Now That's A Mouthful

For some, baking is as easy as… pie!  For others, (like me) we’re lucky if we have something that’s edible!  We tackled a couple of cookbooks that promise fabulous results – both with cookies and with cakes and brownies.  For the most part, we nailed it.

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results.  We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics.  All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results.  We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics.  All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.

We talk about kitchen gadgets almost every week, but what about our small electrics?  There are so many!  And, so many that do the same or similar job… or do they?  We’ll look at hand mixers and stand mixers and food processor and blenders.  Do we need them all?  Where do we store all this stuff?  And, how do they save us time?

Fat is the vehicle to get flavor across our taste buds.  We tested a lot of recipes with bacon and bacon fat is one of the most flavorful fats out there.  Learn what you can do with this delicious fat, how to clarify it so you can keep it on hand!

Mise en place or “everything in its place” is the first step to any recipe – get everything out and measured and ready to go.  This helps set you up for success in the cooking process.  There are other benefits to mise en place, too.  Learn what they are what our testers have to say about working through a recipe.

We cooked from a book designed to help ANYONE become a better cook and from a book intending to change the way we think about cooking in our homes.  Then, we tackled some small-batch desserts that had most of our testers saying… this is small batch?!  We learned a lot, asked a lot of questions and, as usual, our testers had a lot to say about what we were cooking!

There are some tastes and flavors that we seem to gravitate toward and want to include in our food whether they’re included in the recipe or not.  This episode we’ll focus on the taste of sweet:  where we miss it, where we want to add it, and how to do it to keep all the flavors in balance.

One of the most versatile pans in our kitchen is cast iron.  As much as they are versatile and functional, many of them have stories and history attached.  Do you have one?  Where did you get it?  What do you cook in it?

Who says recipes have to be long and wordy?  Some of our most delicious meals are those that don’t require a lot of ingredients or a lot of effort.  We cooked three very simple recipes from a very simple little cookbook with great results!