Cooking at Home

You may have heard this reflection before: that stocks are so integral to cooking, the French use the word fond, meaning "foundation," for most stocks used in the kitchen. Fond de veau (veal), fond de volaille (poultry), fond de boeuf (beef). They're the base for countless recipes, including soups, stews, sauces and that old-school showpiece, the aspic (or, more elegantly, gelée in French). Which explains why various stocks were among the first things we were taught to perfect in the ...

My new class has been up on Craftsy for just a couple of weeks, which you can check out here (bonus: that link includes a 25% discount for you if you opt to buy the class, though you can check out a preview there and may find some other things of creative interest on the site). It was so great to have a ...

It's funny those times when two otherwise disparate parts of our lives overlap a bit. Such is the case with Craftsy. I can't recall how I was very first introduced to the site, but got an email this past week that noted I'd been a member for a year. The context for me was knitting, this platform a very cool, dynamic, multi-layered place to learn about, and fuel your love of, a wide range of crafty endeavors. I never signed up ...

I realize Octoberfest isn't relegated strictly to the month of October, in its homeland of Bavaria in southern Germany, the beer-fueled festivities tend to start late September. But still, the act of flipping the calendar page this morning to October inspired this brief consideration of the fall festival that plays out globally this time of year. My contribution to the party is this recipe for soft pretzels from my most recent book. This was one of the last additions to the Salty Snacks...

So, I survived as a first-time webinar speaker earlier this month! I'd been an attendee on many in recent years, but this was my first time as presenter and I was a bit nervous about coming across polished and full of useful information. It helped, though, that the topic was something I've been engrossed in since the earliest days of my culinary career: recipe development. When I was tapped on the shoulder by the ...

I can't get this thought out of my head since a reader question last week got me pondering recipes and cooking times: clocks don't know how to cook. I heard from someone who'd seen one of my Salty Snacks recipes in a local newspaper and questioned the time that had been listed. For Deviled Bacon, it said to cook for 15 minutes per side, her result was ...

And, at the same time, I suppose that begs the question of what it isn't. It hadn't occurred to me that "home cooking" was that tough a concept to define. But this article in this morning's Wall Street Journal got me thinking. And sent me off on a tangent too. The title "The Art of Almost Homemade" made me wonder, isn't that Sandra Lee's tagline? Which made me do the search thing, where I was reminded she's the "semi-homemade" queen, then I clicked to ...

This picture is one of my favorites from this month's escapade in Paris. It was taken at one of the top pastry/confection shops in Paris, Jacques Genin, which I was very happy to find to be just a matter of blocks from the apartment I rented in the Marais. And it was taken at a Sunday lunch I enjoyed with my sister. Not dessert after lunch. But FOR lunch. We each got our own from among the few millefeuille ...

I went a little nuts at the market today. It's Sunday, a prime market day in many neighborhoods around Paris. The closest/best to where I'm staying in the Marais is the Bastille market that spreads north of Place de la Bastille on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. I went to the market last Sunday too (it's on Thursdays as well, I'll hit it one more time this coming week), but that was a more casual ...

It's been the case at every party in recent memory that I've been at when deviled eggs are on hand. They're simply a magnet. There may be tons of other great food on hand, but folks spring into action around those eggs...and the plate's usually the first one to be emptied. I'll admit to having a bit of an eagle-eye for them. When someone new arrives at the door and I see ...