Essential Spatulas for Cooking and Baking
While I agree 100% with vmac in the article Kitchen gadgets you think you need (but don’t), that egg-poachers, garlic peelers, julienne slicers, and choppers aren’t essential equipment, I do differ with his opinion on spatulas. To me, an active home cook (who also bakes) can have more than two spatulas without it being too [...]
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Fancy but Easy Baking – Cheesecakes, Pavlovas, Souflees & Creme Brulees
Whether you’re hosting the upcoming holidays or are invited elsewhere, wow your family and friends with desserts that seem complicated, but aren’t. Pumpkin and apple pies are ubiquitous with the holiday season, so when I want to show off I try for a dish that sounds like it’s straight off a restaurant dessert menu. But [...]
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Basic Baking Ingredients: Tips on Temperature and Treatment
Recently a friend insisted that she couldn’t bake a cookie to save her life-or to have fun with her kids. Every time her children asked, “Mommy, can we bake cookies?” she reached for the mix and watched the excitement in her children’s eyes fade. Her kids want to bake cookies for the baking, not just [...]
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Ethnic Grocery Stores: Four tips for navigating through the egg rolls and chapatis
“If fish had feet, they would smell like this store” I thought, holding my breath as I stepped inside. This was the first time I had entered a Chinatown store, and I hoped it wouldn’t take long to find the bamboo shoots I needed for my stir-fry.
As I side-stepped a box of barely moving crabs and [...]
Learning
Basic Baking Ingredients: Tips on Temperature and Treatment
Recently a friend insisted that she couldn’t bake a cookie to save her life-or to have fun with her kids. Every time her children asked, “Mommy, can we bake cookies?” she reached for the mix and watched the excitement in her children’s eyes fade. Her kids want to bake cookies for the baking, not just [...]
Ethnic
Ethnic Grocery Stores: Four tips for navigating through the egg rolls and chapatis
“If fish had feet, they would smell like this store” I thought, holding my breath as I stepped inside. This was the first time I had entered a Chinatown store, and I hoped it wouldn’t take long to find the bamboo shoots I needed for my stir-fry.
As I side-stepped a box of barely moving crabs and [...]
Desserts
Fancy but Easy Baking – Cheesecakes, Pavlovas, Souflees & Creme Brulees
Whether you’re hosting the upcoming holidays or are invited elsewhere, wow your family and friends with desserts that seem complicated, but aren’t. Pumpkin and apple pies are ubiquitous with the holiday season, so when I want to show off I try for a dish that sounds like it’s straight off a restaurant dessert menu. But [...]
Tips
Essential Spatulas for Cooking and Baking
While I agree 100% with vmac in the article Kitchen gadgets you think you need (but don’t), that egg-poachers, garlic peelers, julienne slicers, and choppers aren’t essential equipment, I do differ with his opinion on spatulas. To me, an active home cook (who also bakes) can have more than two spatulas without it being too [...]
Recent Articles
Essential Spatulas for Cooking and Baking
While I agree 100% with vmac in the article Kitchen gadgets you think you need (but don’t), that egg-poachers, garlic peelers, julienne slicers, and choppers aren’t essential equipment, I do differ with his opinion on spatulas. To me, an active home cook (who also bakes) can have more than two spatulas without it being too [...]
Raclette: The Perfect Winter Dinner
After over a year of listening to my French-man say how much he missed eating Raclette during the winter, I finally went out and found a Raclette machine to gift him at Sur La Table. Though I’d had Raclette in Switzerland years ago, when we had our first Raclette dinner here in NYC, I was [...]
Stoplight Punch
when my friends threw a party at my house, they brought over two great punches. one was bright red and the other was bright green!! they tasted great, but the best part about them was that the red one had alcohol and the green one didn’t. why is that so great??? because when i asked [...]
Prepare Crispy Tofu Correctly!
i didn’t know how to cook tofu in order to get it nice and crispy for a long time but then a friend of mine showed me how you do it right!!!
the trick is to get as much water out as you can! drain the package, but then flip the whole brick out onto a paper [...]
Flavoring Your Own Yogurts
I love yogurts, but I’ve noticed that even the ones that claim to be healthy are loaded with many artificial flavorings that probably aren’t so great for you. Be especially awar eof “lowfat” and “nonfat” yogurts like yoplait, which use high fructose corn syrup as thickeners.
Because of this, I decided to start flavoring my own [...]
Party Decorations – All you need are candles
Sometimes it’s fun to go all out and decorate for a party – birthday parties or theme parties usually lend themselves to this really well. However, sometimes there’s no apparent theme or more often than not, you just don’t have the time to come up with ideas and implement them all. I’ve found that the [...]
How to Bake Cupcakes from Scratch: 10 Things They DON’T Tell You in the Recipe
Those who bake well and often will tell you that making cupcakes is easy. And it is, if you were raised by June Cleaver or born with the Julia Child gene. I was lucky enough to learn from my mom, the daughter of a truly fantastic baker who wasn’t too June to let me “experiment” [...]
Home-Made Stock: Three Simple Steps from Bones to Broth
I love roasting a whole chicken. I love the way it smells, I love the crispy skin, but most of all, I love roasting a chicken because I get to make a savory stock from the left-overs.
If there’s one ingredient that sets the enthusiast apart from the casual cook, it’s home-made stock. Nothing at the supermarket [...]
Customizing Recipes: Using other recipes to create your own
Mango chutney rocks my world a little bit. Sweet, savory and spicy all at once, this chutney is addicting at first bite. I figured it was time to make my own stash to feed my addiction.
Although I cook regularly, I hate using one single recipe for a new dish. To me, spending all day on [...]
Kitchen gadgets you think you need (but don’t): How cooking skills eliminate the need for gadgets
When I was in school, I worked nights at a specialty cookware store, helping people outfit their kitchens and dining rooms. I quickly came to understand that there are a lot of gadgets and gizmos purchased solely as impulse buys (coasters shaped like flip-flops and silicone hot pad holders molded after a dog’s head come [...]