“Stir until thick” (or “stir until thickened”) might be one of the most difficult expressions in cooking to interpret when you’re just starting out. How can you tell when your sauce/custard/pudding is thick? How do you know it is thick enough? And what does “coat the back of a spoon” mean?
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Last week I talked about how to make browned butter, butter that is cooked until the milk solids in it become brown and toasty, giving the butter a warm brown color and a wonderfully rich flavor. It is not the same as clarified butter. Clarified butter is also used …
Browned butter is pretty much what it sounds like: butter that has been cooked until it is brown. The slightly more formal name for this is “beurre noisette,” or hazelnut butter – a double reference to the light brown color of the cooked butter and the lovely nutty flavor that it acquires …
I’m incredibly lucky to live in California, a state that not only produces fantastic produce, but does so year-round. As a result, you might think that I don’t pay too much attention to what is in season and what isn’t simply because so much is available. But I do. Despite the availability of decent …
Can you describe the flavor of an egg? I’m not entirely sure that I can. Chicken meat is the same way: you can’t exactly describe it, but you know it when you taste it because it is such a familiar flavor. There are many different types and qualities of chickens and, if you eat …
I love all of my cookbooks and use them often. But these days, more often than ever before, I’m looking for recipes (or recipe inspiration) online, too. Cookbooks are easy to take into the kitchen. Computers – even laptops – are somewhat less so. The problem is not gaining access to the …
There are plenty of recipes out there that call for only egg whites or only egg yolks. Angel food cake springs to mind as the most obvious example, since it calls for 10-12 egg whites only, but you can end up with a few leftover after making something as simple …
Agave syrup – also known as agave nectar – is one of those things that was relegated to obscurity in less-trafficked natural foods markets for years, but has recently encountered a substantial upsurge in popularity. The result of this is a much more high profile position in the grocery story, though not everyone has …
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