Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 18

Think Spring: Rhubarb Walnut Crumble Pie

It’s practically balmy here in Cleveland. With most of the snow melted I can’t help but think of spring. Spring means rhubarb. So here with a re-post from a Michigan baker, as I head down to warmer climes with the family. Lisa Ludwinski is a baker and cook living in Detroit. She recently returned to the Great Lakes State after a six-year stint eating bagels, nannying, and mixing many pounds of cookie dough in Brooklyn, finishing with stints at Momofuku Milk Bar and Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Now she is the owner of Sister Pie, a from-scratch home bakery serving the Detroit area via the Facebook page, and aims to celebrate the seasons with pie and other sweets through unique interpretations and natural ingredients. For now, she’s able to bake pies from home for sale under Read On »

Medium-Well(Cooking with Your Senses)

Last week I had lunch with Kate Lee, a senior editor at medium.com, an elegant publishing platform created by the Twitter co-founders (she had a salad, which put me on guard until she agreed to taste some of my terrible-looking but most delicious chicken livers on toast). Medium was in search of writers/content and my book agent, the lovely Cait Hoyt, said she wanted all her writers to contribute to medium. I’m always interested in new platforms, ideas, ways to share and spread information, and promote my own projects.  Medium is about three years old and still trying to find it’s legs, it seems, though no one denies it’s a great place to read interesting stuff, even if it’s often somehow about itself. Which may scarily be what we’re coming to. One of the subtexts of Read On »

How to Cure Corned Beef

It’s time for my yearly re-post of a recipe for corning your own beef. If you can brine a chicken, you can cure your own beef. Start by Thursday and it will be ready to cook on St. Paddy’s day. Of special note here is my partner in charcuterie Brian Polcyn’s recipe for a fabulous pickling spice. You can buy pickling spice, but Brian’s is over-the-top delicious. Any cut of beef can be “corned.” (See my pastrami short ribs.) But the best cuts are the tougher, less-expensive cuts such as brisket. The only uncommon ingredient is the sodium nitrite, pink salt, available here, and also from Amazon. If you know of any local shops that make their own bacon, hams, or smoked sausage, they may have some on hand. This is what accounts for the deep red color Read On »

Cook Your Own Food. Eat What You Want.

I’m on the road all week so I am reposting this, in light of the new governmental recommendations on what we should and should not eat. The Times article noted in the post, interestingly, is from almost exactly two years ago. —M.R. Originally Posted March 14, 2013 I’d have thought that an article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Eat Your Heart Out by Gretchen Reynolds, would have made me happy. I’ve long argued that America’s terror of fat and salt is misguided and blown grossly out of proportion. But all the piece did was make me mad. It notes a study that found that men with heart disease who reduced their intake of meat and saturated fats and increased the polyunsaturated fats in their diet were more likely to die of a heart attack than the control Read On »

Cook Your Own Food. Eat What You Want

I’m on the road all week so I am reposting this, in light of the new governmental recommendations on what we should and should not eat. The Times article noted in the post, interestly, is from almost exactly two years ago. –M.R. Originally Posted March 14, 2013 I’d have thought that an article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Eat Your Heart Out by Gretchen Reynolds, would have made me happy. I’ve long argued that America’s terror of fat and salt is misguided and blown grossly out of proportion. But all the piece did was make me mad. It notes a study that found that men with heart disease who reduced their intake of meat and saturated fats and increased the polyunsaturated fats in their diet were more likely to die of a heart attack than the control Read On »

Opening of Heinen’s

The opening of a grocery store in what had been a derelict Beaux-Arts masterpiece is not simply a boon for residents of downtown Cleveland, it’s a great symbol of the importance of food to our communities. Hundreds of people came out for the 6-minute ribbon-cutting ceremony and to check out the newest resident. I asked Donna to join me and take some photos to document opening day (all photos here are hers). Does anyone know of a cooler grocery store in the country? If so, please tell me where! Our local paper, The Plain Dealer (still the best-named paper in the country, though its plain dealing has been reduced to four days a week on actual newsprint), had the day well covered. Our estimable architecture critic covers it incisively here, and does not hide his joy Read On »

A Cathedral of Food

A new grocery store opens in downtown Cleveland this morning. But this family-run business is more than a grocery store. It’s more like a food cathedral. The above iPhone photo, shot early this week as cases were being filled, attests to that. But the simile goes beyond architecture. This grocery store, perhaps among the most humble-seeming of businesses, is a symbol of this once moribund city’s recent growth. Downtown Cleveland is now a desirable place to live (apparently it’s at 95% capacity). We’ve long known it’s a desirable place to eat. Astonishingly, it’s made significant lists of must-see destinations (Travel+Leisure, Fodor’s, even the LA Times). Also it’s my hometown and I care for it the way one does a cherished mutt: with devotion and pity and deep love, for all its good and bad. (See this hilarious tourism Read On »

Is the Government Right This Time?

  The government and a committee of docs and PhD’s and other really smart people are reversing two generations of recommendations on how you and your family should eat. It’s OK to eat eggs. They’re not a silent killer. The news arrived last week. This opinion piece on what the new guidelines mean is particularly good (by Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet—how did I miss this?! A girl after my own heart; think she’ll join me in my quest to make July national Butter-Is-a-Vegetable Month?).   Look at these delicious dishes above, all photos of the egg by Donna, featured in my love song to the egg (I especially love the sun-like yolk at top). For two generations we were told that eggs, a miracle of economy, nutrition, utility, and Read On »

Shumai

Chrissy Camba (@chrissycamba) is the Owner/Chef of Maddy’s Dumpling House in Chicago. Shortly after graduating from Loyola University with a degree in biology, Chrissy fell in love with cooking. In a very “Sliding Doors” twist, she was asked to stage in a kitchen and later offered her first kitchen job. After many accolades, a Top Chef competition, and the passing of her bunny, Maddy, Chrissy started Maddy’s Dumpling House. Currently, Maddy’s Dumpling House “pops up” once a month around Chicago until Chrissy can find a permanent brick and mortar space to call home.  By Chrissy Camba Dumplings have been a part of my life since I can remember. I would find them floating in soups, looking like wrinkled brains, deep-fried in tight rolls filled with ground meat, steamed/fried/pan-fried racing around me on little metal carts that periodically stopped by Read On »

Beyond Food

I want to call attention to an op-ed by Mark Bittman in The New York Times last week, headlined “What Is the Purpose of Society,” because it’s particularly incisive. He rightly asks us to reconsider how we think about the production and distribution of our food. He calls on us to ask the right questions: What is the purpose of agriculture? And he asks that we come to a common agreement on what that purpose is. He writes: “… [I]s contemporary American agriculture a system for nourishing people and providing a livelihood for farmers? Or is it one for denuding the nation’s topsoil while poisoning land, water, workers and consumers and enriching corporations? Our collective actions would indicate that our principles favor the latter; that has to change. “…[i]f we had a national agreement that food Read On »