Sunday April 24, 2011
Hollandaise is a wonderfully rich, lemony and buttery sauce that goes beautifully with asparagus, eggs, poached fish and grilled meats.
How to make Hollandaise sauce.
Photo © Danilo Alfaro
Here's a recipe for
Hollandaise sauce. And here's a step by step tutorial on
how to make Hollandaise sauce.
Thursday April 14, 2011
If you've ever wondered how many teaspoons there are in a tablespoon, or how many ounces there are in a pint, your life just got a lot easier. You'll typically find yourself making calculations like these when you've got a recipe that serves six, but you only want to make enough for four. Or, maybe you want to double the recipe — or triple it.
Cooking conversion tool.
Photo © Danilo Alfaro
For example, if a recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of baking powder and you triple it, now you need six teaspoons. You could measure out six teaspoons, but that's a bit tedious. Instead, just consult this handy
cooking conversion tool and you'll see that six teaspoons is equivalent to two tablespoons. Brilliant, no?
If you're like me, you'll bookmark this resource and refer to it all the time. It's not only incredibly useful, it's also weirdly fascinating. What else can you say about a tool that will happily inform you that there are, indeed, 768 teaspoons in a gallon? Check out the culinary arts
cooking conversion tool.
Also: Cooking Conversion Chart
Monday April 4, 2011
When you buy a whole roasting or frying chicken at the store, you usually find a little bag of giblets stuffed into the body cavity of the bird. Some people use those giblets to make gravy or stuffing, and others just throw them away. What about you? And did you know that one of the items in that bag isn't technically a giblet?
Also, there's something else about that bag of innards that might strike you as peculiar. You can find out more about what that is, along with a lot of other cooking terms, in the
glossary of culinary terms, which has been updated again with 22 new entries.
This week we feature new culinary terms that start with the letter G:
Friday April 1, 2011
Potato gnocchi (pronounced NYO-kee) are a kind of Italian dumpling made with potatoes and flour. Light and fluffy, gnocchi are like little pillows. You can serve gnocchi with any of your favorite pasta sauces, or with a simple sauce of melted butter and grated cheese.
Potato gnocchi recipe.
Photo © Chi King
Gnocchi are relatively simple to make. First the potatoes are cooked, either by steaming or boiling. Steaming is best because it leaves the potatoes drier, which produces fluffier gnocchi. Then the cooked potatoes are processed in a
potato ricer or a
food mill. The goal here is to achieve a smooth, lump-free texture without overworking the starches. The cooked potato mixture is then combined with flour to form a dough. Finally, the dough is shaped, cut into individual dumplings and boiled. Here's a
Potato Gnocchi Recipe.
Sauces for gnocchi are the same sauces you'd serve with pasta — a simple tomato sauce is perfect, or for a heartier meal you can go with a meat sauce instead. Other traditional gnocchi sauces include a creamy Gorgonzola sauce or a fresh pesto. Check out this list of
Gnocchi Sauces.