There’s no need to go into the wonderful health benefits of eating honey here; most people have heard how great honey is for our various health systems. Most everyone also knows honey is flavored by the region it is harvested, in the same way wine grapes are changed by their growing environment, or how an oyster’s flavor is altered by […]
What He Picked
Foraging is the first & last food frontier. Here’s what Chef Blaine Wetzel, chef at Willows Inn on Lummi Island, Washington, picked one day out West. GOOSEFOOT: This spinach relative grows on sandy beach soil. “It tastes like spinach with tougher leaves,” says Wetzel, who cooks it with stinging nettles and pairs it with fresh cheese. THIMBLEBERRIES: ”They’re very flavorful, almost like […]
This Kid Wants to Beat Daniel Humm
Flynn McGarry, 13, cuts a new path to chefdom. When a culinary wunderkid who has already apprenticed in some of the country’s best restaurants cites YouTube among his chief inspirations, the old path to a career as chef has been rocked. Flynn McGarry is the cooking prodigy who runs a monthly supper club, EUREKA, out of his family’s California home, […]
Getting the Perfect Sauce
It’s a tight rope to walk to try and get a sauce to the perfect consistency. All of the following will affect the final thickness of your sauce: temperature of the liquid, type of thickener used, how long the sauce is cooked after thickening, the natural thickeners in the sauce, the type of dairy added at the very end of […]
Keeping Your Knives Sharp
Working with dull kitchen knives can demotivate any cook. Knives don’t have to be Iron Chef-ready to make cooking easier, but knives do need some resemblance of a cutting edge. The cutting edge is microscopic though, and can be hard to see with the naked eye. An experienced cook can run their thumb across the blade, feeling the edge as […]
Sous Vide or Not Sous Vide…
…That is the question I’ve been asking myself for the past several years as more and more professional chefs have come to swear by this relatively new—it has been practiced in its current form since about the mid-1970s—cooking technique/process. And with the release and subsequent publicity surrounding Nathan Myhrvold’s monstrous 6-volume treatment of modern cookery, Modernist Cuisine, it’s a question […]
4 Essentials for the Well-Equipped Kitchen
It goes without saying late-night TV kitchen gadgets aren’t essential tools from a professional kitchen, but they are great for a holiday white elephant party. The Robo-stir is perfect for keeping your marinara sauce from splattering on the counter, but your favorite risotto recipe will laugh the AA batteries (sold separately) right out it. Obviously, not all kitchen tools are […]
Expert cooks are also expert cleaners
From the guy who would eat with paper plates and plastic forks if it was environmentally friendly. The aspiring or aspired-to cook will always light the stove for the food to be eaten, not the dishes to be cleaned. But inevitably, dishes will be dirtied; warm soapy water will be made. Unfortunately, we have a direct relationship between how much […]
Reinventing Museum-Quality Food at Home, Can It Be Done?
Personally, I don’t paint or sculpt or photograph, but every now and again I get a creative tinge in my brain, so I head for the kitchen. And on a nightly basis, my creative license there extends only as far as choosing between cooking a plain chicken breast or a plain pork chop for my 9-year-old or between rotini or […]
Pesto Change-o
With summer just around the corner, it won’t be long before you’re making the season’s first batch of pesto. I want your pesto to be delicious, and bursting with fresh flavor. But I also want it to be green. Electric green. Distractingly green. Here are three tips for making it—and keeping it—that way. 1. Beware of acid. Acids like lemon […]
