Monthly Archives: November 2010

Make Brioche

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: November 30, 2010

Freshly sliced brioche. Photo by Donna

December is the month for making brioche at home. It's the great holiday bread. Though calling it bread doesn't do it justice. Good brioche is like a cross between bread and cake. Hell, it's really cake sneaking in as bread. Nothing better on Christmas morning. It's a celebratory bread—rich with butter and eggs. Toast it and eat it with butter. Toast it and eat it with foie gras. It makes extraordinary and delicate croutons. Nothing makes better French toast. And it's fabulous on its own, straight out of the oven. I made it once for my daughter Addison. When she asked for a repeat performance, I wrote the below recipe so that she could make it on her own. She first made it when she was eleven, four years ...

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Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Holiday, Recipes | Tagged baking, bread, bread baking, brioche, how to make brioche | Comments closed

Chef Redzepi: The New Visionary

By emilia | Published: November 29, 2010

Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark is the world's top restaurant led by Chef Rene Redzepi . Learn about gastronomic explorers, the inter-relation of botany and weather, and how Redzepi became who he is, via Independent UK.

Posted in Article, chefs, Elements of Cooking, Restaurants | Tagged Copenhagen, Denmark, gastronomic explorers, Noma, Rene Redzepi, restaurant | Comments closed

American Crawfish Invades Scotland

By emilia | Published: November 29, 2010

Lots of talk about the evil Asian Carp, but what about the American crawfish ? A different perspective on invasive species. Crawfish will impact salmon and other species in the streams and rivers of Scotland, via Scotland Herald.

Posted in Article, Food Politics, Seafood | Tagged crawfish, environment, invasive species, salmon, scotland | Comments closed

Wine Influences Art

By emilia | Published: November 29, 2010

The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco is housing a seven gallery exhibit called "How Wine Became Modern". Pieces include scratch and sniff of classic wines, blown glass, murals, and much more, via Wall Street Journal.

Posted in Article | Tagged modern art, san francisco, wine, wsj | Comments closed

Turkey Stock: Oven Method

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: November 27, 2010

I had mine in the oven Thanksgiving night, but for those of you who still have some bones, cover them with water and put them in a low oven for eight hours or over night. Later, add some onions and carrot, bay leaf and tomato paste. Reposting this repost from last year. Works great with chicken carcass as well. Or any roasted bones for that matter!

: Illustration by Pierre Lamielle

(first published 11/29/09) At a reader's request I'm reposting on how to make perfect stock, by slow cooking it in the oven. It's a very low-maintenance, easy way to make stock—just stick it in a low oven and forget about it. I'd meant to post on Friday but the weekend has gotten away from me, and now most people have either discarded their carcass (sadly) ...

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Posted in Technique | Tagged Turkey Stock | Comments closed

Cook! Celebrate! Happy Thanksgiving!

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: November 25, 2010

We live in a time of unprecedented interest in, and care for, food and all the issues that surround its growing, harvesting, purveyance, and its cooking. This interest happened because we were on the brink of losing good food altogether, with farmers disappearing and the masses abandoning the kitchen, handing over our farming to Monsanto and giving our most fundamental and exclusively human act, cooking, over to the ConAgras and McDonalds. (ConAgra, one of our biggest food processors, is that name a joke on us?! Con, against, Agra, agriculuture—against agriculture! At least they're open about it!) We only become reflective about something we'd previously taken for granted when it becomes imperiled. I'm not saying that rampant diabetes in teenagers, epidemic obesity, social fragmentation and alienation, nitrogen runoff in our rivers and oceans, oceans increasingly depleted of fish, the spread ...

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Posted in Food Politics, Holiday, Rant, Uncategorized | Tagged celebration, cooking, thanksgiving | Comments closed

Holiday Shopping: The Big Ticket Items

By Michael Ruhlman | Published: November 23, 2010

Christmas, 1992, my mom's beau, an avid cook with whom I shared many happy hours in the kitchen, gave me a KitchenAid standing mixer. It quickly became and remains my most relied upon countertop appliance. I use it for mixing all kinds of dough, whipping meringue, making big batches of pate a choux, and, when I joined forces with Brian Polcyn to write a book about sausages and other forms of food economy and preservation, to grind meat (via the grinder attachment) and to mix the meat afterward (more this later). It was one of the best and most useful gifts I've received ever. Christmas is a time when we indulge the people we love with gifts they wouldn't be able to afford or to justify buying on their own. For those of you ...

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