sprinklefingers

Found on the Bon Appétit blogs - the 4 most common mistakes made when cooking bacon. I thought you’d like to know…

click on the photo to learn all about it…



And then, for your continued reading-about-bacon pleasure, a supermarket bacon taste-off also courtesy of the fine folks at Bon Appétit! Just click below to read all about it.

i can’t believe i’m going to say this, but, sometimes i just want a huge salad for dinner. 

generally i arrive to work at 4am. sometimes 4:15. or 4:17. in order to make this possible, my alarm goes off at 3:30am. at this time of the morning (which is, basically, still night,) the last thing i want to do is think about packing a lunch. because of this, right around 9am everyday i eat a cookie. and then perhaps a few bites of a tart. and then maybe a bit of pie. all of this adds up to trouble. delicious trouble, yes, but still trouble.

to make a loooong and butter-filled story short, because of all the eating i do at work, sometimes i just need a salad. 

thankfully the world of salad is so vast and so tasty - coming up with something perfect (and fast) is never difficult. sometimes i simply throw together some greens and a bit of veg and call it good, other times i get a bit more complicated. but one thing is true: the more effort you put into a salad, the more delicious it is. homemade dressings, roasted vegetables, grilled protein - all of it can add up to a dinner that’s much more than just a salad. 

one thing i love in salad is an onion. but a raw onion is sometimes too powerful for me. and a grilled onion? sometimes i just don’t want to fire up the grill. a roasted onion? same thing…after working an oven most of the day at work, i sometimes prefer my evenings to be oven-free.

thankfully the amazing michael ruhlman has an answer to my onion-in-salad conundrum: behold the blanched onion.

in all my years of salad eating, i have never thought to blanch an onion. blanching takes the sharpness out of the onion leaving behind the sweetness…and an onion of perfect texture for a salad. you really, really should try it. really.

blanched onions

you need: 

• 2 large yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced
• very icy ice bath

blanch the onions: 

1. bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. (hint: use more salt than you think you should, and your onions will be perfectly seasoned.)
2. add the onion slices to the boiling water and boil for one full minute.
3. remove the onions from the water and plunge into the prepared ice bath.
4. let the onions sit in the ice bath for two minutes, then remove to a paper towel-lined plate.
5. make a salad! use these onions! and if you don’t use them all, they’ll hold over in the fridge perfectly.

this is a great, great read on how mark bittman became a cook.

there’s seriously something about a man who cooks (and does it well) for his family.

my favorite bit:

And the crying need to figure out a career while being a responsible husband and father as newly defined in the early postfeminist years pushed me in ways that journalism school or even a newspaper job never could have. I was perfectly capable of showing up in the kitchen every day at five or five thirty, armed to cook, but I was equally perfectly incapable of showing up at an office every morning, armed to listen to a boss’s bullshit. I know, because I tried.

all this year-end hubbub is making me miss christmas already. i’m currently working on a post filling you in on our christmas dinner - complete with a recipe for my favorite item on the menu. but first - because time is of the essence - and because we only have a few more hours left of 2010, here are two lists of the year’s best cookbooks.

see anything here you own & agree that it’s the best of 2010? see anything you completely disagree with? i’d love to know your thoughts…

first up, the list from the ny times. read all about it here.

and next, the list from the daily beast. read all about it here.

i feel like a jerk. i wrote that post about peach preserves yet failed to address a key ingredient in it: raspberry balsamic vinegar.

first up, fruity-flavored balsamic vinegars are available in the vinegar section of your market. they’re a bit spendier than regular style vinegar…and you’ll want to make sure you’re actually going to use it if you buy it. yes, it lasts forever…but there’s also a way around all this: making it yourself.

i have both store-bought fruity vinegars AND homemade fruity vinegars in my pantry. of course the homemade versions (if started with a quality vinegar,) are much more delicious than the store bought…but at the same time i don’t want you to think i’m completely nuts with my suggestion that you make your own fruity vinegar. i realize there are only so many hours in each day. (no, really, i do.)

BUT, making your own is so easy. and so quick. i’d say if you took your eyes off facebook for, say, 6 minutes, you can make your own fruity vinegar. [and don’t deny the facebook thing. i know all about it, and i’m just as guilty as you are…]

raspberry balsamic vinegar
recipe can easily be doubled or tripled or…

you need:

• 1 cup good quality balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup slightly mashed fresh raspberries (measure after they’ve been mashed.)

to make the vinegar:

1. pour the vinegar into a clean, sterilized jar (you can sterilize it by boiling it in water for 10 minutes.)
2. plop in the berries.
3. place the lid on the jar and store in a dark place for 2-3 weeks.
4. after 2-3 weeks, strain the vinegar through a bit of cheesecloth and store the vinegar in a lidded jar or bottle.

see! so easy…there’s literally nothing to it. and you didn’t miss old facebook at all, did you?

[ps: after you make this vinegar you should so totally update your status to let your friends know all about it.]

this post is about three things: two friends and one recipe for basil simple syrup.

let’s start with the friends:

first we have this lady. we have been friends for-ev-er. my mom grew up across the street and down the block from her dad. THAT’s the way-back, people. this fine friend has been by my side for nearly every major thing that’s ever happened to me…including opening a bakery and having a kid. she’s a shopkeeper with real class AND style…AND she just bought a house (keep this new house in mind - it’s involved later in the story).

then there’s this lady. have i met a funnier person, ever? doubt it. would i walk to the ends of the earth with her? probably. did i ask her to be my partner for a certain competition baking show? i did. THAT says a lot, i think. this lady works at my bakery and can pretty much out-work any machine you could ever invent that makes any kind of baked good anywhere. she’s somewhat bionic. no fooling.

how the two friends & the basil simple syrup intersect:

1. shopkeeper friend buys a house and throws a housewarming party.
2. bionic baker friend gives me a jar of her homemade basil simple syrup.
3. i make a fruit salad with the bionic baker’s basil simple syrup and bring it to the shopkeeper’s housewarming party.

TOGETHER AT LAST!

basil simple syrup
inspired by the bionic baker

you need:

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup fresh basil

to make basil simple syrup:

1. put water, sugar and basil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. when the mixture reaches a boil, boil for a minute or so (just to get the sugar to melt plus a bit more time for good measure,) then remove from heat.
3. let the mixture cool for 30-40 minutes then strain the syrup through a fine mesh sieve into a jar or other glass lidded container.
4. discard basil.
5. rejoice in your basil simple syurp!

this basil simple syrup will make your iced tea taste amazing.

AND i’ll be back tomorrow with a fantastic fruit salad idea (hint: it uses the basil simple syrup! honest!)

on occasion my husband threatens me with his cooking. he has three go-to ‘meals’ in his arsenal: turketti, breakfast burritos and pan-fried deer meat.

i don’t even want to go into the explanation of turketti except to say it involves leftover thanksgiving turkey. and noodles.
breakfast burritos - i shouldn’t have to explain these except to say that i dislike eggs. and what’s a breakfast burrito without eggs?
and the deer meat thing? well, i’m married to a man hailing from bend, oregon. that should be enough of an explanation for you.

anyways, when someone else does the cooking, i don’t really want the above three ‘dishes’ to be what i have to choose from. and while i’m certainly not interested in hurting the man’s feelings, i have seen my husband microwave cheese sandwiched between two slices of bread and then turn around and tell me he’s “making” a “grilled” cheese sandwich. no offense, but no thanks on the whole you-cooking-me-dinner thing.

thankfully the hubs & i have an understanding about his ‘cooking.’ here it is: he doesn’t cook. i do. and he eats what i cook and likes it. or else. great understanding, huh?

and because we have this understanding, i rarely have the special treat of eating someone else’s home cooked deliciousness. and then i met mrs. jeffers.

mrs. jeffers is the kind of person who should probably have some sort of life in the professional food world but knows she may not love it as much if it was her everyday job. she’s the kind of person who can, basically, cook anything. in the past year i have had the pleasure of dining at her house a handful of times, and each time i feel so special to be eating something prepared by someone who loves food as much as i do. and prepared by someone who can really cook.

i can’t explain the feeling except by saying that how i feel when eating mrs. jeffers’ food is exactly the same way i hope people feel when they eat my food. comforted. taken care of. at home. hugged. not that i want someone to cook for me and make me feel like a baby, but sometimes it’s incredibly comforting to let someone else do for you what you are normally always doing for others. [hey, shut up. i know i’m getting heavy here, but i also know this last sentence can probably apply to a few areas of your life - food related or not- and you know the feeling i’m talking about. i know you do.]

just this week mrs. jeffers continued to amaze me by surprising me with a bag full of goodies from her incredible garden. among the bounty? a bouquet of basil so fragrant & gorgeous that i almost couldn’t believe it was real. i ran straight home and turned it into pesto. ina garten style.

pesto with mrs. jeffers’ basil
from ina garten’s back to basics

you need:

• 1/4 cup pinenuts
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 3 T chopped garlic
• 5 cups basil leaves - packed tight
• 1 t kosher salt
• 1 t freshly ground pepper
• 1 1/2 cups olive oil
• 1 cup parmesan cheese - freshly grated

to make the pesto:

1. put the pinenuts, walnuts & garlic in your food processor. give them a whirl for 30 seconds.
2. pack in the basil leaves, salt & pepper then process for a few seconds.
3. with the machine running, slowly pour in the olive oil - don’t do a big dump here, but a steady stream. keep the processor running until you have a fine puree.
4. add the parm cheese and process for a full minute.
5. your pesto is ready!

i usually make a batch of pesto and prepare it for freezing by dividing it among seven or eight 4-oz jars. you can pour a bit of olive oil over the pesto in each jar to give it a good seal, then freeze for up to 3 months. one 4-oz jar of pesto is exactly the amount we need to make a pesto pizza or a family-size serving of pesto pasta.



i can only hope that you get to have dinner at your very own mrs. jeffers’ house soon. maybe tomorrow. [hint: peanut butter malt balls make the ideal hostess gift.]