Simple syrup is a marvelous ingredient that sweetens sorbets, desserts or cocktails and drinks. It only takes a few minutes to make a batch and it’ll save for several weeks in the refrigerator.
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For the last 25 years, my food processor has been one of my most trusted and reliable kitchen tools. Attempting to cook without is truly debilitating.
This beloved kitchen whiz is great for making sauces like pesto, liquefying soups or coulis, and slicing pounds of carrots in a flash… but it’s also a magic tool for making the most perfect tart dough.
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Mayonnaise has completely lost its place as a homemade condiment – and what a pity that is!
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I’ve always been a fan of dried beans. They’re delicious, nutritious, and easy to prepare – unless of course you live in my neck of the woods.
When I moved to New York, cooking dried beans became a frustrating task. No matter how long I soaked and simmered them, they never quite cooked all the way through.
Then, a couple of years ago, my bean predicament came to a head. I’d invited a friend for dinner and decided to make a favorite Tuscan side dish: cannellini beans with rosemary, served with a drizzle of spicy olive oil.
I soaked the beans for 24 hours and started cooking them hours before our dinner. But I never got to serve them: long after the dinner was over, my beans were still simmering on the stove! I gave up. The entire batch ended up in the compost pile.
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For the next several weeks, tomatoes will be at their peak, at least in my stomping grounds. To me that means only one thing: tomato sauce season is here again at last!
One of the important techniques in making sauce with fresh tomatoes is peeling and seeding the fruits. I’m often surprised to learn how many cooks never do this step – which, as simple as it is, is nonetheless crucial to making the perfect sauce.
No matter how many tomatoes I have to make sauce with (and I’ve been known to tackle a couple of hundred pounds at a time!), I always do the peeling and seeding by hand. Why not use a machine, you might ask? For the simple reason that doing it this way makes for a sauce with lots of body and texture. I won’t have it any other way.
So here’s a simple way to peel and seed tomatoes. The whole process takes only a few minutes yet will give you fleshy slices, and deliciously sweet, fresh tomato juice.
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