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Butternut Squash Tart with Rosemary Crust

January 16, 2016 by Charles Leave a Comment

Picking a recipe is never easy. There are thousands of recipes on any given website and among any collection of cookbooks. And then, when cooking for a crowd, things get only more complicated, as more and more tastes, allergies, and preferences must be accounted for.

Among the vast collections of recipes, this one stood out almost immediately. I love a good homemade crust. Caitlin loves a good gourd. The addition of fresh rosemary (from our own herb garden out back) was an additional selling point. Beyond those considerations, …

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…

Egg Salad Sandwich

March 11, 2014 by Charles Leave a Comment

Whenever I see egg salad on the menu, I can’t help but think of the scene from Pee-Wee Herman, where Winnie tells Pee-Wee that she has made him “his favorite.” The two are seated on a picnic blanket, cooing at one another. But with each guess — fried chicken!, hamburgers, cheese sandwich, turkey a la king, vegetarian plate, shepherd’s pie — Winnie becomes increasingly upset, just as Pee-Wee becomes increasingly confused, until he confesses that he can’t think of anything else. At which point, Winnie pulls a carefully wrapped egg salad sandwich from the picnic basket.

Pee-Wee takes the obligatory bite, chews it around, pronounces it “egg salad-y,” and then tosses it, Frisbee-style towards some playground equipment.

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