When sautéing, one of the healthiest fats to use is olive oil, buts lets face it, it just doesn’t impart the same type of flavour as butter. Sauté potatoes in butter and they should turn out nice and crisp, and buttery. Sautéed in olive oil, they end up with undertones of olives. You know what they say, butter makes everything taste better (or is that bacon?). Butter is a magical emulsion of fat, water, sugar, […]
There is a Mediterranean style dish with Moroccan roots that I really like making. It is traditionally made in the style of a tagine, but can be just as easily made in a heavy bottomed pan. It is often made using a whole chicken, which would likely made it more flavourful, but 2-3 free-range chicken breasts works also (for a quicker cook), or even 6-8 chicken thighs. I N G R E D I E […]
Some of us like to delve into cookbooks written in other languages. A good amount of French cookbooks are written in French, and the same goes for German, Italian, Swiss, Danish. For me it is Swiss cookbooks written in German, or for that matter Italian, or maybe French cookbooks. Now I know some basic German, and a dozen words in French, so how to translate recipes, and *how* accurate are they? One way would of course […]
I had never thought about cooking pulled pork… it somehow seemed too tricky to get right. Boy I was wrong. This is something that can be easily cooked from a generally cheap piece of meat – the boneless shoulder of pork. I made this with a 3-pound pork shoulder, which took about six hours to cook, and produced just under two pounds of pulled pork. Basically it takes about 10 minutes to prep, and the […]
By themselves beets can be somewhat intense, almost overwhelming. A great way to cut down the richness is to add some sour cream. This is a Nordic type salad, which would be eaten with pickled herring, or hard boiled eggs. I use the pre-packaged cooked beets because of convenience, but steam beets are also good when in season. I N G R E D I E N T S 500g cooked beets 2 crisp apples […]
For many years I have used a small Zyliss grater, with three interchangeable grating drums. It’s only problem is that it has a suction base made of rubber, and over time this has degraded, to the point where it doesn’t work, and they don’t make replacements anymore. So I went looking for a good quality vintage grater. What I found was a grater from British company Spong. Spong & Co. Ltd. were founded in London […]
A do like seafood chowders of any sort… but I have never made on eat home until this past weekend. Typically many chowders use more expensive seafoods like lobster, and scallops. However a chowder can be made quite nicely using shrimp, fish, and clams. The recipe below is a take on an east coast chowder using Icelandic cod, Manila clams, and some shrimp. You can substitute the shrimp for lobster if in season, and even […]
There are numerous fish pies in the world of baking. This is one I made last year for the “night of pies” (cider fish pie, chicken and leek pot pie, Guinness pie). It can be made with any white fish, and salmon, and the shrimp could be swapped out for a smoked fish, like hot smoked salmon. It’s easy to make. filling: 750ml fish stock or water 400g white fish (haddock, cod) 250g salmon, or […]
Buying a frying pan (or skillet) can be a daunting task. I have bought a number of them over the years, from inexpensive commercial kitchen pans, to Swiss Diamond, and WOLL. Mostly non-stick, and here-in lies the problem. The companies that manufacture these pans usually use some sort of hard materials like titanium, or diamond in their marketing, but they are still based on the use of PTFE, with Teflon being the most famous PTFE. Now PTFE […]
One of the most useful tools in my kitchen is the mouli. Also known as a food mill, or passe-vite, it’s designed to sieve fruit and vegetables. The design is very simple, with three parts: a bowl, a sieve plate, and a crank with a partial auger (which makes it is easy to dismantle and clean). The crank handle drives a spiral auger-type plate that pushes food through a plate pierced with holes. The “holey” sieve plates are interchangeable with […]
despite the snow 