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I may still have a thing or two to learn about tempering chocolate, but I’m pretty good at sugar-based confectionery. Every year at Christmas, I make these lemon and rosewater jellies – a sort of faux-Turkish delight, since they’re set with gelatin rather than starch – from an old Bon Appétit recipe that’s inexplicably missing [...]

Nearly two months after I posted about trying to make vinegar without a mother, the time has come for an update. I’m sad to report that it was an utter failure: instead of developing a healthy population of acetobacter, my would-be vinegar developed a nice coating of fuzzy blue-green mold. (Trust me, this photo is [...]

When I wrote about the Coffee Cocktail, I mentioned that it was one of two drinks that make a frequent appearance in my cocktail shaker during the holiday season. The other one is the Stinger. On paper, drinks like the Stinger look simple. And they’re certainly simple to make. But there’s something about these quintessential [...]

I’m off in New York this week, but I thought I’d share a couple of the appetizers my husband and I served at our annual Christmas party, which took place this past weekend. First up, shown above, a hot passed app that was a mix of traditional and modern techniques: shredded roast lamb shoulder (recipe [...]

In the world of confectionery, there are two types of people: chocolate people and sugar people. Chocolate people are versed in the arcana of tempering and cocoa butter crystallization; sugar people are seers of water content and caramelization. I am a sugar person. I’ve never really grasped chocolate tempering, despite having attended a fantastic chocolate [...]

Occasionally, things work out just as well in my mouth as they sound like they’re going to in my head… How to make a quince upside-down cake 2 quinces 2 cups water 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter 1/2 cup brown sugar 1.5 cups cake flour 2 tsp. baking powder Large pinch salt 1/2 cup [...]

When the Christmas season rolls around, there are two cocktails that make their way into increasing rotation in my bibulous life. One of them is the Coffee Cocktail, mostly because we always have a bottle of port in the house at Christmas; it goes in our fruitcake. If you’re not a regular denizen of the [...]

There are a number of ingredients that carry a certain cachet among food professionals and amateurs, before eventually achieving fame among the population at large. From the butcher’s counter, short ribs are an obvious example. In the vegetable kingdom, a case might be made for celeriac. And as far as fruits go, the quince deserves [...]