In the first post I wrote about brownies, I may have seemed dismissive of apple pie. Oh no. I simply argued the point that apple pie didn’t deserve its exalted place on the list of things “As American as…” Apple pie is great. But since crab apples are the only variety of apple native to … Read More →

Better known as a “device.” As much time as I spend playing with very sharp knives, I have never cut myself with a knife from my arsenal. My hands have chosen another arch enemy: the vegetable peeler – a device designed to take skin off in strips instead of slices. I can’t blame the vegetable … Read More →

As Thanksgiving approaches, many cooks will be reaching for a can with miraculous custard-making powers: evaporated (i.e. condensed) milk. Yes, technically, pumpkin pie is a sweet custard – pumpkin and sugar cooked with the thickening custard duo of egg and milk or cream. In most cases, the milk is evaporated milk. Condensed milk. A lot … Read More →

A while back, I posted an article that examined Chocolate Chip Cookies – basically, I addressed the variations in a recipe that contribute to three different consistencies for this iconic cookie. From that post: A chocolate chip cookie is, technically, a butterscotch-y cookie that is baked from a cookie dough that has been garnished (or … Read More →

My goal for this post is to use a modified pizza dough to make Pepperoni Rolls – a staple fast food popular in the mining towns throughout West Virginia. They are the official “State Food” of West Virginia. They are delicious to the point of being a threat to anyone’s sense of self-control. The approach … Read More →

Thinking Through Recipes Let’s say you meet a strange brownie recipe in the wild – what should you expect? Well, one recipe I meet frequently is the recipe on the cardboard wrapper for my bars of Baker’s Unsweetened Baking Chocolate (100% Cacao). Without actually baking a batch of those brownies, what might I expect based … Read More →

When are we ever going to stop saying: “It’s as American as apple pie!” Good grief, we wouldn’t even be growing apples here if the Europeans hadn’t brought them over to their new world. Apple pie is a foreign pie made with foreign fruit. Tastes great. Totally un-American. Brownies, on the other hand, can boast … Read More →

I have been thinking about brownies a lot this week and will address them at length in my next post. But before we can talk about brownies, we’re going to have to discuss chocolate. There are countless online treatises on chocolate that can give you any amount of detail you might want on the subject. … Read More →

Time to throw this food cart into reverse so hard you can hear the gears grind. I have been harping pretty hard on the importance and necessity of scaling ingredients. I stand by that very proudly. However, as a true culinary southern boy, I believe everyone needs to keep two fundamental measuring-cup-based recipes in their … Read More →

My last posting examined the disagreement between the expectation and reality when trying to assign a weight to a volume of dry ingredients. I wanted to follow-up with three additional examples to emphasize that the variability exists between brands of flour and not just between my measuring cup and the statements on the side of … Read More →