Kitchen Tools
-
Recipes
Category Archive
Category Archives: Donna Turner Ruhlman Photography
How To Fry Chicken
Fried chicken, done right, is one of the best things to eat on earth. It's all about the proportions—crunchiness: juiciness: chewiness: savoriness. And this ratio hits golden proportions with the wing, lots of crunchy peppery surface area and sweet succulent meat.
The study of fried chicken began for me in 2007 during discussions, observations and eating with chef Dave Cruz at Ad Hoc in Yountville, CA, as we worked on the book Ad Hoc at Home. While Ad Hoc's method of flour-buttermilk-flour is not unique, their trial and error experimentation with various methods (including sous vide), proved to them and to me, that this method is indeed superlative.
That was 2007, and I've since fried a lot of chicken. My recipe is in Click to Continue Reading
Also posted in american regional cuisine, Main Courses, Recipes, Seasonings and Spices, Technique Tagged food photography, fried chicken, recipe, twenty Comments closed
The Greenhouse Tavern
Restaurants have flourished in Cleveland over the past decade. Michael Symon's places are nationally know; Donna and I had a great summer meal al fresco at Doug Katz's Fire Food and Drink on Friday (does the best brunch in Cleveland, too), finally got to eat some great food truck food last night from Chris Hodgon, and the place that makes me so happy these days: The Greenhouse Tavern. They hand grind beef to order for tartare, roast chickens en croute, serve humble clams with snooty foie gras, and roast whole hogs heads and serve them on the bone. Defiant cuisine in a meat-and-potatoes I-want-my-burger-well-done town. Or used to be. No longer. Thanks to everyone mentioned here, and the too many ...
Also posted in chefs, Restaurants Tagged Cleveland, donna turner ruhlman photography, The Greenhouse Tavern Comments closed
Serving Foie Gras At Home
Foie gras has a reputation for being fancy. Many don't understand what it is. When I served my dad a seared slice of foie gras, the liver of a fattened duck, he looked at it surprised. "I thought foie gras was pâté," he said. Often foie gras is made into a pâté, but not always. Foie gras can be sliced and seared in a very hot pan, no oil, crisp on the outside, molten within. It can be roasted whole. Or it can be made into a torchon as Bob del Grosso described on Monday, with a product he and Chef Pardus developed for Hudson Valley foie gras, and served cold. Either ...
Also posted in Appetizers, Charcutepalooza, Charcuterie Tagged A Hunger Artist, Bob del Grosso, Hudson Valley Foie Gras, serving torchon at home, The Greenhouse Tavern, torchon Comments closed
Veal Stock Contest!
Regular readers know I’m a veal stock evangelist.
Veal stock is one of those magical ingredients that can transform a mediocre cook into an ohmyfuckinggodthisfoodisamazing cook.
Really, it’s that powerful.
My first piece for Gourmet magazine was about veal stock. My veal stock recipe is in the Gourmet cookbook.
In Elements of Cooking, a 242-page book about food and cooking, there is but a single recipe: veal stock.
I once asked Jacques Pepin about veal stock and he said he didn’t much make it. Ingredients weren’t at his store in Connecticut. I found this amazing, until I realized something important! It was Jacques Pepin! He doesn’t NEED veal stock. He could probably make Miracle Whip taste good.
But for the rest of us? ...
Also posted in aromatics, Challenege, Giveaway, Ratios, ruhlman products, stock Tagged Aki Kamozawa, Alex Talbot, giveaway, ideas in food, Mr. Veal Stock, pantry, stock, utilization, veal stock, veal stock contest, what do you do with veal stock Comments closed
Lessons of Guacamole
This is not just a guacamole recipe and preparation, it's a broader lesson about aromatics and acid and using seasonal foods. It's avocado season, so they're really good now! And they will be all summer long. Avocados are one of my favorite fruits; they're kind of like butter, a ready made sauce—all you have to do is adjust texture and add flavors.
I recently offered this mortar and pestle to followers on OpenSky (more on OpenSky here), and it makes a gorgeous service piece in addition to being a practical cooking tool. I mash garlic and salt to a paste, then add minced shallot (yes shallots!). Then I add lime ...
Also posted in Appetizers, aromatics, Ethnic Cuisine, Kitchen Tools Tagged avocado, guacamole, guacamole recipe, motar and pestle Comments closed

















