Buttermilk
Stepping back and creating distance allows for discovery. When we make butter we prefer to age it in its own buttermilk to further develop flavors. Then we realized that we could and should serve the butter and its buttermilk together. And today we saw more opportunity. We can flavor the buttermilk. We have flavored the cream prior to churning and gotten delicious results. But flavoring the buttermilk after the fact is a small change. And it opens up flavor options from smoke to ranch. And if we looked beyond the buttermilk and blended it with other ingredients: carrot juice, beet juice, hoisin sauce, then more dish and ingredient specific options are created. Whether its for aging, or serving, or an answer in between, flavoring the buttermilk is now an important step in our process.
Years Past
| |
|
A Musical Interlude
Tubthumping by Chumbawamba came out years ago, when we worked at Clio. It seemed to come on the radio every afternoon and was exactly what we needed to help push us through the end of prep and gear us up for service. TIme goes by, cooks move on, bands break up, but those old songs ring true forever.
Years Past
| |
|
Potato Starch Fried Chicken
The Top 3 Pieces are Coated in Seasoned Potato Starch, the others in Seasoned Flour
Potato starch is our new best friend. We have used it to crust fish. And in a recent workshop we used it instead of flour for our Cold Smoked Fried Chicken. Actually we did a side by side comparison of flour versus the potato starch. We thought we got a great crust with the flour, until we tasted it next to the potato starch version. The potato starch version is extremely light and holds its crispness for hours. Yes hours. I didn't think our fried chicken could get better. I have never been more happy to be wrong.
Years Past
| |
|
Are You Ready For Some...
APPLE PIE?
The season has officially begun.
Get off your couch and into the kitchen!
Years Past
| |
|
Grilled Cheese Outside In
We have been griddling cheese inside our hot dog buns for several years. The cheese cooks into the bread, caramelizes and produces a chewy cheesy crust. It took an excess of grated cheese on the cutting board for us to apply this idea to the outside of our grilled cheese sandwiches. Aki was going to sprinkle the bit of cheese onto the top side of the exterior of the sandwiches. When I saw what she was up to, I dove head first into the process. I added full slices of cheddar cheese to both slices of bread. Aki's thought was why use butter when you can use cheese? My thought was the more cheese, the merrier. Together our ideas produced an off the charts grilled cheese sandwich. It didn't hurt that she lined the bread with Sir Kensignton's Sriracha mayo and added thick slices of ripe tomato. The crispy cheddar cheese on the outside was salty and nutty. The soft melted cheddar on the inside was oozy and sweet. The tomatoes were meaty and juicy and the mayo added just the right touch of spice. Our grilled cheese sandwich game has now been vastly upgraded.
Years Past
| |
|
Simple Vinegar Syrup
When we taste pickled foods, we think of vinegar and lacto-fermentation. Lacto-fermentation has recently commanded a lot of our attention. We recently re-visited vinegar pickling, choosing a new starting point. Usually we balance acidity with salt and sugar. In this case, we created a vinegar simple syrup using equal parts brown sugar and rice vinegar. We seasoned the syrup with 0.5% salt. Then we used it to cook fairy tale eggplants. We simmered the eggplants for five minutes in the syrup and then let them cool to room temperature. When the eggplants were cool we removed them from the syrup which had absorbed that funky eggplant bitterness, removing it from the fruit. The pickled eggplants were sweet, tart, firm, and seasoned. They were eggplant cornichons. Was starting with the vinegar simple syrup the key? Perhaps. Choosing a different starting point will often lead to new discoveries.
Years Past
| |
|
Controlling Your Attention
Searing in butter is an exciting process due to the low smoke point. It keeps the cook involved. You need to adjust the heat and pay attention to what is happening in the pan. Using butter slows down the cooking. We can't get it too hot or the milk solids burn. We are forced to cook ingredients more gently. As we sear and then baste large pieces of fish in the browning butter, the aroma fills the air and penetrates the flesh. We found the flavor of brown butter fully imbued the cooked monkfish loins. This was the first time that we ate it and understood why people associate the flavor of this fish with lobster. The monkfish tails were slightly sweet, rich and meaty, with large flakes and a delicate chew. And perhaps because we were forced to pay attention to the cooking we paid closer attention to the eating.
Years Past
| |
|
The Sorting Room
Taking everything that's ready and then culling through it to bring out the best in each piece.
Years Past
| |
|
Eggs on Toast
Semi-soft boiled eggs on sourdough toast. This was a delicious breakfast. It was simple. It had textures and aromas. It was seasoned well. I'd eat it again, any day. And reflecting on it leaves a void. Not in its simplicity. But in its lack of moxie. That missing element which takes a dish to another level. Does every dish need this element? Absolutely. Our job is to find it. And when we realize we've missed an opportunity, it is automatic for me to pull out my rapidly graying hair, and then dive back into the fray.
Years Past
| |
|
Ideas in Food vs. The Snickers Bar
Once again we are visiting our friends over at Serious Eats. This week we've taken the classic frozen Snickers Bar and turned it into an ice cream pie. All of the components are darned tasty so you can pick and choose what you want to make, and if you put everything together you'll have a pretty special dessert.
Years Past
| |
|
Artichokes at Home
Artichokes are one of my favorite foods. A lot of people don't cook them at home because they think they are a lot of work. When you order them at restaurants they are peeled, perfectly cooked, and artfully turned. But in reality you don't need to work that hard.
I grew up eating stuffed artichokes. My Aunt Lucy made them whenever we went to Pittsburgh or she came to NYC to visit. Aunt Marie and I loved them. After Aunt Lucy passed away Uncle Alex would make them for us when we came to visit. He didn't trim them or dig out the chokes but they were still delicious, we just had to do a little more work at the table. When I worked in restaurants I spent hours peeling and trimming baby artichokes. We would braise them and cut them into slivers and you were lucky to get one whole flower on your plate. They were delicious but the portions were tiny.
Now when I stumble across fat, weighty artichokes at the market I use my pressure cooker. I cook them at high pressure for 7-9 minutes, depending on their size, and they are perfectly cooked. You could make a dipping sauce or drizzle them with melted butter but I like them straight. There's something almost meditative about scraping your teeth across each leaf and slowly working your way towards the meaty heart at the center. These were fat purple beauties. As you can see in this picture, I started to trim them and realized I was going to lose a whole lot of the good stuff to the garbage can. Sometimes leaving things alone gets you a better yield. I have to admit that I'm the kind of person who nibbles on the outside leaves while I'm finishing up things in the kitchen but if I leave them all on there than nobody ever knows the difference.
Years Past
| |
|
Mashed Potatoes Makeover
We have changed the way we make mashed potatoes. I am a fan of mashed potatoes that you can eat with a fork. They should still be smooth, but the loose potato puree that slides around on the plate and is diluted by sauce does nothing for me. We can all relate to and recall the famous Robuchon potato puree. And even though his are served in a crock, they are stable enough to hold a fluting on their surface. Potatoes need texture.
I have been observing what happens when we make mashed potatoes. After they are boiled we put them through a food mill or a ricer. Then we put them back in the pan and add the butter. At home I eliminated the step of ricing the potatoes and instead use a hand mixer with the beaters to work the butter into them and break them down. As the potatoes absorb the butter it coats the starch granules and emulsifies with the help of the steam in the pot. Despite popular belief and kitchen lore, the potatoes remain silky and smooth in spite of of using the mixer. They retain a firm texture; the potatoes are forkable. Kitchen lore says mashed potatoes need milk, cream, or some sort of additional dairy. So I would take these wonderful potatoes and add warm, not hot, liquid dairy. The potatoes would then thin out and become grainy. When I opted out of adding the liquid element we had perfect potatoes.
What is equally interesting is that when we cooled down the excess mashed potatoes we could puree them in a food processor, add water, and then reheat a fluid potato puree. I miscalculated the amount of water needed for the reheat and ended up with the aformentioned liquid potato puree. Despite my error we were onto something. Even when we put the mixture back into the food processor the potatoes did not become gluey. It was as if we had made a potato roux with the gelatinized potato and its starch. We could do anything with the potatoes without overworking them.
Now begins the process of incorporating the right amount of additional moisture to have a repeatable, reheatable, forkable mashed potatoes.
Years Past
| |
|
Worth a Thousand Words
There's a reason Alex doesn't have his picture taken often.
Years Past
| |
|
Marinated Mussels
We were going to make shrimp scampi. We wanted additional broth to flavor the pasta. We bought mussels to make a stock. We cooked them with olive oil, garlic and sherry. Once the mussels had opened we removed them from the pan. We added shrimp shells to the broth. We cooked the shells for 5 minutes and then strained the liquid. We were left with a platter of moist, tender, juicy mussels.
I didn't have a plan for them. We removed them from the shells and set them in a dish to cool. The mussels were the by-product because I wanted the sauce for pasta. They became an inspiration. We dressed them with olive oil, lemon juice, a few spoonfuls of a mustard vinaigrette, and a hearty spoonful of Gran Luchito: smoked chili paste. Just before serving we folded in coarsely chopped basil and chives from the garden. The mussels grew into an exceptional dish. We served them with crusty bread as a prelude to our dinner of shrimp scampi.
Years Past
| |
|
Lobster and Mashed Potatoes
I'm not sure when lobster mashed potatoes started becoming a thing. If I was to make a somewhat educated guess I'd say Jasper White had his hand in things. But, like many great ideas that get handed off and explored the end result becomes diluted. I love the idea of sweet tender lobster. And I certainly enjoy decadent buttery mashed potatoes. And I am usually the guy wanting the lobster mashed potatoes. The problem is when they are combined the sum is less than the individual parts. The lobster overcooks. Its juices dilute the flavor of the potatoes and make them grainy. And the lobster to potato ratio is not easily controllable. Instead of combining them we separated them. And only at the table did I bring them back together. Our all butter potatoes shined. The lobster was juicy, sweet and firm. The two were great together when we treated them as individuals.
Years Past
| |
|
Roni-back Zucchini
No ingredient is free from my pepperoni reign of terror. At least that's what Aki will you tell you. Recently we explored hasselbacking zucchini with pepperoni. The process was slow. The pepperoni to zucchini ratio is high. Aki informed me there are more calories in one zucchini-pepperoni than there are in two large pepperoni pizzas. She may be exaggerating. We will roast the zucchini in a 400°F oven to allow the pepperoni to brown, crisp and flavor the zucchini. An alternative method would be to saute the pepperoni, then remove the slices from a pan and saute the zucchini in the pepperoni fat. Both ingredients can then be combined on a platter. Or, just lay slices of pepperoni on the zucchini and roast them together as we did with our Brussels sprouts.
Years Past
| |
|
The Mere Exposure Effect
Why we love repetition in music - Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis via TedEd.
Now carefully apply this to the way we cook.
Certain elements on a menu make people feel good, regardless of what they're presented with.
It's why new techniques are often folded into interpreations of old favorite dishes.
We order the things we are familiar with because they make us feel good.
Repetition, it's what's for dinner.
Years Past
| |
|
Pie Dough Streusel
I happened to have some extra pie dough in the fridge. Half was rolled out into a pan in the freezer and half was still in a disc. There were several kinds of berries in the fridge but not enough of any one to make a pie, so I combined them all (about 5 cups worth) with 3/4 cup sugar, 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt, 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and 4 teaspoons of tapioca starch. (When Alex monopolizes the scales I have to make do with imperial measurements.) It was very hot and humid in the kitchen that afternoon so instead of attempting to roll out the second crust I crumbled it into streusel and spread it over the top of the berries. Then I scattered raw sugar over the streusel and baked the pie at 400°F. for 20 minutes, reduced the heat to 350°F, and baked it for another 45 minutes.
Pie dough streusel might just be my new favorite thing.
Years Past
| |
|
Summer Rainbow
One of the joys of summer cooking in a vacation house is sharing the load. We all gather in the kitchen and work together. It's not about cutting things perfectly, it's just about celebrating a great meal with people we love. Heirloom tomatoes sprinkled with coarse sea salt create a rainbow that promises a great meal to come.
Years Past
| |
|
Pork Roast Parts
We started with a well marbled, 4-bone rib roast from the shoulder side. We injected it with buttermilk brine. (We used the recipe from our cold smoked fried chicken in Ideas in Food.) We cooked it for 5 hours at 57°C in the CVap. Then we cooled the roast in the blast chiller. Once it was cold, we broke the roast down into its many parts: ribs, center eye in two parts, deckle, flat iron, and outside deckle in two parts. Then we grilled the pieces on the Kotaigrill, let them rest, sliced, and tasted. This was a unique indulgence. Normally we cook the parts from raw and then finish them. Normally we work with one part at a time. Starting with the large roast and then breaking it down let us taste individually and all together. This time we were not concerned with removing every perceived imperfection: fat pockets, irregular shapes, and bones. Instead we were able to enjoy them all and appreciate what each piece brought to the table.
Years Past
| |
|
Categories
- American Noodles
- Approach to Cooking
- At the Table
- Bakers Dozen
- Balancing Tastes
- Beyond the Kitchen Doors
- Books
- Can You Believe It
- Cookie Counter
- Cooking Classes
- Culinary Conversations
- CULINARY EVOLUTIONS
- Culinary Introduction
- CULINARY REFERENCES
- Curiosity Doughnuts
- DISCOVERIES
- Food and Drink
- Food For Thoughts
- FOOD SCIENCE
- For the Bookshelves
- Fried Chicken Project
- From the Bookshelves
- Icons and Alliterations
- Impromptu Pizza
- Indulgence
- Ingredients
- INSPIRATIONS
- Just Before the Bin
- Katsu Dogs
- Kitchen Tools
- LIBATIONS
- Listen to This
- Magical Mistakes
- Meditations From the Kitchen
- Menus
- Music
- Not Food Related
- Notebooks
- Picture This
- Recipes
- Salumi Sessions
- Someone Else's Kitchen
- Staples We Cannot Live Without
- The 10 Condiments
- The Alchemy of Flavor
- The Art of Improvisation
- Videos
- WELCOME
- What We Learned
