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I got a lot out of participating in last week’s Eleven Madison Park tribute dinner in Ottawa, but all of it was in intangible form. Really, there was only one tangible thing I wanted to take away, and I didn’t even manage that: a jar of Eleven Madison Park granola. The story goes that every [...]

Every now and then, I like to push myself a bit and cook food on a slightly grander scale than my everyday meals. It gives me a chance to test – and expand – my skills, and an opportunity to cook some of the more interesting and challenging dishes from all the cookbooks I collect. [...]

I’ve wanted to make veal stock for a long time. I’ve probably wanted to make veal stock ever since I first read The French Laundry Cookbook. I definitely wanted to make it after reading some of Michael Ruhlman’s writings on it. And, recently, reading the Eleven Madison Park cookbook and seeing some of the recipes [...]

One last dispatch from the “I love my new blender” files for now. Last week, I made these pork-and-potato tacos with guajillo chilli sauce. Like many Mexican recipes, it starts with you soaking dried chillis in hot water, then pureeing them with other ingredients (in this case, tomatoes and garlic), then “frying” the resulting puree. [...]

As a fairly indifferent bread-baker, I never really got on the no-knead bandwagon, a trend that’s been around for a while now. Usually when I bake bread, it’s one loaf at a time, and I knead it in my stand mixer. No-knead recipes were a solution to a problem I just didn’t have. This isn’t [...]

At my mother’s request (after she read my last post), I baked up some mincemeat tarts. Merry Christmas!

The Christmas season is a time of tradition, whether our own family traditions or wider cultural traditions that connect us with our forebears. Foods and drinks that are otherwise defunct come out of hiding to adorn festive tables, and people nostalgically quaff eggnog while partaking of goose and chestnuts, fruitcakes and mincemeat pies. I’ve always [...]

One of the chapters in Ruhlman’s Twenty is devoted – rightly, in my opinion – to salt. If you want to be completely reductionist about it, you could say that all cooking ultimately comes down to understanding heat, water and salt. Proper use of salt is one of those things that separates restaurant cooking from [...]

Even after the meal was over and the positive reviews were in, my trouble with the Eleven Madison Park gougères continued to bother me. Gougères are just pâte à choux (similar to the pastry used for cream puffs and éclairs), with the addition of some grated cheese. I’ve made pâte à choux several times before; [...]

After making the beet fluid gel for my take on red velvet cake, I found myself with quite a bit of beet juice left over. Fortunately, I had a recipe handy to help me use it up: beet pâte de fruit. Or should that be “pâte de légume”? It may sound strange, but beet pâte [...]