Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 7

Bacon! (Again!) (Podcast!)

Brian Polcyn and I cure bacon on this week’s “From Scratch” podcast. That’s the gorgeous chunk of pork belly Brian’s holding, from Dickson’s Farmstand, at the Chelsea Market. Brian was impressed by the quality. I was impressed by Brian’s belly. His pork belly, that is, lower left, the cured stuff we cut and sautéed. That’s me with the mic, and in the purple shirt Jonathan, the producer, who started this whole thing.

Most important thought I came away with from this week’s podcast: every successful cuisine is a result of a successful relationship with a place. Place is fundamental. That from Jack Algiere (more below). For this episode we talk pig, bacon, farming, curing and cooking.

Why is bacon all but universally adored?

I don’t know, but I talked with Brian about it, I went out to Stone Barns to talk with Jack Algiere about it, and then Brian and I convened at my West Village apartment to cure bacon and to cook it.

As I said, curing your own bacon really is as easy as marinating a steak. Here’ s a long-ago recipe that still works. Or read about it in-depth in Charcuterie.

Other pertinent links from the podcast:

Here’s a good bacon recipe.

The shop Brian mentioned in Cleveland, Saucisson. And I also must mention Adam Lambert and Ohio City Provisions who is also offering great cured meats. These, along with Dickson’s, are prime examples of the great things happening in the world of both butchery and taking the care of animals.

Chop Shop in St. Augustines is fabulous–Brian and I had such an amazing time here–people of St. Augustine, here’s where to get your meat.

And the bacon method is also in my new book From Scratch (so is the corned beef recipe!)! But really, it’s everywhere all around us:

As Jack said on the podcast, every successful cuisine is a result of a successful relationship with a place.”

The Egg: From Scratch Podcast

“When I started my apprenticeship, my chef told me, ‘You’ll need ten years to master sabayon.’ It wasn’t exactly a decade, but it did take a while to get accustomed to controlling the heat to prevent the sauce from breaking. Once I did, I was so happy. Making a beautiful sabayon by hand is immensely satisfying.” —Gabriel Kreuther

The above dish, sauerkraut and sturgeon on phyllo, topped with a white wine sabayon and caviar, is a signature dish of a chef I’m working with now, and what I’m calling attention to here is the sabayon. It is of course a derivative of the Hollandaise sauce, an emulsified butter sauce, flavored by lemon, one of the classic mother sauces. My favorite kind of cooking–classical French: egg yolk, butter, and lemon.

For me this sauce, the Hollandaise, or the sabayon, or the Bearnaise is all about the egg. The egg helps to form an emulsion (a thick mayonnaise-like consistency of oil and liquid), it thickens the sauce, and enriches the sauce.

As I’ve long said, the egg is a miracle. A miracle of economy and deliciousness, elegance and simplicity, and of extraordinary functionality. I wrote a whole book about it. And in the podcast today we talk with three culinary powerhouses, Eric Ripert, chef of Le Bernardin in NYC, Kenny Lopez-Alt, author-cook-chef (his great book The Food Lab, his restaurant: Wursthall), and my dear friend and colleague and co-author Brian Polcyn. Each offer their thoughts on the egg, their stories of early failures the Hollandaise brought upon them.

Eric Ripert, chef and gentleman (and a fabulous cook)

Hope you’ll listen to the new podcast, “From Scratch with Michael Ruhlman,” and this week’s topic, the egg. Pertinent links below.

Brian Polcyn (left) and I talk eggs, Hollandaise and Chef Milos in my apartment with iHeart producer Jonathan Dressler.

Here are he pertinent links:

My favorite pan, hands down, The All-Clad Saucier. (Unpaid endorsement! I love the pan. That and and old cast iron skillet is all I need.)

Kenji Lopez-Alt’s best egg experiment in the history of the universe (seriously): Nytimes.

Kenji’s invaluable book, The Food Lab

Eric Ripert’s Memoir, 32 Yolks.

Brian Polcyn’s (and my) Pate, Confit, Rillettes.

I googled Hollandaise recipes and they’re all across the board. Here’s how Brian made is on the show.

He put 2 egg yolks in a sloping sided bowl with a 2 teaspoons of lemon juice (add 1/2 teaspoon water to this). He then put the pan/bowl into simmering water and whipped the eggs till they fell in loose ribbons from the whip. He then slowly added 6 ounces of melted butter in a thin stream into the fluffy eggs. Just a few drops to start then in a steady stream. Add 1/4 teaspoon cayenne. Then, taste! Evaluate. Want more lemon? Add it. Need more salt, add it. A tad more spice? Add more cayenne.

What to do with this concoction besides eat it moaningly with a spoon? Put it over poached eggs! Or on green vegetable. Put it on a sandwich! It’s not one of the oldest sauces on recored for no reason.

I go into all this in my new book From Scratch, as well as so many other things.

Thank you Eric, Kenji, and Brian! And Jonathan Dressler, ace prodcast producer.

From Scratch Podcast: Wines and Spirits (and jus lié)

Scenes from the cooking podcast, From Scratch. Brian Polcyn and I, in my West Village apartment, make a sauce, jus lié, using a wine reduction for an episode on wines and spirits. I also talk with another chef and a wine maker, and a very special guest.

The latest podcast episode is up! On wines and spirits, cooking with them and drinking them. In this episode, I make a simple wine reduction sauce with Brian, who is an amazing cook and a better teacher. We also talk with wine producer Dave Phinney and chef Peter Kelley, and follow this with, gadzooks, a vodka martini, with an expert who had never had one!

is up! On wines and spirits, cooking with them and drinking them. In this episode, I make a simple wine reduction sauce with Brian, who is an amazing cook and a better teacher. We also talk with wine producer Dave Phinney and chef Peter Kelley, and follow this with, gadzooks, a vodka martini, with an expert who had never had one!

I promised early in the show to give a recipe for a jus lié, which is simply a thickened sauce. This one with a white wine reduction. Here it is, but casually, because it’s so easy, you can play fast and loose, if you use your common sense.

What you need is:

2 ounces bacon (optional), chopped, 1/4 cup chopped onion and 1/4 cup chopped carrot (Brian likes celery, I don’t for chicken but love with beef), some butter, 1-1/2 cups wine, 1-1/2 cups chicken stock (bay leaf and pepper if you have it), tablespoon of tomato paste, and a thickener, a corn starch slurry or beurre manié (described in podcast)–none of this in order so just have it on hand. And of course a sauteed chicken breast or a roast chicken to put the sauce on.

Cook the bacon so the fat renders. Cook the onion and carrot in the bacon fat. Brian added some butter to get everything rendering as you can hear. When things are browned, add the wine in thirds, reducing it till the pan is crackling and the sugars stuck to the pan are browning. After the wine add all the stock, reduce by half, strain it into a clean pan, bring to a simmer, adjust seasoning, then thicken with beurre manie, as we do on the podcast, or with a cornstarch slurry and you are: good to go.

It’s actually better to listen Brian describing it, or both. We’re trying to figure out in this podcast how to do audible recipes. Please let me know if it works or how we can do it better.

Then, I actually make and more or less concede to the … Vodka martini. Yep. But only because I found a really good vodka. David and I discuss it.

David Lebovitz, chef, author, bon vivant, mixing us his first ever vodka martini, less commonly known as a Kangaroo. Listen to the podcast for his verdict (and thoughts on so many topics.

Despite what Brian says, cooking is easy, if you know the basics, and remember that unless it’s burnt, mistakes are edible.

And if you listen to and like the podcast, please give it some stars BECAUSE: that’s the way more people learn about it and we want people to hear it!

Links from the show:

Peter Kelley of X2O

Slovenia Vodka

Dave Phinney, wine producer

David Lebovitz, and his books

Brian Polcyn

And my new book From Scratch: 10 Meals, 175 Recipes

From Scratch Podcast: Water Episode

Tom Yum Kung Soup by Jean-Georges: water seasonings aromats, shrimp, mushrooms.

On this week’s episode I explore my second favorite ingredient in the kitchen, one we scarcely think about: water. I interview chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, on his journey from Alsace to the south of France to Bangkok, which transformed his life. And he demos the first dish he ate there.

And I also speak with Adam Bosch, 0o the Environmental Protection Agency, about the extraordinary New York water supply. And we go inside the very first aquaduct that delivered water from upstate New York to Manhattan in 1842, transforming the city from a fetid swamp to a thriving metropolis.

Adam Baosch, director of public affairs for the NYC public watershed.



Sara Kelsey in the Croton Aquaduct, opened in 1842 to deliver fresh water to Manhattan

When something is ubiquitous, such as water, we tend to take it for granted. Imagine if you woke up and found no water running from your tap, no coffee, nbo shower, no water for chicken stock. What if all neighborhoods had to haul water from fetid ponds, a time when beer was the safest liquid to drink.

Water is life. And it is magic in the kitchen. In this Episode 5 of “From Scratch with Michael Ruhlman” we explore a few aspects of the elemental substance with experts in the kitchen and out.

For the tours mentioned in the show, go to this link at aquaduct.org.

For more about Jean-Georges Vongericthen, visit his restaurant site, read this recent piece in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

His new memoir, which I wrote with him, is JGV: A Live in 12 Recipes. That’s where you’ll find the Tom Yum King recipe.

My new book, From Scratch: 10 Meals, 150 Recipes has just been published as well.

Listen to the podcast From Scratch wherever you get your podcasts! It’s produced by iHeart Media here, or if you listen to podcasts on Apple, here.

Can you remember the first time you smelled lemongrass?

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From Scratch, the Podcast: Wood

Suzanne Cupps, on her last day as executive chef of Untitled, about to make her jerked carrots. (That’s me and my producer, Jonathan Dressler, hamming in the background.)

Yesterday, the fourth episode of my podcast, “From Scratch with Michael Ruhlman,” went up. On each episode, I speak with one chef and one non-chef about the same theme, to see what we can learn. This week’s theme is “Wood.” And we’re cooking with Chef Suzanne Cupps, who will be opening a new restaurant in the West Village this fall called 232 Bleeker and will have a wood burning hearth at the center of the new kitchen.

She came to my attention at the restaurant Untitled for her gorgeous, delicious and vegetable forward dishes (not to mention her fried chicken, which I would put against any in the city). For the show she teaches us about cooking with wood and gives us her method for jerked grilled carrots.

The podcast also features Ian Wogan, a Florida-based wood expert who discovered the perfect use for an invasive species of trees in southern Florida. Guess what it is!

Hope you’ll have a listen. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s the general link: https://megaphone.link/fromscratch

Let me know what you like and what we can be doing better. If you like it, please rate it—and even comment; this will help more people find it. It just launched last week along with my new book with the same name but very different contents.

Here’s a link to the first episode on what does authentic cooking really mean, with Oakland Chef James Syhabout, born in Laos, and Dr. Krishnendu Ray, a brilliant food scholar at NYU and author of several great books on the culture of cooking. Here’s the Apple podcasts link for that one.

Happy cooking!

Publication of From Scratch Today!

The details are these: The new book looks at 10 staple meals—roast chicken, steak dinner, lasagna—and explores all the techniques and dishes you learn simply by knowing one of them. It includes 175 recipes, gorgeous photography by Quentin Bacon of food I made in my home kitchen in Providence, RI. I’m all about technique and learning. But I sent it to recipe goddess and a writer I truly respect and admire, Ina Garten, even though I was terrified she wouldn’t like the food.

To my astonishment, I received this in return: “Hi Michael, … It’s simply STUNNING!!  I love your voice, the recipes, the components, and all the amazing information.  Small batch stocks is transformative.  And the recipes we made are so delicious!”

Thank you wonderful Ina (both my wife and my mom own most of your books–why? “Because they work!” And Ina offered these words on behalf of From Scratch:

“I love this book!! Michael Ruhlman is a genius cook and teacher. I love his voice, his recipes, his tips, and the way he makes great cooking totally accessible. Through the recipes for 10 classic meals, he covers how to cook almost anything. From Scratch inspires me to be a better cook and I know you’ll feel the same way I do!”– Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa cookbooks & television. (Here latest is Cook Like a Pro.)

I also sent it to the phenom testing guru, cook, restaurateur and author, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who said even more:

“Like a master chef clarifying a murky stock into a crystal-clear consommé, Ruhlman detangles the complex web of technique, myth, and folklore that is cooking. With From Scratch, he embeds lessons in the context of things you really want to eat, and he shows how understanding one recipe really well can open the door to dozens of others. The lessons are set up in such a way that you can decide exactly how deep a dive you want to take, though with a guide like Ruhlman at your side, that’s most likely a mouth-first leap straight into the deep end.”— J. Kenji López-Alt, author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science (a truly amazing book, btw, and I’m just saying that to blow smoke–I referenced it often when writing mine.)

Thank you amazing Kenji!

Hope people will give it a look. The world is better and we are happier when we cook our own food. Period

I urge all to support local booksellers! We need them in our world and they won’t be around if we always use Amazon, so if it’s all the same to you, go independent via Indiebound.

Of course, Amazon isn’t going away either. Here’s the B&N link.

Do you live in Canada? Here’s the link. Do you live in Australia? Here’s the link for you. And elsewhere internationally, click this link.

Feel free to contact me via the contact button on the site, or michael (at) ruhlman (dot) com.

Happy cooking!

What Does From Scratch Mean to Me? Part 2.

In my new book, From Scratch, I make a wide range of dishes from scratch, from relatively simple fare to elevated and complex meals, involving many steps and components. (Still available for pre-order; fill out this form to receive a free gift from my publisher, a signed cassoulet chart.) I’ve spent years observing how some of our most accomplished restaurant chefs do what they do, and I will share some of their thinking and techniques in ways that home cooks can easily put to good use. My wife, Ann, and I cook dinner for each other almost every evening we’re home, and we both take great pleasure in the smells, flavors, and nourishment of a home- cooked meal. Nobody should be intimidated by the thought of cooking or feel that a shortcut (jarred tomato sauce or a rotisserie chicken) is a compromise; it’s a choice, depending on our circumstances. Cooking delicious food is something we’re all capable of.

Take popcorn, for example. Can popcorn be “from scratch”? Few of us grow our own corn, make our own butter, or harvest our own salt. Microwave popcorn has become dominant in today’s household, and it can’t be beat for convenience and no cleanup. Open a box, remove a cellophane wrapper, microwave for three minutes, and then open another bag to get at the popped corn covered in oils and chemical flavoring. This is definitely not from scratch by any reasonable measure. Stovetop popcorn is a wholly different product, to my mind—one of my very favorite things to eat, in fact. 

But can popcorn cooked on the stovetop be considered “from scratch”? An unqualified yes. You’ve taken a raw, inedible product that looks as it did when it was harvested, transformed it with some heat and care into something edible and delicious, enriched it with butter, and seasoned it with salt.

The bottom line for me is this: “From scratch” is an attitude, not a recipe or a rigid set of instructions.

Pre-Ordering From Scratch (and what “from scratch” really means)

Happy Tuesday, all! I’m writing to encourage you (at my lovely publisher’s request) to pre-order my new book FROM SCRATCH: 10 Meals, 175 Recipes (and all you can learn from those 10 meals). It’s out next week and I’m very excited about it! If you’re interested in the Cassoulet Flow Chart, from my publisher send in this form (photo of said chart on this page as well). Cassoulet is meal #6 (best ways to cook beans, making your own sausage, confining duck legs, curing ventrêche (French-style salt-cured belly). It’s a cool chart my publisher made to thank people for pre-ordering.

The Story of the New Book

From Scratch came about while I was writing a completely different cookbook, thinking about one of my favorite meals, roast chicken, and all you can learn from it (how to make a stock, and then any stock, how to make a pan jus, how to make gravy, a refined sauce fines herbes, various sides that go with it).

And I recalled the long ago BLT From Scratch Challenge. How great was that?! Everyone agreeing to make their own bread, make their own mayonnaise, grow their own lettuce and tomatoes, and cure their own bacon. None of it particularly difficult, and a blast if you like to cook. I went back to the winners entry, and remembered 9-year-old Emma Kate, who once again brought me to tears with her story (sadly, the post is cached without pix). And I tell this story in my introduction. So Emma Kate, who with her father, Walter, made a BLT from scratch, bringing father and daughter and family and friends together with a simple sandwich.

And so, thinking of that great challenge and all the people who took it up lead me to wonder aloud (lying in bed one Sunday reading The Times), “What other meals can you learn from?” My wife Ann, stepping into the shower, shouted out “Lasagna!”

Yes, I thought! How to make pasta dough! A variety of tomato sauces. How to make your own ricotta, and even mozzarella! And also Bolognese sauce and Béchamel! And other pasta dishes. There’s even an offshoot recipe for the cleanest, most refreshing Bloody Mary you can make.

And so the book began. Image at top is the table of contents and the ten meals I chose to represent all of cooking.

What does “From Scratch,” really mean?

To me it means only this: you made the meal yourself. You didn’t buy it and reheat it or have it delivered. Is popcorn made on the stove top in a pot with melted better “from scratch” if you didn’t make the butter yourself? Of course it is. 

For lasagna, if you roll your own pasta, make your own sauce from tomatoes you grew, include sausage you seasoned yourself and add ricotta and mozzarella you also made? That is SERIOUSLY from scratch. But so is my pal Blake’s version—and he uses jarred sauce, frozen spinach and cottage cheese (seriously, Blake, cottage cheese?)—he calls it “from scratch” and in my opinion it definitely is. Why? Because he cooks everything, assembles it and bakes it, filling the house with great smells and sharing a delicious homemade lasagna with his beloved wife and daughter.

He cooked his own food. That what From Scratch means to me.

And this is what From Scratch looks like:

Emma Kate Smith, in 2009 with her BLT from scratch, made with her father Walter. (I tracked her down on Facebook. She’s now a college student and still cooking she told me.) Thank you both! I owe this book to you and your dad.

Is Red Meat Bad For You?

The chapter on Steak Frites and all you can learn from it, in my new book From Scratch.

I didn’t know whether to be glad or frustrated by yesterday’s page one story on a new study that finds decades of nutritional advice and intuitive common sense to be wrong: There’s little evidence that eating beef and pork leads to increased chances of your getting cancer or cardiovascular disease.

Traditional nutritionists and doctors are up in arms, saying the study is reckless and harmful.

Now who to believe?For me, the only thing the study tells us is that almost no study on what food is good or bad for you is reliable. Do they have these studies in France? I doubt it. Because the French generally don’t treat their food as medicine, the way we do. They eat nourishing food and enjoy life and each other.

My own nutritional advice is to not even listen to me. I say listen to your body. Do you feel good after you eat a meal, or lethargic or worse? The only reliable nutritional information seems to be that heavily processed foods are probably bad for you. Do we know this from studies? Some. But the more reliable information is that in America, studies have shown that people who are prevented from buying fresh food or food that needs cooking, tend to be sicker and die earlier than people who have ready access to groceries.

And this is why I encourage people to cook, here and in my books. And I have a new one coming out called FROM SCRATCH, about how ten common meals can teach us everything we need to know about cooking. Steak Frites for example! I hope you’ll have a look when it comes out later this month. And if you want to pre-order it through my publisher, they have a special gift for you (because for some reason, publishers believe that pre-orders really, really help a book, and I love my publisher, Abrams).

I will conclude with the best diet advice I’ve ever heard, from Harry Balzer: Cook your own food. Eat whatever you want, so long as you cook it yourself.

Happy cooking!

Non-Wheat Breakfasts

Yogurt with Nuts and Cherries (or “Breakfast with Paul”)

One splendid idea: whole fat Greek yogurt with toasted nuts and, for sweetness and additional acidity, sour cherries (we fell in love with these in Greece; happily, in Providence, where we reside part time, there is Yoleni’s a store selling great Greek products, yogurt as good as what we had in Athens, and I hear is a swell place for a quick lunch in downtown PVD).

As I’ve long opined, the traditional American breakfast foods, composed primarily of refined wheat and sugar, make for the most dangerous meal of the day, causing blood sugar levels to spike, release insulin, making one sluggish and tired and hungry in 90 minutes. My dear pal, Blake Bailey, a cereal lover (though I applaud is typical poached egg on toast ; the world patiently awaits your Philip Roth bio!), and others asked, then what do you propose, and what’s fast to prepare as I’m rushing to get out the door in the morning.

I’d welcome comments on variations on the yogurt-based breakfast that avoid refined wheat. I too love a poached egg on toast. To avoid the wheat, I sometimes put a poached egg in a half avocado (The Beloved gets the other half).

Or sometimes a boiled egg with soft yolk—6 minute boil for runny. But read this piece by Kenji Lopez-Alt, the NYTimes new food columnists who conducted the most exhaustive double-blind study on hard-cooking eggs our species has known. Fascinating! 

My takeaways: MUST try his steaming method (but Kenji, you don’t address that half the time cold eggs going into boiling water crack!); his commentary on creating tender rather than rubbery whites (hear, hear); his command—command!‚never to put eggs in an egg bath (sacré bleu! I don’t know if I’m on board with this yet); and most important of all, that the taste of fresh eggs from neighbors and friends or your local farmer, some only hours old, tasted no better than commercial Costco eggs. Thanks, Kenji, and The Times did right by hiring you.

As far as no-wheat breakfasts go, I’d love to know what other faves are. The lentils of India and kitcheree? Things like that? I’ve become accustomed to avoiding refined wheat as much as possible, and when I do it’s combined with protein and fat to slow the sugar’s absorption (eg a poached egg on toast).

The main reason to eat yogurt with nuts and cherries for breakfast, though, is because it’s delicious, nourishing, and keeps one sated all morning.

Oh, and BTW, this is my new site design (home page here; all critiques suggestions welcome, as next month I launch a new book and podcast on cooking, both called FROM SCRATCH: 10 Meals, 175 Recipes and Techniques You’ll Use Over and Over. AND my own podcast about cooking.)

(PS: this site uses WordPress.n Anyone know how I get rid of that double photo?!)