Tag: Recipes: Technique

A jar full of glistening homemade preserves makes a year-round prized treat, whether smeared on a hot biscuit, dolloped onto goat cheese, or draped over ice cream. Here, Preserving Place’s Martha McMillin explains how to make her award-winning recipe.

“An omelet in its purest form is sacred to me,” says Linton Hopkins as he sets a nonstick skillet with shallow, sloping sides on the stove. “The fewer ingredients the better, so long as they are of exceptional quality: the best farm eggs you can get, really good butter, and sea salt. I don’t even add pepper.”

The profiteroles at Cafe Alsace have developed quite a reputation since Benedicte Cooper first put them on the menu 18 years ago. “We have regular customers who order them on their anniversaries instead of Champagne,” says Cooper.

One of the easiest and healthiest fish techniques is cooking en papillote, in which fillets are wrapped in parchment to steam in a hot oven. Stuff the parchment packets with sliced vegetables or rice for a complete meal.

For an easy dinner at home, Billy Allin suggests open-top braising, a slow-cooking method that yields super-tender meat with minimal kitchen effort. For poultry, Allin prefers the “crocodile” method, in which he places chicken (or duck) pieces in a pan and partially covers them with liquid, leaving the tops exposed “like the backs of crocodiles floating in the water.”

Sarah O’Brien uses a standard recipe for making her irresistibly flaky crusts. So how come hers taste so much better than ours? “It’s all about the little things,” she says.

A roast chicken prepared with precision can be a Michelin star–worthy feast. Here, Little Bacch executive chef Joe Schafer breaks down the basics.

Everybody knows that a ripe tomato is essential, but it’s the details that make for BLT perfection, says Wrecking Bar Brewpub executive chef Terry Koval, who never lets his tomatoes see the inside of a refrigerator.

“I like a steak with personality,” says Tony Manns Jr. To him, no slab of meat fits that profile better than a ribeye, characterized by a generous marbling of fat that adds rich, robust flavor and juiciness.

Michael Greene grew up on these old-time fluffy “cat-head biscuits” that have been a Matthews Cafeteria signature for six decades.He learned to make them by watching the cooks mix, roll, cut, and bake some 300 to 500 a day in a sprawling old basement kitchen where he has spent much of his life.