Monthly Archives: September 2010

The Best Garlic

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 16, 2010

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman

Last weekend North Union Farmers Market put on a garlic festival, where I was lucky enough to judge a cooking contest pitting five local chefs against one another creating dishes that had to feature grilled grass-fed beef and garlic.  I was further fortunate to be seated next to Jonathon Sawyer, chef/owner with his wife Amelia (aka chefswidow), of The Greenhouse Tavern, arguably the best restaurant in Cleveland, certainly second to none (I only get prouder of the burgeoning restaurant scene here). Jonathon is so restless and inventive, he once ate the choke from an artichoke wondering if there was some way of puttin it to use (there wasn't).  So here's a guy who will strive for inventiveness and still have the balls to put pike quennelles, ...

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How to Grill Fish: Grilled Branzini

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 14, 2010

Grilled Bronzini, photos by Donna

A confession: I'm not a great cooker of fish.  In fact, Donna hates it when I cook fish, because I usually want to put some kind of fancy sauce on it.  She wants it sauteed with plain lemon, a little butter maybe.  (Yawn.) But she's usually right—I don't cook it enough to get good at it.  But another part of the reason I'm fish challenged is that I grew up in Cleveland in the 1970s where fish came into the grocery store on Monday (trucked in, no doubt) and sat around through Saturday, which was the only time in Cleveland you could get a good sense of what low tide smells like.  The only fish I ate, and ate grudgingly, was breaded, fried, frozen, and reheated in a toaster ...

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Don’t Be Lazy When Making A Photo—And Fixing It When You Are.

By Donna Turner Ruhlman | Published: September 12, 2010

©photo by Donna Turner

My photo above.  And below is the photo that Michael took with his iPhone because he wasn't sure I'd have time to take one.

©photo by Michael Ruhlman

And I have to say it's not bad (he may be picking up a few photo tips like I'm getting some cooking ones from him). But—there are a few things wrong here that is basically just laziness. To start, he could have moved the crap away and that would have given him the space on the counter, eliminating the distracting lower right corner. The other would be to take the beans out of the plastic. Anything white, silver, or shiny is going to attract the viewer's eye and ...

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Cherry Tomato Pizza Margherita
(CSA Week 15)

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 11, 2010

photo by donna

Week 15 from Geauga Family Farms.  I think they're getting better—the lettuce is fresher, there's less signs of travel in the soft vegetables. As I've pointed out before, just because you grow heirloom fruits and veg, doesn't mean they're good. You've got to be a good farmer or grower.  And just because you grow excellent fruits and veg, doesn't mean they're still excellent when they arrive on the table of the family that purchased the CSA.  Every part of the process matters. Fun CSA this week: I'm not a huge fan of cherry tomatoes—too much skin relative to the amount of flesh, and frankly, I don't love them enough to blanch, shock, and peel them.  But last night, photographing a bacon and eggs pizza for the new book, I had some leftover dough ...

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The Cooking Channel

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 9, 2010

As this impromtu video suggests, Michael Symon, grows increasingly comfortable in front of a camera.  And he seems to love to do TV.  He's filmed a series of webisodes for the Wisconsin Cheese board which are actually kind of interesting (in his first, he pairs Wisconsin parmesan with shrimp; I'm curious to see how well such cooking videos do on the web and what they'll become in the future).  He's a favorite at the Food Network. While his ratings as host of "Dinner: Impossible" edged by those of Robert Irvine, the network continues to have faith in the Cleveland Boy with a couple of new shows, "Food Feuds" and "Cook Like an Iron Chef," in addition to "Iron Chef America" and judging on the latest "Next Iron ...

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Converting Color to B&W

By Donna Turner Ruhlman | Published: September 7, 2010

©photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman

I've always loved B&W photographs because they seem to say, "I am timeless, I need no pretty colors to attract—I am edgy." With the age of digital also came the not having to choose between B&W and color film. This is truly a great thing, but you can't just push the "remove color" button to convert your digital color into a B&W and many people do. If you do that you'll end up with a very flat looking photo—here's an example form Michael's book, Ratio: Do you see the difference? If you ever did any B&W printing in the darkroom you would for sure. I did 2 things— increased the contrast being careful not to push the highlights too far ...

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Ratio—Now Out In Paperback!

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 7, 2010

I'm thrilled to announce that Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, has now been published at an enormously friendly price, in pocket-friendly flexibility. That wickedly smart television personality, author and speaker, food guru Alton Brown, chose the book as one his Top 5 cookbooks, period: "This is a refreshing, illuminating and perhaps even revolutionary look at the relations that make food work," he writes in The Wall Street Journal.  (Brown has a new book out next month, Good Eats: The Middle Years.) My favorite review was in Slate, in which Jennifer Reese asserts that Ratio is a "fascinating and pompous new book."  Who the hell is Jennifer Reese?! NPR reporter Guy Raz read Reese's skeptical but ultimately won-over verdict and did this piece for All Things Considered. If you're new to this ...

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Donna’s Back!

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 4, 2010

I've coaxed Donna back into blogging about her pix when she has something to say.

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Okra: Direction of Subject Elements While Composing

By Donna Turner Ruhlman | Published: September 4, 2010

©photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman

Someone asked how I go about composing my CSA vegetable photos and instead of thinking about the lighting, I immediately thought about the challenge of photographing a group of many things without its looking chaotic. The direction that each element is pointing can lead the viewer's eye throughout the entire photo or it can run it off the page. In this Okra photo you have the direction of the wood grain in the bottom directing your eyes to travel up and to the right—then the Okra pieces are varied so that your eye travels around—the uncut Okra sweeps up to the right but the wood grain at top left pulls you back. If all your elements are going in the same ...

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How To Cook Okra (CSA Week 14)

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: September 4, 2010

The mysterious okra (photos by Donna)

Cool surprise in today's CSA.  Okra!  Something I almost never cook, and something that when I've had it, is cooked into slime. The key to cooking okra is to not cook it too much.  Saute it in a tablespoon of canola oil in a hot pan, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes if you want some heat, till tender but still crunchy. When I was working on Return To Cooking with Eric, he sauted them this way and served them on mahi mahi with a citrus vinaigrette. They're delectable.  Truly, and so rarely do I eat them, they taste and feel like a delicacy when prepared this way. Or, cook okra the southern way, dipped in butter milk or egg, rolled in a corn-meal-mixture and fried.  That's delicious, too.  Goes great with ...

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