This will be a short post because, as it turns out, making buffalo chicken wings is one of the simplest things in the world. As crowd-pleasing recipes go, it really doesn’t get much simpler than this. My connection to wings goes back nearly 30 years – back to one of the graduate student keg parties … Read More →

Oatmeal is categorized for sale based on how it has been processed for cooking. Steel cut oats look more like little pellets and take at least 30 minutes to cook until tender and oatmeal-y. Most popular oatmeals have been further processed, by steaming and pressing, so that the resulting flakes cook in less time (and … Read More →

Because of significant regional variations, it is hard to define exactly what chili is. But for starters I’d describe chili as basically a spicy, tomato-based stew or soup. Some chilis have cubed meat, some have ground meat, some have no meat. Some have kidney beans, some have black beans, some have no beans. But surrounding … Read More →

I tasted Tiramisu for the first time in the summer of 1996. I was in Boston on a business trip (and I remember the year because the summer olympics was underway in Atlanta). While I was visiting, a Boston native asked me if I had been to the beautiful North End of Boston – an … Read More →

In advance of my next post on Tiramisu, I thought it would be wise to say a few words about the salmonella risk associated with using raw eggs in recipes. All unpasteurized raw eggs carry some risk of salmonella. The risk is very small – less than one egg in 20,000 is likely to be … Read More →

I learned this basic recipe for peanut butter cookies when I was about 10 years old. After reading the directions once, I never needed to see the recipe again – it was that simple. I have never forgotten the recipe. You can find it online (with minor variations) under a variety of names: flourless peanut … Read More →

I hate cooking bacon in a frying pan. I lose my patience somewhere between the the curling ends of the bacon and the grease management issues. Restaurant kitchens have the benefit of spacious professional griddles and bacon presses (those bacon weights that control curling). But I have found that baking bacon works even better. Some … Read More →

Toffee is a type of candy that is made by cooking sugar and butter until the sugar reaches a specific concentration in the water from the butter. When the mixture cools, it forms a brittle confection with the taste of butterscotch. The butterscotch-y taste of toffee comes from a Maillard browning reaction between the sugar … Read More →

I wanted to provide one additional example of the ratio I work with when developing a variety of quick breads. This Banana Bread recipe is almost identical to the pumpkin bread from my last post. Banana Walnut Bread Dry Ingredients: Flour – 10 oz. Baking Powder – 2 tsp. Baking Soda – 1/4 tsp. Salt … Read More →

The ratio and mixing method for quick breads I examined in the last post can be applied to more than just cornbread. In this post I want to examine how the same basic ratio can produce other familiar baked goods with simple modifications. And the ratio I’m talking about here is my revision of Ruhlman’s … Read More →