In order to be original you must be confident in your ability to copy.
Years Past
January 18, 2009
January 18, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Okay, technically this is not rugelach. It's shortbread trimmings, rolled thin, and then covered with things that I would use in rugelach. In this case I've spread half the dough with home made cranberry-meyer lemon marmalade and then sprinkled it all with bittersweet and milk chocolate chips and chopped pistachios--roasted and salted, of course. After I baked the dough, we cut it with a bench scraper while it was still warm. Hence we had a 100% yield on our shortbread dough and a small variety of yummy cookies.
Years Past
January 17, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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...is always better than store bought because you can caramelize it to its maximum flavor potential.
Years Past
January 16, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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A refreshing hit of citrus to brighten up these chilly winter days.
Years Past
January 15, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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I have been planning to combine red wine and miso for years. This afternoon I finally did. I am frustrated it took me so long to make the idea happen. I am thankful that I finally did. The simple combination is a flavorful powerhouse destined to disrupt our kitchen protocols.
Years Past
January 14, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The veal chop is first Frenched. It is cleaned up and the fat pockets are removed. The chop is pounded super thin and wide. (My hand is used to show the size.) It is floured, egged and crumbed. The pounding with the resulting size and thinness is an extreme look at a pounded veal chop. It is a beautiful foundation. With the model we can begin to look at the parts: chop, seasoning and crumbs. Is the chop smoked, brined, aged? What underlying seasonings can we use in the flour or eggs: tea, tandoori, lemon pepper? What kind of crumbs are we using: rye, garlic bread, tortilla chips?
The extreme is where the ideas grow.
Years Past
January 13, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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There's cheese steak on the menu tonight. Alex kind of laughs at me as I carve up the leftover rib roast, carefully removing all the fat and gristle from the cap and the center cut before handing them off to him so he can slice it and do his thing. Totally worth it though. I hate biting into a great sandwich and snagging my teeth on unpleasant, chewy bits. It ruins the whole experience. If you're going to do it at home, you have the opportunity to do it right. That way you can savor each bite.
Years Past
January 8, 2005
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Because sometimes two things are better than one.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Slap Noodles
350 grams flour
3 grams salt
20 grams sunflower oil
180 grams water
Mix the flour and salt. Add the oil and evenly coat the flour with the oil. Add the water and knead into a silky dough, 3-5 minutes. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes. Knead the dough again. Repeat twice more and finally let dough rest an hour or more. Cut the dough into pieces. Flatten the pieces on a lightly oiled counter. Use a pulling and slapping motion stretch into noodles. Adhere the noodles in place with pressure on the end of the noodle strands. Allow the noodles to rest as you stretch the remaining noodles. Cut the noodles in half and stretch them further, about another doubling in length. Use pressure on the noodle ends to secure them to the countertop. Trim the ends and boil for 2-3 minutes.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Heat the cast iron on medium high heat.
(Hopefully) remember to turn on the exhaust hood.
Sprinkle the bottom of the pan with salt.
Once the pan is just smoking, add the steaks.
Flip the steaks, often, every 30 seconds or so.
Marbled steaks will render enough fat to cook the steaks in.
Leaner cuts like filet mignon need the addition of a little extra fat to the pan, we use bacon fat.
When the steaks are browned, crusty and cooked almost to the desired temperature (rare, med-rare, medium, etc.) we add butter (and occasionally herbs) and baste and flip the steaks.
Let the steaks rest on plates for 5 minutes.
Indulge in a special meal.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Amaya and I agreed on ice cream sundaes as an appropriate New Year's Eve dessert. Festive and relatively easy, right? Well not quite as easy as I was imagining. Though we did use store bought ice cream, we needed home made whipped cream and sauces. The final flourish was the cookie crumbs. You can't have a sundae without something crunchy to pull everything together. Fortunately we had salted pistachios and Newman's Own chocolate sandwich cookies in the pantry. Alex heckled me as I scraped out all the filling but it was a necessary step. The finished crumbs were sweet, salty, and very similar in appearance to the dirt in my garden. A touch of green makes all the difference.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The secret is in the salt sear and the bacon fat-butter basting to finish.
Happy New Year!!!
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Finding an ingredient, that normally takes time to be ready to use, ripe and fragrant is magical. Yesterday we picked up a flat of hachiya persimmons. They were wrinkled, ripe and ready to eat and create with. We have a running list of persimmon potential projects.
Persimmon
However, with any list there are always a few entries that take precedence. These persimmons are destined to become blended with habanero peppers to become a favorite hot sauce we have not visited for over ten years.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Tempura shumai are purely brilliant. Sure, we have eaten shumai before. We have eaten shrimp tempura before. But battering and frying shumai, I had never seen it, heard of it or tried it. Today that changed. I experienced shumai tempura at Terakawa Ramen in Princeton. They were delicious with a light crispy exterior and the soft juicy dumpling beneath. Of course this then leads me to a number of paths. What other dumplings, gnocchi or small meat(or fish)balls should we be battering and frying?
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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We were preparing breakfast. I opted to slow down. I sliced onions thinly. I soaked them in cold water to rinse off some of their astringent bite. We patted them dry and dressed the onions with olive oil and salt. Aki asked Amaya if we could add some black pepper. Amaya responded, "Nope, but we can use the fresh red pepper flakes." Amaya does not like the taste or aroma of black pepper and its heat source piperine. She has become a fan of chili peppers and the heat from capsaicin. The small adjustment from black to red was one I would not have explored on my own. I would have just gone without the spice. Amaya's openness to interchangeable parts reminded me that finding the right component can work better than simple eliminations.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Instead of sugar cookies, we do shortbread cut-outs. We roll them out twice and after the second roll, any large pieces of scrap are baked off as they are for tasters and house snacks. The pretty ones go into the gift boxes and the interesting ones are for us.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The flavor of mint, particularly peppermint, is insanely strong. We have previously tempered its strength on doughnuts by grinding it with white chocolate kit kats. For this years holiday season we bounced the idea of candy canes around and BJ asked about a glaze. Ask the question, make it happen. We integrated candy canes into our milk glaze. The result was a subtle and creamy liquid candy cane. For this years crumbs we pulverized candy canes with vanilla sandwich cookies and white chocolate. The crumbs are a delicate expression of a candy cane.
At the shop we have used both candy cane forms on there own. Together they overlap and increase in intensity, a necessary flavor enhancement on our chocolate glazed super cake doughnuts.
Years Past
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I have wanted to make boiling water extruded noodles for too long. Fear of the unknown (messing up our extruder) has kept the idea on the sidelines. Thankfully I gathered enough moral fortitude and emotional support to make the idea happen. For our first run I used the smaller Arcobaleno home machine. It is a powerful wonder that facilitates small idea testing. I tried a few shapes: campanelle, lumache, and ridged super thick bucatini. The first two shapes did not extrude all that well. I am not sure if it was there shapes or perhaps I did not allow for enough mixing. But, I did not allow the two failures deter me. The thick ridged bucatini extruded beautifully. I let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before putting it into zip top bags in the refrigerator. The pasta had a visual dryness and durability that we had not experienced with regularly extruded noodles. This morning the pasta held its coil and was nicely dry to the touch. I cooked a few coils for 2 minutes and finished them in butter enriched tomato sauce. The noodles had a bite and a resiliency that was exciting. Now I need to revisit the failed attempts to see if it was patience or process that caused the initial flawed results.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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We take pictures as reminders. Too often we do not go back and look at what we needed to remember. Today I looked back at what I deemed photo-worthy.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The outside is silky. The inside is chewy. The noodles are slurp-able and elastic. Three thumbs up for tonight. We are making progress. We ate these in a sauce of broth, butter and soy sauce.
Udon Noodles v3
100 grams AP flour
100 grams durum flour
100 grams water
3 grams salt
0.5 grams baking soda
Dissolve salt and baking soda in water.
Combine the flours in a medium bowl. Add the water. Knead the flour and water together in a bowl into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest 10 minutes.
Unwrap and knead for 1-2 minutes until the dough is silky. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest 10 minutes.
Unwrap and knead for another 1-2 minutes. Wrap the dough and refrigerate several hours or overnight.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature, about an hour. Roll the dough through a pasta sheeter or by hand until it is 1/8 inch thick. Cut the dough into 1/8 inch strips.
Boil the noodles for 7 minutes until they are cooked through and chewy.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Because toasted marshmallows make everything better. The question is, how many will make it onto the houses and how many will simply disappear?
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Amaya asks questions and tests out ideas freely. Not everything is a success. Not everything is a failure. Today she tested blood orange and chocolate. It looks like we will be borrowing her idea in the near future.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The list of noodle ideas and flavors is long. It can feel dauntingly large. I often procrastinate, intimidated by the amount of work and the lack of a consuming audience. It's a form of writers block, one where I create the plan and then choose not to put it into action because no one besides us will eat it. The "why bother?" sentiment tends to scream loudly in my ear. It is in these moments when I realize that in order to create, to get things done, to explore--it is necessary to silence that voice. It is the process and practice of making that allows us to improve, discover, and be delighted.
Today I looked at the flavor list in our American Noodles outline and picked a few to begin working on. The first was green curry. I started with a prepared green curry paste and mixed it with some water to make a flavorful liquid to hydrate pasta. I strained the mixture in order to remove any solids that could clog the pasta die. I mixed the green curry liquid with semolina in the pasta machine. I chose campanelle because I enjoy alliterations. I extruded the pasta and the campanelle curled into aromatic trumpets. I let the pasta air dry for half an hour before I put it into zip top bags in the refrigerator, reserving it for cooking later.
The aroma of the curry is intense. The raw dough captures the essence of the flavor. The cooking will show that the infused flavor will stand up to the dilution of boiling and saucing. For a first version we are on the right path. I believe it's important to force myself to take the steps forward and not just think about where I want to go.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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I ended up not tying our pork shoulder. I put it in a roasting pan with about an inch of white wine and a bit of chicken stock and cooked it at 250°F with convection for 10 hours and 15 minutes. I cooked it until it reached 192°F internal temperature. I was shocked that it took that long to cook. Somehow I thought that a pork shoulder would cook in about 6-7 hours. Fortunately we started early. Once it was cooked I let it rest for an hour before carving.
The roast carved cleanly and was tender. The sausage and meat became one. My critical side has me looking at keeping the meat juicier. The sausage can use some refinement, first off less salt. But as a first run it a delicious start to refining our complete pork shoulder.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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First up, Today Marks 15 Years of Ideas in Food
take a moment and dive into the links below to see what we have been up to on this day over the years.
Now onto the Ideas in Food:
I continue to explore the benefits, functionality and inspirations in using sake to flavor foods. I salted our pork shoulder and let it season overnight in the refrigerator. This morning I combined yellow mustard and sake. I brushed the entire shoulder with the mixture and will now let it infuse and hopefully dry overnight.
The blend of sake and mustard creates an aromatic, savory, slightly boozy mustard. My first application is with the shoulder. But I see many openings in the future from thick cut fish to hangar steak. Time and availability of ingredients will determine our next directions.
Years Past
December 5, 2004: when it all began
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Years ago we used corn nuts as a topping for calamari bolognese, that we spooned over fresh corn polenta. Since then I have quietly forgotten about them. Today Aki picked up a container of salty, crunchy, nutty corn nuts and my eyes were opened again. Funny enough I had already bought a few cans of corn to make a popcorn glaze for doughnuts. The connection was made and I realized the corn nuts would be an insane topping for the popcorn glaze. The finished doughnut will be a corn-Nut.
Of course outside doughnutland these corn nuts will gain some new uses from a pasta to polenta to a crunchy topping for roasted shrimp and grilled beef.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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We have been asked, on occasion, for jelly doughnuts. We used to make thumbprints. But as a whole we have found jelly doughnuts don't sell. Today, we brought jelly doughnuts back. I figured they would fly off the shelf because recently there have been lots of jelly requests. It turns out there were not as many requests as it seemed. There were a few loud requests. The jellies found a few happy homes. They did not grow wings and fly out the door. We will continue down the jelly path and see if the loud voices are joined by other, softer, voices leading to greater consumption.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Last night I had the pleasure to eat at. The details were impressively striking. The last one that caught me by surprise and brought a smile to my face was the wallpaper in the bathroom. It was a cooks notebook, blown up on a massive scale. It turns out it is Adam Perry Lang's pastry notes from when he was a young cook. The use of a notebook as decor was brilliant and engaging. I'm now interested in trying out a few of the recipes.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Step one: macerate the fruit. We're making Cranberry-Meyer Lemon marmalade to fill doughnuts this weekend at the shop. Right now the fruit is resting with an equal weight of sugar and 0.25% salt. Tomorrow we'll cook it down to a rich marmalade and finish it with a generous splash of vanilla paste. This first step helps draw out the juices and blend the flavors. It's not required but it makes a world of difference.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Broth is an important element ingredient in our kitchen. The easy availability of better prepared broths has made us lazier about preparing our own. We easily rely on the pre-made organic broths to kick start a recipe. Thankfully Thanksgiving provides us with a bounty of bones and trimmings that must be converted into a rich decadent broth. Prior to the big day Aki had made a batch of chicken broth. Perhaps we were not as reliant on the prepared broth as I thought. In any case, I took the turkey and pork bones and put them in our new favorite pressure cooker. (It's simplicity, durability and ease of cleaning has won me over. Hopefully I will get the 8-qt for smaller projects soon.) I added Aki's broth and topped the bones with water. I sealed the lid and brought the broth to a boil and cooked it for one hour. I let the pressure dissipate and was rewarded with an intense flavorful liquid. It immediately sparked the need for tortellini en brodo. And that is exactly what we made.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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This is not a beautiful dish. It's not meant to be. It is delicious. It's the main reason I agree to mashed potatoes in addition to au gratin, sweet potatoes, and stuffing on Thanksgiving. Mix some diced dark meat chicken, vegetables and turkey broth or gravy to make the base. Top with leftover mashed potatoes and bake until hot throughout and golden brown on top. Forget the sandwiches, this is our favorite Thanksgiving leftovers meal.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Our friends at Blis just came out with an apple cider vinegar aged in rye barrels. They sent us a bottle as a gift and it was so good we had to share the news. The vinegar is surprisingly light and delicate, well rounded with delicate floral notes from the apple and a nice roundness from the barrel aging. It's a fun ingredient and we can't wait to put it to good use in our kitchen.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The quality of the spice rub you buy is reliant on the quality of the spices, the blend, and the age. Recently we went Kondo on our spice cabinet. The result was a tidy space with no resources when I wanted to assemble a few rubs for our Thanksgiving pork shoulder and half-cocked turkeys. Instead of restocking our spice drawer at the 11th hour I opted to pick up some fun sounding spice blends.
Since I had already pre-salted the shoulder and the bird I searched out spice blends with little or no salt. I found two that were interesting and rolled the dice. When I got to our kitchen I opened them up. I tasted the blends. Both mixes had some pluses and minuses. They were not horrible (see my opening line), I know a glowing endorsement, and I needed to get these massive hunks of meat seasoned. I picked one for the shoulder and one for half the cocked turkey. The second half I figured I'd season with a bit of maple-soy sauce.
Since the meat was pre-salted and air dried I opted to steal the sake seasoning technique to adhere the spices. I doused the shoulder and the turkey with the sake and liberally applied the spice rubs. I brushed the other half of turkey with the maple-soy sauce and returned the bounty to the refrigerator overnight.
What I learned is that if you are going to start from scratch you must actually start. And if you are going to rely on the work of others you must be able to rely on them. I believe our shoulder and birds will be delicious and open my relatively closed mind to new blends and combinations that I might not have explored on own. It is the absence of choice that forced my hand to try something new.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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This is a super simple dish. I use "dumpling technique" to cook brussels sprouts with some julienned ham to get them soft and crispy. Clean and split your brussels sprouts. Julienne a few slices of ham. Set a large skillet over medium high heat and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Once the oil just starts to smoke, add the brussels sprouts, flat side down. Season with salt. Sprinkle the ham over the top. As soon as the sprouts are sizzling, add water to cover the sprouts by a quarter of an inch and then cover the pan. Cook for about 10 minutes, until all of the water has evaporated. Uncover the pan and cook until the brussels sprouts are caramelized on the bottom. Toss the sprouts well and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the ham has browned too. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve immediately. We tend to eat them straight from the bowl if the rest of dinner isn't ready and usually at least half of them are gone by the time we sit down.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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When I first arrived at culinary school many, many years ago, I discovered sriracha. There were giant bottles of it on every table in the cafeteria. The first time I tried it was a revelation. It was hot, yes, but also full of flavor. Garlicky and sweet and spicy, it was like no other hot sauce I had ever tried. Nowadays sriracha is everywhere but, since my husband has a distinct prejudice against it, I hadn't had any in years. On a whim I added this Yellowbird Blue Agave Sriracha to a recent hot sauce order. I wanted to see how the sauce had evolved through the years and I liked their logo and their philosophy. This sauce was only vaguely reminiscent of the sauce I remembered. It is bracing and bright and full of flavor. There's definite heat and sweet and garlic but this sauce has a bit more personality and finesse than the ubiquitous rooster brand. It's going to be a great addition to our pantry. Who knows, I may even get Alex to embrace sriracha for the very first time.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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I thought it was pretty smart to package both the sweet and hot sausages together. Too often we end up having to either buy one or the other or, when we buy both, we end up with an excess. Having both together makes the decision easy and we can actually use all of what we buy.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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I have been wanting to make habanero pasta for years. I finally put the idea into action. As I was gathering the ingredients, I noticed an array of new hot sauces that Aki had picked up for our pantry. One of the sauces was habanero and mustard based. I immediately knew I needed to integrate some mustard into our habanero noodles. I blended the peppers with mustard and water and strained the mixture. The liquid was super spicy, floral and brightly acidic. The pasta came together in the machine beautifully. For our first run I made thick spaghetti, more close to a bigoli.
The only short coming in the noodle was the color. It makes we wonder what other flavor we may integrate to increase the bright orange color and add a supporting flavor. The first ingredient that comes to mind is carrots. Time to tinker.
Habanero Noodles
200 grams fresh habaneros stem removed
400 grams water
100 grams yellow mustard
2000 grams semolina flour
6.5 grams baking soda
6.5 grams salt
Put the habaneros, water and mustard in a blender. Puree them together until the mixture appears smooth. Strain the habanero mixture through a fine mesh sieve. Weigh out 600 grams, reserve any extra in case noodles need additional hydration.
Put the semolina, baking soda, and salt into the pasta machine and mix to distribute in the hopper. With the machine running, drizzle in the habanero water. Mix the dough for 6-7 minutes. Check the consistency of the dough after 4 minutes. It should begin to resemble course streusel. Squeeze the dough together in your hand. Break the dough apart. If it breaks cleanly, the dough has enough water. If it crumbles, add additional water in 20-gram increments. Once the dough is the right consistency let it knead in the machine for a few minutes. Then, if you are in a hurry, you can begin extruding immediately. It's better to let it rest for in the machine for 10 minutes to achieve ideal hydration and then extrude your noodles
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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We were planning on mashed potatoes the other night when we were overcome by a sudden desire for chili and nachos. That happens to everyone, right? So instead of mashing the boiled potatoes, we dried them in the pot and chilled them on a sheet pan. The next day we pulled out some steaks and paired them with spicy spinach and cream fried potatoes with bacon. We took some leftover bacon and cut it into matchsticks. Then we set it in a pan with some butter, just until they started to crisp up. We added the cold potatoes and let them brown lightly on one side. We gave them a quick toss and tipped in some heavy cream and a good sprinkling of salt. We cooked them until all the cream had been absorbed and the potatoes had browned. They were crispy and velvety, creamy and rich. Sometimes leftovers make the best parts of a new meal.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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We cooked the (pre-salted) steaks sous vide, from frozen, for 3 hours. I pulled them from the bags and stood them up, fat side down in a medium hot cast iron skillet. The fat slowly rendered and the fat caramelized. When the edge was richly browned I flipped the steaks in the rendered fat to quickly brown the surfaces. The steaks provide the fat and become more flavorfully cooked in the process.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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I took the idea of spraying yakitori with sake, to increase umami, from Chicken and Charcoal and applied it to our burger making. I reduced the amount of cream from our cream burger and used an equal amount of sake and cream. I mixed in salt and formed patties. The burgers browned well and were extremely juicy. The flaw was the raw sake became too much in the finished burger. The alcohol overpowered the meat. Perhaps I would have been better off brushing the cream burgers with sake. Perhaps I can cook out the alcohol in the sake. The first run was delicious and has me wanting to improve and explore the use of sake in meat cookery well beyond the burger.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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While we're thinking about yakitori, there's some interesting stuff in this video of Chef Shigetoshi Narita in Mexico via Eater.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Years ago we came across maple cotton candy. I loved the idea of it. Recently I came across maple cotton candy for sale in the aisles of our local Whole Foods. I couldn't pass it up. I bought it and cracked open the lid. The candy was light and airy with a delicate maple flavor. I knew we needed to use it on a doughnut.
I am a blueberry pancake junky. It made sense to make a blueberry and maple doughnut and top it with the cotton candy. We used our super cakes as the base. We added maple glaze and blueberry crumbs. We nestled a tuft of cotton candy in the middle.
Years Past
November 8, 2009 (triple crust pie)
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The idea of Calabrian kosho has been in the notebook, really the passion project cookbook file, for years. The idea was to combine cultural icons into a delicious condiment. Yuzu kosho is currently quite fashionable. It has been for a while now. We created a quick version recipe of it in our second book Maximum Flavor. The concept of American Noodles is another fetish of mine. It is the passion project that I cannot let go of and cannot get going in the real world. The idea is a multi-influenced pasta-land where anything goes, as long as we can make a smart and delicious connection. Today I'm playing with Calabrian kosho as a foundation ingredient for pasta, meatballs, dressings, noodles and sauces. To create this hybrid I blended preserved lemons, white miso and a jar of calabrian chiles packed in oil. The result is bracing bright, funky, spicy and rich. It is an amplfied, rock star version of the classic yuzu kosho. It illustrates where I want to take American Noodles and all of our cooking.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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...there's flavor. We didn't grill much this summer, it was just too hot out there. So we're dubbing fall the new grilling season. Now if it would just stop raining...
Years Past
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We cut deep cross hatches into a pork shoulder and seasoned it liberally with salt. We let it sit uncovered in the refrigerator for 2 days, allowing the salt to penetrate the meat. We cooked the shoulder on a bed of miripoix with a bit of chicken broth in a covered pot for 6 hours at 250°F. The fat became meltingly tender and the meat softened into an almost spoon-cutting texture. The meat is now a blank canvas to be dressed in a variety of forms: from yuzu kosho to tomatoes with onions sweated in butter. By cooking the shoulder on its own we can now explore many paths.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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Some days you cook the crisp for an hour and there are thick dribbles of juice bubbling out of the pan. You let it rest during dinner and go to scoop it and the juices under the crust are thin and watery. Then your husband and daughter start taunting you about serving a raw crisp. So what do you do? You wrap the pie pan in foil and set it over a burner. Fifteen minutes later and the juices are bubbling and thick. You have a perfectly cooked crisp.
Years Past
November 2, 2009
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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The pleasure of books can be summed up in the random discovery of joy. We picked up Chicken and Charcoal: Yakitori, Yardbird, Hong Kong by Matt Abergel. The super clean pictures of butchering and the assembling of skewers is complimented by an instinctual and inviting prose describing insights on the cooking process. The obsession with the process is apparent from the first flip and I am certainly eager to dive into the process of yakitori as well as stealing the techniques for other preparations.
Years Past
Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work
Maximum Flavor: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Gluten Free Flour Power: Bringing Your Favorite Foods Back to the Table
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