Mayonnaise has completely lost its place as a homemade condiment – and what a pity that is!
{ 30 comments }
Once you’ve tasted freshly made ricotta, you can’t help but be hooked!
The first time I did was in Tuscany. The cheese was so fresh, it was still warm! I’ll never forget the experience. How could something so simple be so delicious?
Ever since that first bite, I’ve been seeking out freshly made ricotta in gourmet stores or farmers’ markets. It finally occurred to me that I’d be better off simply making my own. I could make the precious cheese whenever I needed it, and would never again have to go out of my way to find it.
The revelation for me was that making ricotta at home is almost as easy as boiling an egg! Today, making my own ricotta is as routine as brewing my morning tea.
Ricotta in Italian means “re-cooked.” It’s made by re-heating the whey left over from making another cheese. In Tuscany, the leftover whey they use is from sheep’s milk pecorino. (Yes, that was my unforgettable first bite!)
{ 57 comments }
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.
{ 13 comments }
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.
{ 13 comments }
Do you get turned off when you see recipes calling for slicing, dicing and mincing? What about one that calls for a chiffonade?
If the answer is yes, then the feature “Chop, Chop”, which Vegetarian Times asked me to write for their April 2010 issue, will put your mind at ease, and offer some good practical tips to boot!
And if the answer is no, you might still want to take a peek, just to bone up on your knife skills…
The article features four essential cutting techniques, which every serious cook should master; four great recipes to go with them…; and, as if that weren’t enough, a video too.
Take a look at the full feature by getting your own copy of Vegetarian Times’ April 2010 issue (on newsstands now!), or click on Chop Chop! Learn how to slice, dice, mince, and chiffonade like a pro, to view the recipes.
{ 33 comments }
