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In keeping with my annual tradition of starting off the year on a Japanese-cuisine kick, I made my first nabe of the year last week – a fitting dinner given how cold and snowy it’s been. I turned to Japanese Hot Pots, which is the indispensable reference on the subject, and used the recipe for […]

One of the stops on my road trip across the US last month was Kansas City. Naturally, this meant we had to sample the local barbecue, which we did at a couple of locations, namely Jack Stack and Woodyard BBQ. We tried a range of the offerings, including brisket, “burnt ends,” and pork ribs, as […]

When I offered my husband his choice of the various barbecue sauces in Modernist Cuisine and started listing them, he stopped me as soon I said “Kentucky.” “That one. You should make that one.” I looked at him. “Why?” “Does it have bourbon in it?” “Yeah.” “That’s why.” There are at least a handful of […]

A common sauce-making technique used in contemporary recipes is the fluid gel. A fluid gel is a substance that behaves as a solid when still, but moves like a fluid when exposed to enough outside force, a property known as “shear-thinning” or “thixotropy”. The textbook example of a shear-thinning fluid is ketchup: in the bottle, […]

One of the techniques that cropped up a lot in the menu for my recent dinner party was reduction: the carrot flan called for reduced blood orange and carrot juices; the plum glaze and foie gras sauce on the duck dish both involved reduction; and the sauce bordelaise on the beef dish was based on […]