Yea- one culinary challenge crossed off the list! The last two days have been preoccupied with making homemade ricotta following the procedure outlined at Becks & Posh. It’s so easy and rewarding! The ricotta is almost sweet tasting on its own. I’ve made all my batches with whole milk, and am now going to try [...]
My work in the lab gives me great access to many tools that are screaming hot with chefs these days. Liquid Nitrogen, water incubators, and dry ice. Dry ice has been a friend in making fruit carbonated- which is great quirky stuff to play with. Awhile ago I posted a link to an article about [...]
My recent delivery of Lovescool’s Valentine’s Day Champagne Brownies gave me the inspiration to make little bite sized brownies. Her chocolate delivery was so charming and tasty and bite sized. A week after finishing them off, I’m still thinking of them and realizing that they addressed a fundamental rule that I have forgotten to apply [...]
Our mouths operate as a limbic estuary, a tidal zone where molecules and emotions mesh in our food. There is no holiday better than Valentine’s Day to demonstrate this, as newscasts report on chocolate’s love-like chemicals, and seafood shops tout the levels of zinc in oysters. Do the high levels of zinc register with our [...]
Sweets and I recently worked ourselves into a frenzy with a great anti-valentine idea. Inspired by released transcripts of public figures saying naughty and explicit things to the objects of their affection, we agreed that some of these catch phrases would be perfect on Conversation Hearts.
Creating treasures of culinary aphrodisiacs has been a crafty hobby of mine. My visually accute X-Rated Sweet Pussy Cakes of SHF#13 were a smashing hit, and really deserve more exploration… ahem, in the form of a more explicit tutorial. Another project on the back burner is to make dishes using local company Terra Firma Botanicals’ [...]
In a moment of scrumptious serendipity, I came across Lex Culinaria’s lemon curd recipe. I had just indulged myself at a friend’s kitchen with shortbread bars dipped in tangy curd and couldn’t push these flavors out of my head. Lex’s recipe is different from the curd recipes I’ve made in the past in that it [...]
I was struck by a bolt of inspiration in the department of dessert making. In fact, I still have this lightening strike up in my current inspiration window- a magnificent jello monster that uses all the colors of the rainbow in combination with a creamed layer in between each. It is stunning, and makes me [...]
I’ve been mentally straddling the line of eating healthier for a good two months now. Sure I have a stock pile of excuses as to why I’m still on the fence. Unfortunatley I’m really enjoying shuffling through these excuses! Getting ready to go monastic in the new year = new you tradition can be like [...]
My Christmas present givers helped remind me of a significant gift for foodies in the kitchen: a kitchen aid stand mixer! We promptly broke it out of its box and made fluffy eggnog with it. Good mixer. In a moment of divine food blog inspiration, Michelle at Accidental Scientist made a batch of Christmas marshmallows- [...]
