Chiffa-wha? Chiffonade. It’s a fancy name for cutting herbs or other greens into long, thin strips. It’s literal French translation is “made of rags”. Sounds appetizing, right? Even so, it’s a nice little technique to have in your back pocket.
I mostly use chiffonade for basil (do chiffonade? make chiffonade? I’m not sure the right verbage here). It is nice for bruschetta, caprese salads, pasta, etc. I like it because it makes the basil smaller so it gets distributed better. And it looks pretty. Besides sometimes you need a dash of fancy in your life.
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Tagged as: basil, definition, how to, knife skills
Have you ever bought a bunch of leafy lettuce with the intent of making a beautiful salad only to find it wilted in your refrigerator a few days later? What did you do? Did you:
A. throw it away then eat a pound of chocolate because you were so riddled with guilt? Or…
B. revive it and have your salad after all?
If you chose A, you are not alone. I am ashamed to admit how many bunches of lettuce, chard, kale, spinach, [insert your favorite leafy green here] have gone into my refrigerator only to die. But I have learned there is another way.
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Tagged as: food storage, wilted greens
If it weren’t for cleaning out the inside of a pumpkin, I think I would cook with them more often. It takes me forever to scrape out all of the stringy stuff inside. This has made me lazy and I mostly use canned now. But we bought a few pumpkins for Hallloween decorations, and never carved them, so they have been sitting there taunting me… (I’m not sure how to cook big pumpkins though, I’ve only cooked with small sugar pumpkins – anyone have suggestions?).
Tonight I decided to go for it. Just cut the top off of a sugar pumpkin and dove in. I made a rendition of Ruth Riechl’s pumpkin “soup” or gratin or whatever you want to call it (it doesn’t really resemble soup, at least not the way I made it. Tasty though. Then again most things are tasty with enough melted cheese).
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Tagged as: nablopomo, pumpkin
A new batch of mini-pies are cooling in the kitchen right now. Once the taste tests are done I will share the results with you. I have four crusts in the test: all butter, butter + shortening (both of these are repeats from round 1), butter + lard, and Cook’s Illustrated fool-proof pie dough which uses vodka.
But for today, I thought I’d share a few tips about making pie dough. [Continue reading...]
Tagged as: nablopomo, pie crust, video
