Category — HOW TO

Every year a small group of dedicated friends gets together to make an epic gingerbread project that takes a cue from whatever this year’s Christmas party theme happens to be. Two years ago, for a Casbah Christmas, the tradition was born with a Middle Eastern-style courtyard house of gingerbread. Last year, we celebrated Christmas in Summer and put Santa in the pool, surrounded by a beachy scene. This year’s party theme was Christmas in the Future, so we took a few hints from The Jetsons and put Santa on the moon.

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(Note: This happened several months ago, but I couldn’t find the recipes I wrote down, so I hadn’t posted about it. I found them wadded up in the bottom of a drawer recently, so here goes.)

My Dad and I have birthdays a week apart, and often do things together to celebrate. When I turned 6 and he turned 40, I asked my parents if we could eat at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. (We lived in New York at that time.) I guess at that point my parents realized they had a strangely fancy food-obsessed kid on their hands. I don’t remember much about the food, but I do recall going to the bathroom with my sister, who was 10, and being thoroughly confused by the presence of a restroom attendant. When I turned 16 and he 50, we donned our tuxes and prom dresses and got the best seat at Julius’ Castle, a venerated old dining institution with views of San Francisco Bay. Of course neither of those places is still in business, sadly, but we still try to do food-related birthdays together.

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To me, mashed potatoes are like a blank canvas. They can be creamy and pillowy or rich and silky. They can be chunky or smooth. They can have green stuff in them. But most importantly, they can be really really really good or just so blah and boring that they’re not worth the calories.

I always make mashed potatoes a little differently, so I’m not here to share a specific recipe – but rather a group of the most important scientific potato facts and chef tips gleaned from years of experimentation and experience. Armed with this knowledge, you will never need a recipe to make fabulous mashed potatoes under any circumstances.

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I used to think eating granola was healthy. I would eat a big bowl with milk for breakfast, feeling virtuous about starting my day right with one of those “balanced breakfasts” people are always going on about. Several years back, I took a temporary job making granola for a high-end, organic boutique granola business. I was more than mildly surprised to learn that this expensive, hand-crafted, and much sought-after granola was loaded with Wesson oil. I mean, we’re talking bottles and bottles of the stuff for a reasonably small batch. Virtuous? Hardly. I might as well be eating a giant plate of french fries dipped in mayo for breakfast. An order of large fries from McDonald’s has fewer calories than a cup of most kinds of granola! Of course some of the granola’s calories come from the sweetening and the nuts, but the oil is definitely not helping. So why not make your own?

The weird thing is you can make really terrific granola with no oil, so it’s unclear to me how that practice got to be so commonplace. You do need something sweet, or else you just have some dried-out oats, so let’s not be crazy here. But you actually don’t need very much sweet stuff to make good granola. Also, making it yourself is really cheap, especially if you’re like me and you use it as a way to clean out the hodgepodge collection of nut remnants that lurks in your freezer. (Or am I the only one who has miniscule amounts of 15+ different kinds of nuts leftover from other projects?)

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By far the most popular article on this blog is the Super Tall Amazing Rainbow Birthday Cake, a tippy, teetery, monstrosity of a cake. Attempting that sky high cake is not for the faint of heart, so I wanted to figure out an easier way to create rainbow cakes. I bring you the latest in rainbow cakery, baked in a jar to show off all the pretty colors.

Cakes in jars are great for a picnic or to bring to someone’s house, since they’re completely sturdy, sealable, and portable. Rainbow cakes in a jar are also the perfect treat for all your unicorn friends.

“What’s that, magical horsie? Oh, you’re very welcome, it was my pleasure. I hope you enjoy your cake.”

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Purple potatoes and Yukon golds, butter, salt, pepper, a hot oven, and… you get Pommes in a Pile.

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In my home kitchen, I use a lot of shortcuts and tricks gleaned from my checkered pants past. From time to time I will pull one out of my toque and share it with you! If you have questions or requests, leave them in the comments and I’ll tackle them in a future post.

Have you ever made risotto with an elderly Italian woman? Be warned: she might yell at you for doing it wrong. Here are some things you can do to get top marks with the signoras!

• In the first part of the process, toast the rice well in the olive oil before adding any liquid. The rice should be a nice golden brown before proceeding to the liquid phase.
• You don’t have to heat the broth before adding it in. I swear. Don’t believe the broth-heating hype, you’re just making more work for yourself!
• While Arborio rice is the commonly recommended risotto rice, many chefs and grandmas prefer Carnaroli rice – try it if you can find it.
• If you’re adding things to the risotto, like sauteed vegetables or bacon or shrimp, cook them separately and fold them in at the very end.
• Also: I once read that Thomas Keller folds whipped heavy cream into his risotto at the end, to finish it. I have tried that and it’s not worth the effort – a splash of unwhipped cream or a knob of butter does the trick just as well.

It bears noting that I don’t use a recipe to make risotto, and I don’t think you need to either. It’s one of my favorite things to make when I need to make a good side dish and I don’t want to go to the market, because you can add most anything to it. The whole process takes about 20-30 minutes, and shouldn’t be made ahead because it will ruin the texture.

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When my niece is turned 8 a few weeks ago, I did something no food blogger should EVER do–I started pre-writing a post while a cake was in the oven, because I was so sure it would turn out perfectly, despite never having made it before. Painfully I feel compelled to share that the first line originally asked you, gentle reader, to “enjoy this simple technique for making a show-stopping stunner of a cake.” Ugh.

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Is there anything more satisfying than a perfectly seasoned steak cooked to your exact liking? For a meat-lover like me, there is not. Unfortunately it can be hard to get that steakhouse taste at home, unless you know a couple of culinary secrets. Here is my tried and true method for cooking steaks. Once you start making them this way, you will never go back to your old habits!

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