Christmas Cooking: Part II (Goose)
Posted in Cooking on Dec 28th, 2009
We decided this year that we were tired of turkey and wanted an alternate bird. So, we bought a lovely 10 lb local goose through our butcher and roasted it for Christmas dinner.
Category Archive for 'Cooking'
Christmas Cooking: Part 1
Posted in Cooking on Dec 23rd, 2009
As I’ve done every Christmas for the last 5 or 6 years, I start my Christmas cooking by making my Grandmother’s Christmas pudding.
No-Knead Adventures
Posted in Cooking on Dec 3rd, 2009
I’m probably the last food blogger on the internet to experiment with no-knead bread… but this is a cookbook website after all, and now Jim Lahey has a cookbook, My Bread, which just came out this October, and the non-blogging world can now participate enthusiastically in this ‘revolution’.
Orange-Date Muffins
Posted in Cooking on Nov 21st, 2009
I felt like something comforting. My mom has made these muffins for years and they’re fast, easy and crumbly-moist. And they use whole oranges, which appeals to me on some subterranean level.
Mycophilia
Posted in Cooking on Nov 7th, 2009
While I was in Vancouver the other day, Mrs Cookbooker’s brother came over with a box full of Shaggy Parasols for dinner.
Green no more…
Posted in Cooking on Nov 2nd, 2009
A few weeks ago I blogged about my cartloads of green tomatoes. We left the bulk of them alone to ripen in the basement, and now, look what we got…
Easy Bake Chocolate Cake
Posted in Cooking on Oct 29th, 2009
There is actually a real cookbook for Easy Bake ovens, The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet. Various well-known chefs have submitted tiny gourmet recipes. Mark Bittman has Baked Chicken Breast with Cherry Tomatoes and Capers; Rob Feenie has Roasted Quail Breast; Molly Katzen’s got a Carrot Kugel.
Pain a l'Ancienne Baguettes
Posted in Cooking on Oct 22nd, 2009
This is one of the simplest, and paradoxically, one of the best breads in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, a book bursting at the seams with great bread recipes.
How simple? Well, you do have to have the right tools for it: a baking stone and a spray bottle are the most important, and practice helps, but there are no fancy techniques, no kneading, and the bread itself is a revelation.
Russian Apple Pancakes
Posted in Cooking on Oct 17th, 2009
These are wonderful pancakes, and for someone used to regular baking-soda/powder raised pancakes, a bit of a revelation. They’re the first yeasted pancake I’ve made, and although this requires extra time and effort ahead of time, they’re well worth it.
Neo-Neapolitan Pizza
Posted in Cooking on Oct 2nd, 2009
Our regular weekly pizza bake is based on my favourite dough recipe from Peter Reinhart’s American Pie. As he details in the book, pizza preference is highly individual, and strongly influenced by your experience. I tried a few of his doughs before settling on Neo-Neapolitan. It has, for me, just the right balance of crispy, thin and chewy – it can hold a reasonable amount of topping and is easy to work with.