Caution: Keep crust away from flame

Wow. Talk about learning something new every day. I can't wait to try this trick.

In my search for the simplest pie crust recipe to make with the fabulous E, I found a new secret to flaky, sublime, no-fail pie crusts. Vodka.

Ya, no kidding. Vodka is evidently all that stands between you and the perfect crust. This trick comes straight from Chris Kimball's epicurean mouth itself, and while Cook's Illustrated may not be the source for exciting or sexy new recipes, it is for sure the resource for perfected versions of your tried-but-not-yet-so-true cooking staples. You know, like pie crust.

According to the folks over at The Kitchn, "this baked dough (we had some scraps we baked and ate immediately) was the tenderest, flakiest crust we'd ever used in a pie. Delicious! (And no taste of alcohol, in case you were wondering.)"

That's enough to make me want to bake a pie right now. Or at least the crust. Besides, the way I see it, if the pie doesn't turn out, at least you can still get your guests drunk. And then no one will care about the pie.

When coffee hits the road

I start my morning with an espresso. Every morning. Or so I thought. Turns out my beloved Mr. Bialetti moka pot does not technically produce "espresso." This is not to say that Mr. Bialetti's brew is looked down upon (check out this article in The Atlantic by Giorgio Milos, Master Barista for Trieste, Italy-based illycaffe), just that it's not true espresso.

There's only one response to that piece of knowledge: find a gadget or machine to make "true espresso" that meets certain criteria — paramount being that it fall within my budget, and also paramount (yeah, I know paramount is a unique position, but life is full of impossibilities) is that it be reported to be good at its job. Me being me (I being I?), that means research and lots of it.

Me also being me, it didn't take long for me to find the espresso machine that exceeds one of my criteria, but falls a just a wee bit short of the other one — The Speedster, a bespoke espresso machine made by Kees van der Westen, in the Netherlands (runs somewhere around $6,500, before shipping and not including installation).

The Coffee Geek compares the Speedster to the Maserati Gran Turismo and the Leica M6:

We look at these amazing achievements in design, technology, usability, aesthetics, performance and uniqueness, and combined, they make them "the best." Price isn't a factor. What they represent in terms of being a pinnacle of what technology and design is capable of during the period they were produced is.

I'm about as likely to be driving a Maserati GT these days as I am to be pulling my morning espresso on a Speedster, but a girl's got to have goals, right?

In the meantime, the hunt for the best espresso maker under $500 continues.

What Garcia effect?

Did I mention that hamburgers are still, despite a few negative experiences, on my top five favorite meal list?

Look, I love me a good steak (yeah, yeah, charred rare, and anyone who bothers to order their steak anything over medium might as well just take a fork and knife to their shoe as far as I'm concerned, but another post for another day), and there's no doubt that sushi can hit the spot like nothing else.

Still. A perfect hamburger, great fries and a milkshake? Tell me it gets better than that? See? I didn't think so.

New York Magazine today posted a story about the resurgence of double patty burgers. Which, I have to say, is pushing it. The perfect burger is all about balance, and once you start doubling the meat, or, say, adding ribs and foie gras (ye who shall remain nameless), you've betrayed the very essence that makes a burger a burger.

In 2005, The LA Times ran a story on Nancy Silverton's hamburger recipe. Yeah, the recipe got its own story. And it deserved it. You'll note that although the meat is muy importante (she suggests combining prime chuck with prime sirloin), and the fat content of the meat in particular (20% to 28% total), nowhere does she suggest that you put two patties on one hamburger bun. As if.

What's in a grade?

Do you buy Grade A maple syrup because you think it's better in some way than Grade B syrup?

I used to. I mean, I grew up wanting to get an A on my report card, not a B. (Doesn't mean I always got an A, but you get my point.) So yeah, I went for the syrup that earned an A—I mean, it had to have tried harder, right?

Wrong. Although Grade B may often be less expensive than Grade A, it didn't try any less. It's just different. It breaks down like this: there are three grades of Grade A syrup: light amber (sometimes known as "fancy"), medium amber, and dark amber. Interestingly, the powers that be in the maple syrup marketing cabal didn't choose to grade these A+, A, and A-. Huh. Can't imagine why not.

Anyway, the truth about Grade B is, it's darker than the darkest Grade A. More intense. More aromatic. And less money.

Some people just can't handle the truth.

The Case of the Mysterious Maple Smell

It could have been worse.

It could have been really bad. Foul. Putrid. Noxious.

Instead, New York City smelled like breakfast. A tasty pancakes and waffles breakfast. Which evidently was enough for concerned citizens to take to the phones and dial 311. And this was in 2005.

Three years and some months later, scientists from two states, NJ and NY, cooperated on the investigation along with the Department of Environmental Protection. Is it just me, or does it seem ironic that when it comes to tracking suspicious pleasant odors, our agencies have no problems playing nice, but when we have to share information on, oh, I don't know—possible terrorist activity—that spirit of cooperation is itself a mystery?

So, playing nicely together, the scientists plowed through chemical registries, air samples, weather reports and 311 call logs, and found the culprit—a factory in NJ that, among other things, processes fenugreek seeds. Oddly, according to Newsday, the factory, Frutarom, "slammed down the phone on a reporter who called for comment." Now that is suspicious.

Oh, you want to know what fenugreek seeds are?

Wikifact has it that fenugreek is both an herb and a spice (a blog for another day), and is often used in the US to mimic maple flavor, as in artificial maple syrup products. Well, duh.

Down with Tollhouse, long live Torres...

It's true.

The tollhouse recipe has been toppled.

Which is a shame, because I know that one by heart. And now I have to learn a new one. Which has more ingredients. And takes more time. But... and it's a significant but... which makes a better cookie.

This past summer, The New York Times ran an article on the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Maury Rubin, Jacques Torres, Shirley O. Corriher and Dorie Greenspan all weighed in. Two types of flour. Sifted. Baking soda and baking powder. Light brown sugar, not dark. 36 hours of rest time. Okay, to be honest, I skipped that part (we couldn't wait). Point is, they were way better than the "original recipe."

They say love makes the world go round...that's possible, but I think it might be chocolate. Then again, maybe love is chocolate.

Now you're cooking with... ?

Just when you think you know what you need to know to make a decision...

You buy olive oil, you know to look for "Extra Virgin," right? The ubiquitous Rachel Ray even goes so far as to call it EVOO (because, evidently, those extra four syllables are four too many). Well, "extra virgin," which refers to the acidic level of the oil - less than or equal to .8% (you know, if you were wondering) - is only part of the story. Turns out, you also want to look for "first cold pressing" - "cold," because if they have to heat the olives to expel the oil, it, as you can only imagine, changes the flavor, and "first," because, really, who wants seconds from tired, already pressed olives?

Actually, heat (and other far more obscure sounding technologies) are only used on the sad and mangled remains of the olives after they've been pressed - sad and mangled remains technically called "pomace," in case, you know, you were wondering. What is produced from these second, third and subsequent pressings (hot or otherwise) is generally not edible and should be used for things like soap and candles.

But, and this is where it starts to get scary, it turns out that olive oil is to the E.U. what cocaine is to South America. No, really. Except sort of backwards. Instead of pushing the real thing (I'm talking about the white stuff - not the secret formula soft drink, which supposedly once had the white stuff in it, but that's a story for another blog), oil producers pushed anything but. There you are, in the kitchen, happily pouring what you think is extra virgin olive oil from the hills of Puglia, but instead you're pouring hazelnut oil from Turkey. Nice.

The New Yorker published an article (which I read, even though it wasn't written by Malcolm Gladwell) last summer about the olive oil trafficking in Europe, most of which filters through Italy, though I suppose it's technically "anti-trafficking?"

You've got Greek and Spanish olive oil being shipped to Italy for packaging and being sold - this is legal, mind you - as Italian olive oil. You have other oils entirely (soy, canola, hazelnut) being treated and colored and then flamboyantly packaged and sold as EVOO, at EVOO prices - and, in the best scam of all, low grade Italian olive oil being doctored, altered and sold as the highest quality oil - the hardest ruse to uncover even with chemical analysis of the "oil." These last two are not considered legal, even by the friendly consortium that, well, regulates would be a stretch, the olive oil trade in the E.U.

So, what are you cooking with? Well, if it tastes peppery, bitter and fruity, it's probably good quality olive oil (though whether it's Italian, Greek, Spanish, Moroccan, or... that's anybody's guess). When it comes to EVOO, being label conscious just won't do you a lot of good. Oh, and the big brands? Colavita, Bertolli, Nestle? They've all been peripherally touched by scandal - in fact, Unilever just unloaded the olive oil and vinegar portion of the Bertolli brand to Grupo SOS. Hmmm. Fancy that.

Conversely

By the way, it turns out that salted water boils at a (ever so slightly) higher boiling point than plain water.

Yep, salted water gets colder and hotter--it'll freeze something or boil it faster. It's like those words that mean one thing and also the opposite (you know, like livid?). Though evidently, the impact on the boiling point is not nearly so impactful on your cooking time as on your cooling time. Oh well.

So, if it's pasta for dinner--salt the water and cover the pot (which can cut boiling time by as much as half).

If that's not enough, the Salt Institute (did you doubt it?), has a veritable plethora of tips on the uses and benefits of salt, including:

Improving coffee - A pinch of salt in coffee will enhance the flavor and remove the bitterness of over-cooked coffee.

Testing egg freshness - Place the egg in a cup of water to which two teaspoonfuls of salt has been added. A good egg sinks; a doubter will float. (If we could only try this with our dates.)

Preventing mold - To prevent mold on cheese, wrap it in a cloth dampened with saltwater before refrigerating.

Color-matching nylons - Good nylons that don't have a match can be made the same color by boiling them a few minutes in a pan of lightly salted water. (Which begs the question of what to do with bad nylons. Put them in the corner?)

Salt. Is it in your kitchen?

Those old wives may have been on to something...

This argument goes back over 20 years - though maybe that's just for me. And Connie.

That would be the same Connie who stole CDs out of my dorm room after being subjected to hours, days and weeks of the same song over and over and over and over again. And the Connie who taught me how to drive. And to knit. The Connie who can complete the line "It's possible..." and knows why the phrase "for no apparent reason" is really funny.

Well, that Connie also insisted for years that hot water freezes faster than cold water. And I, as you can imagine, insisted she was wrong. Crazy. Flat out block-headed. I mean, really, water has to get to 32 degrees to freeze -- so of course water that's closer to that temperature is going to get there faster than water that's further away. Duh.

I even found a reason why once upon a time this oddball theory held water (sorry, couldn't resist), actually, my mom came up with this: back in the days before self-defrosting freezers, if you filled your metal ice-cube tray with hot water, it would melt the frost on the freezing element, bringing the tray closer to the element, and thus the water in the tray would actually freeze faster.

Well, to be fair, I owe a big fat apology to Connie. According to today's New York Times, hot water does indeed freeze faster than cold - something to do with hot water having less mass so it needs less energy. The "Mpemba effect" - which I can't even pronounce, let alone understand. But I understand that Connie was right all along and I was wrong. Consider this a public retraction, Con.

I still get to stand by this one though - cold water does NOT boil faster than hot water. Thank goodness some things are still self-evident. Although you still should use only cold water from the tap for cooking, drinking - and BOILING. Even if it does take longer.

Not enough hours in the day...

Although Heidi's cooking blog does live on my right hand wall of fame, I thought I'd actually write a bit more about it today, as I was procrastinating. Shocking!, I know, but it happens. (Not often, of course, for all you clients out there reading this, but occasionally. And it never happens, of course, when I'm working on your project, but it does occasionally happen.)

There are two basic ways I procrastinate - either very productively on something entirely unrelated to what I need to get done right now today this minute, or dreaming and fantasizing and researching feverishly about something (or things) I'd much rather be doing than what I need to get done right now today this minute.

And quite often, the latter involves food, and cooking. I love to cook. I dream about cooking. I yearn to cook. I have a prodigious collection of cookbooks, from many of which I have yet to make one, single, solitary recipe. Not one. I have an old-fangled (for all you loyal readers out there, you'll get it... for you newbies, search the blog and it'll all come together nicely, I promise) egg-box crammed with recipes from newspapers (I love you, Mark Bittman, Nigella Lawson, Amanda Hesser...), magazines, cans and other oddball sources, like the little card that's about 2 inches square from the restaurant BLT on east 57th St. in New York with a recipe for Yorkshire Pudding. It's in that box, I'm sure of it. Come to think of it - I've actually made that recipe, and it's quite yummy.

So periodically, when I really, and I mean REALLY, should be doing something else, I find myself sneaking over to 101cookbooks.com and reading up on what she's been cooking up lately - her premise is that she is going to go through her prodigious collection of cookbooks and actually cook from them. What a concept.

I did make a pretty darn good garbage pasta carbonara the other night - given that I had no peas, I made it with spinach. And I have never actually made a real carbonara, but this one had soft sauteed onions, scrambled eggs, ricotta cheese, whole wheat pasta, wilted spinach - all topped with crumbled bacon I made ahead of time in the oven. It really was tasty. But it didn't come out of a single cookbook. Oh well.

with thanks to the Brothers Jazz

Last October, my friends (the aforementioned Brothers Jazz) made me their comfort food dinner, which entailed tater tots, eggs, cheese and bacon — all in one pan. I'll be honest, it looked absolutely revolting. As it was sizzling away, I kept a weather eye on Tasha and Bernie (resident Bernese Mountain and St. Bernard, respectively). After all, I was sure the dogs would eat — ahem — like it. Then I tried it. What do I know? It was fantastic, and is now a staple of my own cooking repertoire and oft requested by my friends. And Tasha and Bernie? Poor things never even got a bite.

Something that good, I announced, needed a name. What name? "Dog food." Obviously.

And the recipe (feel free to ad lib as you see fit):

1/2 bag tater tots, frozen
1/2 lb bacon
6 eggs
2/3 (or so) cup shredded cheese (cheddar or jack/cheddar)

Chop the bacon crosswise into 1/2" wide strips, cook up and set aside.
Fry up the tater tots in a pan with some canola oil. Pour in as much of the bacon grease as you like as they're cooking. You need to stir and scrape, or they'll burn on the bottom. And the tots will fall apart as you cook 'em &mdash that's just fine.
When the tater tots are cooked through and good and crispy on the bottom, crack in the eggs and add in the cheese and the bacon. Scramble it all up until the eggs are thoroughly cooked.

Voila &mdash dog food. Yum!

Bully redux

Pursuant to requests for further research and additional information (who knew the bully in the fruit bowl would provoke such a furor?), the facts have been checked and rechecked, the mysteries investigated and resolved, the onion peeled and the cucumber seeded (with a handy dandy cucumber deseeding gadget, no less - don't you just love internet solipsism?).

The Transport Information Site (you'd be surprised what you can learn there) has this to say about Allelopathy:

Allelopathy is understood to mean the influence exerted by vegetable products (fruits) on other plants or plants of the same species through the gases they give off...

For example, apples excrete large amounts of ethylene, which may cause potatoes to sprout prematurely. Cucumbers turn yellow on exposure to ethylene from apples or tomatoes. The reason for this is that the fruit and vegetable species produce different amounts of ethylene and exhibit different levels of sensitivity to other ethylene producers

Now, this begs the question - is the apple a bully or a wuss? As previously reported by yours truly, and according to the master scientists at Real Simple, we called the apple a wuss. Now it turns out that apples are that worst kind of wuss - the ones that let themselves get bullied (by bananas and tomatoes, for instance), but given the opportunity, will turn around and beat up on some poor, unsuspecting potato or carrot.

There is, however, an upside. Exploit the bully! Should you ever need a wimpy, green piece of fruit to ripen faster - well, then, by all means, put it in the bowl with a bully. Presto! Change-o! Ethylene gas emitted, ripening process hastened, edible fruit delivered.

And you thought life in a fish bowl was tough.

Patented

What did we do before we had the...

Microwave "Fasta Pasta" Pasta cooker (you know, because boiling water on the stove is soooo hard)

Patented in Italy in 2002, and in the good old US of A in 2006. There's something not right when Italy, the land of spaghetti and vermicelli and rigatoni and orechiette and, and, and... issues a patent for a microwave pasta cooker. Don't you think someone at the Officina dei Patentsi should have stood up and defended the tradition of Italy's national carb?

Natural Peanut Butter Mixer (and here I was, stirring with a knife. What was I thinking?)

Patented by Robert N. Witmer of Ohio in 2004.

Did you know that George Washington Carver did NOT invent peanut butter? C.H. Sumner purportedly turned the world onto the stuff at the Universal Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis. Then, in 1922, Joseph L. Rosefield patented the formula for the shelf-stable stuff we grew up with. You know, the peanut butter that doesn't need to be mixed? But where's the fun in that?

Tuna Press (why use the lid when you can buy a piece of plastic to do the same thing?)

Patent evidently issued in 1999. But, alas, this indispensable product may soon be dispensed with - vacuum-packed pouches of tuna, introduced in 2000 according to the US Tuna Foundation (seriously, the Tuna Foundation), mean no liquid, and hence, no draining. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Plastic Bag Opener (is there anything else to say?)

Patent issued in 2006 - I mean, what else could it be for?

Cucumber Deseeder (and here I am, scraping away with a spoon. Silly me.)

For this indispensable gadget, I could find no patent (shocking, I know)... But it too can be yours for the low, low price of just $10.







I often wonder, what did we do before the cell phone? before email? before the tuna drain? Excuse me, before the tuna press?

Don't you?