Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 51

The Fallacy of “Follow Your Passion”

The word is passion and I used to hear it from chefs. “I can teach you to cook, but I can’t teach passion,” they would say. I took this at face value from so many chefs I can’t tell you, until I didn’t anymore because I realized it meant exactly nothing. Thomas Keller, the chef [...]

Pretzels for Oktoberfest

    How to Make Pretzels Originally Posted on November 16, 2009 My obsession with pretzels began with olives and lye, but I was only moved to actually figure pretzels out after a comically disastrous demo at the Fabulous Food Show on Saturday.(Before the demo, hanging out with Symon and Jonathan Sawyer, I mentioned my [...]

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Bloody Mary

Today’s cocktail post was inspired by a question on Twitter asking for a good Bloody Mary recipe, and it is indeed a good topic because they are often so mediocre. And it’s not the vodka’s fault this time. It’s rather that the Bloody Mary is carelessly prepared, a fault I am guilty of, especially on [...]

Le Creuset Giveaway: The Way to Braise

We’re back with another cooking lesson and Le Creuset giveaway! This time with my favorite cooking method: braising. Why is it my favorite? Because it so definitively expresses what real cooking is: transformation. Great cooking is about transforming something that would be unpleasant to eat into something exquisite. In my view, grilling a steak is not [...]

Homemade Peanut Butter

That 30 cases of salmonella have been reported in 18 states is, of course, troubling (HuffPo story here). I buy bottled stuff—mustard, mayo, ketchup, hoisin, etc.—and feed it to my kids. But the salmonella—have they isolated its source?—makes it an an opportune time to encourage people to make their own peanut butter. Why? It tastes better, [...]

Salumi Video & Tour Events

  On Saturday night in Cambridge, on a young friend’s recommendation, we dined at The Russell House Tavern, near Harvard Square, where chef Michael Scelfo and his mischievous band of cooks put out excellent high-end tavern fare. I was delighted when my 13-year-old son perused the menu and immediately asked, “Can we get the charcuterie board?” This [...]

Friday Cocktail Hour: The Brandy Blazer

Because I love the interconnectedness of all things, including cocktails, My Girl Friday suggested a Daisy, which was in fashion in the 19th century, then out, then back in in the 20th, and could be again in the 21st, but not in Ohio, where ordinary citizens such as myself are unable to purchase it due [...]

Guest Post: Rob Levitt

  When I published Ruhlman’s Twenty last year, Rob Levitt, proprietor of an old-school butcher shop in the great meat city of Chicago called The Butcher & Larder, invited me to talk about technique while we made sausage and soup. It was so much fun and Rob, who happened also to be a graduate of [...]

Guest Post Rob Levitt

  When I published Ruhlman’s Twenty last year, Rob Levitt, proprietor of an old school butcher shop in the great meat city of Chicago called The Butcher & Larder, invited me to talk about technique while we made sausage and soup. It was so much fun and Rob, who happened also to be a graduate [...]

The Main Dish—My Kindle Single

Ever since I read Anne Patchett’s The Getaway Car, a short memoir on writing, I’ve wanted to write my own Kindle Single, a fiction and non-fiction venue for fiction and non-fiction that’s longer than a magazine story but shorter than a book. (The NYTimes reviewed the singles here.) Any device running Android or iTunes can [...]