Humans, in our arrogance, have devised numerous ways of taking a fruit or vegetable and dissecting, dissolving or distorting it from its natural state to make it into something, well, delicious. I’m not knocking the natural state of produce that Hashem blessed us with, but sometimes, we don’t want to have to do all that chewing.
There are a surfeit of cookbooks on the shelves, everything from pretty books that rattle off lists of ingredients whose duplication in the styled photos is next to impossible, to classic tomes that assume a complete apprenticeship to a master chef and years of professional experience.
I own both kinds.
Having cookbooks is a way to explore worldwide cuisine without leaving your reading chair. It mixes the exotic with the familiar and ignites the imagination. Cookbooks, for me, are a way to kick-start my creativity. I process kosher substitution in my head to see whether milk can be reasonably substituted or whether just plain water will do, or if veal or turkey can stand in for pork. It’s well past the point where I flip past a recipe simply because it’s not intrinsically kosher; anything can be kosherized. (more…)
Over the years I’ve had several different kitchen scales. The first one I remember was a cheap spring-driven one that almost never got used. It sat on the shelf with the glasses, and sometimes we used it to weigh letters (like emails on paper; you remember those).
My current kitchen scale is a fairly inexpensive electronic scale. But it does an amazing job of making sure that I’m giving you recipes that are easily replicated and scalable. It’s usually only the small stuff (1/4 tsp. black pepper, etc.) that I resort to volumetric measurements. (If you have trouble with amounts when you have to multiply by 20, let me know.) (more…)
There are three stages to knife sharpening: honing, or steeling, stone sharpening, and professional grinding.
Honing, or steeling, is the act of realigning the edge of your blade. Your knife blade comes into contact with objects and surfaces stronger than itself all the time: counter (!), bone, stones/pits, and so on. This bends the edge of your blade, making it dull. Honing your blade on a steel helps readjust the bent-over parts of your blade so the edge is straight. It’s a good idea to hone your knife before working with it, especially if you keep it in a drawer (which you really shouldn’t anyway), and every 15-30 minutes of continuous use depending on what you’re using it for.
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Baking bread during the winter months in a cool, drafty kitchen is a particular challenge. Yeast likes a fairly warm environment to do its thing, and trying to proof dough on countertops that register 50°F are going to result in flat, dense loaves.
Proofing boxes are temperature and humidity-controlled walk in monsters found in professional bakeries. Home bakers need something a little less unwieldy. As it turns out, a simple incandescent light bulb will do the trick, providing enough heat to proof a couple of loaves worth of your favorite bread dough.
