Breads

Herb and Apple Stuffing

February 18, 2016 by Charles 1 Comment

I wouldn’t consider myself a stuffing man. It’s not something I usually think to have or make with a meal. And I am definitely not bold enough to try putting the stuffing in any raw bird. That’s just not something I am willing to try.

But this past Thanksgiving (yes, this recipe is looong overdue) I was willing to try a stuffing recipe. And I am glad that I did. This recipe turned out great. It was absolutely delicious and the leftover stuffing was the first of the Thanksgiving leftovers to bite the dust.

We had actually tried to make cute stuffing muffins from this recipe, packing the mixed stuffing into buttered muffin tins. The stuffing cooked fine, but it did not hold together in a muffin shape. Instead, it quickly came apart the minute we removed it from the tins. In the end, it was probably for the best. I liked…

Blueberry Bran Muffins

July 29, 2015 by Charles 2 Comments

How I have been remiss! It used to be that an Ina recipe landed on my blog almost every other month. There was her spanakopita and her cheese straws. There was her panko-crusted salmon with french lentils and her maple-roasted winter squash. Every dish, it seemed, was a winner.

And with six of her cookbooks sitting on my shelf, each neatly arranged according to the spine’s color, there was no shortage of recipes at my disposal. There were even two recent books — Make it Ahead and Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust — that, horror of horrors, I had not yet acquired.

I was desperately falling behind on my Ina testing.

Fortunately, the St. Louis County Public Library …

Homemade Pizza with 00 Flour

July 5, 2015 by Charles 1 Comment

I had never heard of 00 flour when I first bought it. My regular grocery store had never heard of it. Even Whole Foods seemed unfamiliar with it.

Finally, after searching The Hill, Saint Louis’s Italian neighborhood, I found a grocer who carried this Italian flour. Having tried it, I’m glad I did; it makes an extraordinary pizza crust.

As Saveur notes, 00 flour is ideal for pizza crust because it is finely ground and because it has a lower gluten content than other flours. In Italy, flour is graded from 1 to 0 to 00, with 1 describing a rough grind and 00 describing the finest grind.

Gluten is the natural protein that remains when starch is removed from wheat grains. It creates the elasticity you feel when biting…

Parker House Rolls

June 27, 2015 by Charles 4 Comments

I don’t love the magazine Food & Wine. I signed up for a subscription by cashing in some airline miles due to expire. At the time, I was willing to try six months of content at no cost.

The food in the magazine looks great. It’s exquisitely staged and photographed on glossy magazine paper. The colors pop while the copy rolls along. But there’s just something about the magazine that I don’t love. Between the advertisements for exotic cruises and high-priced jewelry, the magazine gives the impression that none of its subscribers actually cook the recipes – that the subscribers have people for that kind of stuff. Food & Wine’s recipes look great to try – but they also look like, at least most of the time, that the recipes are tried only after they are cooked by the wait staff.

In my mind, the average Food & Wine subscriber is not the apron-wearing, oil-splashed, cooking type, …

Soft Pretzel Bites with Honey Mustard

February 3, 2014 by Charles 1 Comment

When I attend a professional sporting event, I usually buy a pretzel from the concession stand. A hard, chewy, somewhat tasteless pretzel. That costs about $5.00. But really, what are you going to do? Try ballpark sushi? Or spend $20.00 for a hot chocolate? Stadium food rarely presents many good options, though I’m sure there are some inherent challenges in preparing food for 70,000 people.

With that in mind, I decided to make my own stadium snack for the Superbowl. With the big game on in the background, I got to work on these pretzel bites, mixing, kneading, rolling, slicing, and salting my own soft pretzels. And the outcome was delicious, even if the game itself had turned anticlimactic by the third quarter.

When I first found this recipe, I found myself …