What do you do when you have the first crop of Spring rhubarb and some frozen raspberries? Why, you make this Raspberry Rhubarb Pie, of course. I will admit I hadn’t previously thought of combining raspberries with rhubarb–usually opting for the classic strawberry +rhubarb combination in baked goods. I used a recipe from Martha Stewart’s sister-in-law. I had a feeling it would be good, because you’d have to be pretty damn confident to bring a homemade pie of any kind to Ms. Stewart’s house.

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In my home kitchen, I use a lot of shortcuts and tricks gleaned from my checkered pants past. Tuesdays are the day I pull one out of my toque and share it with you! If you have questions or requests, leave them in the comments and I’ll tackle them on a future Tuesday.

There, I said it. I use Pam, and I LOVE it.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m impure because I use Pam and that all my baked goods must taste funny and that if I were a REAL chef I would never use such a horrific product. But the ugly truth is that cooking spray is one of the most useful things in a restaurant kitchen. At the range of places I have cooked, from the medium-low end to the very very very high end, there have been industrial-sized aerosol cans of cooking spray all over the place, and they get used all the time.

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People ask me for travel advice all the time, and sometimes I just don’t get around to blogging about it in advance. Here’s your chance to ask me anything about anywhere! If I have any good intel–I’ll gladly share it with you. This is the question that inspired the start of this new regular feature!

The Question: “Me, my wife, and my 2-year-old son are going to Europe for the month of May.  We fly into Berlin at the start of the month and we fly out of Rome at the end.  We will definitely make our way to Paris in between, but that’s all we have.  I’ve only been to London, Amsterdam and few cities in Spain, so I am completely overwhelmed with the many choices of where else we could go. So, I’m wondering if you know of any easy-to-get-to great locales in between Berlin, Paris and Rome. Also, any train advice you have would be helpful.  I know that flying between the cities would be cheapest, but I’m trying to avoid flying and airports as much as possible.

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The other night, my sister graciously invited me over for dinner and asked me to bring a salad. She told me she was making potato and chorizo tacos from this fantastic Tacolicious recipe featured in Food & Wine, and I hemmed and hawed over what kind of salad to make, since I can never figure out what salad goes with Mexican food. I decided to take a little creative license and throw a bunch of things in a blender to create something akin to a Mexican Green Goddess dressing–a tangy, creamy blend of pepitas (raw green pumpkin seeds) from the local Mexican market, coriander, cilantro, and lime.

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In my home kitchen, I use a lot of shortcuts and tricks gleaned from my checkered pants past. Tuesdays are the day I pull one out of my toque and share it with you! If you have questions or requests, leave them in the comments and I’ll tackle them on a future Tuesday.

Every Italian nonna worth her salt will tell you to save your pasta water! Before serving, add a splash of the pasta water to the sauce simmering on the stove and cook, stirring, to combine and heat through. Then toss it with the pasta. The starch in the water will make the sauce a bit creamier and help it hold on to the pasta. If it looks watery and gross when you first add it to the sauce, don’t worry–just keep cooking it and it will get incorporated into your sauce. You don’t need much, anywhere from a couple of tablespoons to half a cup!

This also works very well if you’re making gravy and potatoes in the same meal. Use part water and part potato water for a creamier gravy that needs less flour.

Purple potatoes and Yukon golds, butter, salt, pepper, a hot oven, and… you get Pommes in a Pile.

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In my home kitchen, I use a lot of shortcuts and tricks gleaned from my checkered pants past. Tuesdays are the day I pull one out of my toque and share it with you! If you have questions or requests, leave them in the comments and I’ll tackle them on a future Tuesday.

Have you ever tried making bread at home and found that it didn’t come out with a nice crust? What you need is some STEAM in your oven. Commercial bread ovens have steam injectors to get the crust brown and crisp. You only need steam on the loaf for the first 10-15 minutes of baking. There are a couple of ways to get the steam in your home oven for a better crust:

• Moderately Dangerous But Pretty Darn Effective Way: When you turn on the oven to preheat it, put a metal pan (like a 9×13 pan) in the bottom of the oven. When the oven is preheated, put the loaf pan on a rack and pour boiling water into the hot metal pan. This will make a big amount of steam really quickly, so close the oven door so it stays inside and don’t open for at least 10 minutes. Steam burns are very painful, so be reeeeeally careful to position yourself as far away from the pan as possible when you add the water.
• Lazy Way That Works But Not Quite As Well: Throw a couple of ice cubes in the bottom of the preheated oven as you place your loaf pan on the oven rack.

I saw this lovely looking almond cake on The Kitchenette and felt oddly compelled to make it. I say “oddly” because I’m not a huge fan of nuts, and marzipan on its own is not my favorite, but I felt it definitely had potential. Maybe it was the pretty pictures; who knows? In a rare burst of culinary creativity and energy, I adapted the recipe to include citrus and made individual small cakes baked in ramekins. I topped it with whipped cream sprinkled with a little black salt. I even made a simple warm caramel sauce in a little pot and just before serving, reheated it on the stove to glossy goodness, and poured it over at the table. That’s the kind of thing that goes a long way in impressing people, when all you have to do is caramelize some sugar and throw some butter and booze in it.

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