I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.
For rave-worthy soups, skip the store-bought stock. You can extract a cleaner, stronger broth from a combination of water and several pantry ingredients. It's all about layering powerful flavor-enhancers that you probably already have on hand - bacon, tomato paste, herbs, peppercorns, a Parm rind, and, of course, kosher salt.
Turkey burgers receive a fair amount of disparagement, and it's not unfounded.
Always use liquid measuring cups to measure liquid and dry measuring cups to measure dry. Especially when measuring flour, accuracy is important, so using only dry measuring cups - or better yet, weighing on a scale - is key.
Replacing white flour with whole wheat generally makes baked goods denser, drier, and more crumbly because the germ and bran in whole wheat absorbs more water.
Turmeric or cinnamon? Nuts or raisins? The players may change, but the fundamentals of fluffy, fragrant pilaf are always the same.
I brought babkallah to a party and people freaked. They hovered over like it was a newborn baby, oo-ing and ah-ing. Its beauty didn't prevent them, however, from devouring the entire thing within minutes. It makes a lovely hostess gift, as it's both novel and delicious.
I always keep some variety of dumpling in my freezer for convenience, but frozen homemade pierogi are a special treat.
Even though they have long shelf lives, chemical leaveners will lose potency over time. If the only box of baking soda you have around is the one that's been absorbing odors in your fridge for the last few years, it's probably a good idea to get a new box just for baking.
Deep-frying properly requires you to keep the oil at a precise temperature range depending on the food. If you're frying in more than an inch of oil you really should invest in a deep-fat thermometer so you can monitor the temperature and know when to adjust the heat.
Plating your salad with groupings of ingredients may seem fussy but in fact it's the opposite. All the prepped ingredients go directly onto the platter, so no need to dirty a separate mixing bowl for tossing. Another reason we like this plating strategy? It allows the picky eaters out there to choose only the parts they like best.
Lame blades can dull relatively quickly, so after slashing several loaves the blade won't slice through the dough with tremendous ease. (When this happens, don't throw it away - it's still sharp enough to score duck or pork skin, or shave paper-thin slices of garlic and chives, like a hot knife through butter).
Hearty soups with relatively long cook times like minestrone, for example, are chock-full of aromatics and flavor-lending ingredients like bacon, onions, and garlic. These infuse the water with their flavor and produce a clean-tasting broth all on their own.
Whipped ganache is a great gateway icing if you're working your way slowly into the vast world of egg-based buttercreams. It's just a few ingredients and far superior in flavor to the basic butter/sugar/milk frosting.
One thing I hear a lot is that people feel less stressed out after they watch 'Gourmet Makes.' There's a transference of their stress onto me.
The holy grail of recipe developing is the recipe that turns out so much more impressive than you would expect from the effort it took to produce.
Heaven is a bowl of creamed herring and onions. Ditto whitefish salad. But the real object of my desire for all things gilled is gefilte fish.
Having those people that you trust implicitly is so important.
Of all the quirky, inexplicable, reindeer-embellished holiday traditions out there, making your own Yule log might take the cake.
Running - it keeps me balanced, energetic, and primed for pasta intake.
