For last night’s birthday feast for Amanda we made these flour tortillas to go with the carne asada. All flour tortillas are made with some solid fat, either the traditional lard or the more modern vegetable shortening. I have a small container of rendered pork fat which I had saved for making ramen broth, Read More …
Since we have quite a lot of blueberries in the house right now, Carol asked me to make a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfast. This version is adapted from Mary Meade’s Country Cookbook, which is a good source for standard mid-20th century Midwestern cuisine, since the author was the longtime food editor of Read More …
One of our granddaughters slept over last night, so that made this morning a good time for a special breakfast, like waffles. One of the nice things about Richmond is that it is easy to get full-fat buttermilk here, and that meant we should have buttermilk waffles. This recipe, adapted from Cook’s Illustrated, makes two Read More …
A few years ago, Carol and I spent 4 very enjoyable days taking baking classes at King Arthur Flour’s baking school in Norwich, VT. One of the classes I took was for baguettes, and this is an adaptation of how we made them in that class. One change is that I baked the baguettes Read More …
My contribution for the family Easter gathering this year was three pans of dinner rolls, adapted from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Small Breads. The recipe below will make one pan of 12 rolls. This enriched dough is very easy to work with, and can be used to make a variety of roll shapes. I Read More …
A few weeks ago, I was in the mood to make Brazilian Cheese Bread (Pao de Queso). Grand Mart had Goya yucca flour (and from Brazil), but only the sweet type vs. the sour type I was looking for. I bought the sweet yucca flour and decided to make cheese bread using the Read More …
I spotted an article on a new book Paladares: Recipes Inspired by the Private Restaurants of Cuba, by Anya von Bremzen, who has written several cookbooks that I liked. I quickly bought it, Amazon Prime quickly delivered it, and I have now cooked two recipes from it. These curried chicken empanadas were popular at two Read More …
This enriched bread is a recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and is less rich than her true brioche, which has three times the butter. We have used this dough instead of puff pastry for Beef Wellingtons, including at this year’s Christmas dinner. It is very eggy, and Julie recommends Read More …
This is what I made for brunch on Christmas Day this year, as a change of pace from my usual Sticky Buns. This coffee cake is adapted from Mary Meade’s Country Cookbook, which was published in the 1960s by Ruth Ellen Church, the long-time food editor of the Chicago Tribune. This is a Read More …
Pain a l’Ancienne is essentially a baguette made using cold water and a slow fermentation in a refrigerator to develop additional flavors vs. a shorter fermentation using warm water. This is an adaptation from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which is an excellent book. I baked it in a Fourneau oven, which is Read More …