Book: Cooking with Booze
December 20th, 2007
Ah, a book after my own heart: Cooking with Booze. We all know how to cook with wine by now, and thankfully Cooking with Booze focuses more energy on spirits, beer, and hard cider. Even better, whiskey gets the biggest section of all.
The recipes in Cooking with Booze lean towards traditional English fare, with a few adventurous side trips abroad. Some recipes that piqued my interest were Potato Salad with Beer Dressing, Whisky Pancakes, Brandy-baked Brie, and Roast Pork with Apple Stuffing and Cider Sauce.
You can buy the book (obligatory Amazon.com link), or you can view it in it’s entirety online, with the occasional video.
No Knead Bread, Revisited
December 6th, 2007
As one of the billions of people now enjoying New York Times’ (in)famous No Knead Bread on a semi-regular basis, Cook’s Illustrated’s recent revisions piqued my interest. If you don’t have a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, you can get a rundown of the changes here.
No Knead Bread, photo licensed under CC courtesy of Taryn Domingos.
Essentially, Cook’s Illustrated addresses the major issues people were having — namely, the dough falling during transfer to the pan, and lack of flavor. Additional salt seems to help address the latter, but the article suggests substituting small amounts of vinegar and beer into your liquid to give the bread some additional complexity.
They also suggest several small procedural changes, including 15 seconds of kneading. Heresy, I know.