It’s citrus season, which means a couple of things around here. One, any pretension of even halfass locavorism goes out the window. I’ll take all the citrus California, Texas and Florida can manage, please, for as long as they’ll ship it up to me. Two, I start going crazy making lemon curd, salt-preserved lemons and limoncello. (I also…
Techniques
When And How To Use Dried Herbs – Kitchen Tips Everyone Should Know
Look, I’m pro-fresh-herb. I love giant huge bunches of cilantro, I consider it a crime that parsley isn’t used as a vegetable, I’ll drink chimichurri sauce by the shot glass. Who has two thumbs and loves fresh herbs? This girl. And yet – there is a place for dried herbs. Usually, that place involves a big…
14 Easy Ways To Bring More Flavor To Your Food
There’s no magic to great cooking – but there are a few tricks. When you cook professionally, you’re always trying to find those little things that can help bump up the flavor of a dish. Here are 14 things that make my cooking better. I’d love to know your tips and tricks – if you’ve got something to…
7 Simple, Delicious Ways To Use Lemon Peel
I am such a sucker for citrus. If I didn’t hate temperatures over 73 degrees I’d move someplace where I could have my own huge lemon tree in the backyard and spend all day figuring out ways to use bushels of lemons. As it is, I have to buy my citrus, so I try to get as…
Turn A Mason Jar Into A Twine Holder With This Easy Kitchen Hack
I’ve been tying a lot of stuff up lately. Must be that 50 Shades of Grey cultural zeitgeist thing working on me. If you want to make all your kitchen bondage tasks (everything from trussing a beef tenderloin to draining your homemade ricotta) far easier, make yourself a DIY twine holder from a mason jar. This is the simplest kitchen hack…
Kitchen Tip: 9 By 9 Inch Pan Perfectly Sized For 1 Gallon Freezer Bag
I bake almost all my quick breads and cakes in square 9 by 9 pans. I’ll admit that this started out as a happy accident. Six years ago, in an effort to earn a little extra holiday cash, I took a seasonal job as the Holiday Food Demo Girl at my local mall’s Williams-Sonoma store….
How To Trim A Whole Beef Tenderloin For The Holidays
Thinking of splashing out some cash on Christmas dinner? Beef tenderloin (the cut that gives you filet mignon steaks) is a classic “wow, nice meal” choice for the omnivores. There’s no getting around it: this is a spendy cut of meat – the grass-finished tenderloins I’m hacking up here cost me $15.95 a pound. But…
How to Get The Seeds Out of A Pomegranate Without Going Crazy
Pomegranate: possibly the most delicious fruit ever. Surely the most tedious fruit ever. Separating all those seeds from the extensive, bitter membranes that intersperse the delicious seeds of the pom is a herculean task. I have developed a pretty decent hold-sections-of-pom-over-the-sink-and-scrape-the-seeds-off-with-my-teeth technique, and even manage to eat this seasonal winter fruit without getting horror-movie-esque levels…
Magically Fast and Easy Homemade Mayonnaise
Of all the things I demo’d yesterday at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, nothing – nothing – rocked people’s socks like my favorite technique for making excellent homemade mayo in a hurry, using a mason jar and an immersion blender. This is the simplest mayo method I’ve ever tried, and I’m consistently happy with…
Never Buy A Rotten Avocado Again
Where I live, far from avocado country, it’s not unusual for organic avocados to be $2.50 or $3 each. “Oh, waaah, you big crybaby,” locavore purists might argue, “avocados are expensive because you live in Seattle, so stop buying non-local food!” To which I reply: “The zombies can have my guacamole when they pry it…
How To Render Beef Tallow From Marrow Bones
I recently made beef stock with marrow bones (sometimes called pipe bones) and in the process rendered out a heck of a lot of beef fat (tallow) from inside the bones. Two birds with one stone, and all that. See all the white stuff inside the bones? That’s marrow. It’s either a great culinary delicacy…
The Man's Guide To Manly Water Boiling
My dad, a capable man by any measure, a highly skilled Marine in his youth, a brilliant car mechanic and automotive diagnostician as an adult, and a generally handy-about-the-house guy, has long confessed that he does not know how to boil water. If a man of his skill and diverse competencies cannot boil water then…