Soaking a fruit or a vegetable in pickling lime or Calcium Hydroxide is a theme in the Mugaritz book. Soaking any vegetable in a mixture of water and pickling lime binds the cellulose and makes the fruit firm. The longer it is soaked the harder a shell it forms. The reason pickling lime is sold […]
Mugaritz: Dried Tomato Salad, a Bunch of Garlic Cloves and Herbs Read More »
Summer is winding down (sure it is October, but this is Houston…summer goes all the way to November sometimes) and the summer produce is really at its peak (and it’s cheapest). Even the run-of-the-mill supermarket tomatoes are very good this time of year. They are sweet and with the right balance of acidity. The red
This delicious vegetarian dish comes from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty. The chef is much better known in the UK where he runs a chain of “deli” shops that serve a huge variety of creative dishes, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. He also has a weekly column in the Guardian newspaper. The website has a lot of his
Yogurt Flatbreads with Barley and Mushrooms Read More »
A while back I was making a chicken stew that included saffron, a Tagine really. The saffron needed to soak and flavor a portion of chicken stock that I had put in a white bowl. The color was so pretty with the deep rich yellow of the saffron threads slowly diffusing and swirling into the clear
Yellow: Tomatoes, Saffron, Corn, Virtual Egg Read More »
Of course it’s a gimmick, but it is so cool. It’s also great to see the look on your guests face when they bite into one of these expecting a good old egg and then doing a double take. Their brain is telling them that this is an egg but the signals they are getting from