Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 73

Brown

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman Long enamored of black and white, my wife and collaborator has been working on a series of food shots featuring not food so much as the color of food. If you like her work, let her know or have a look at her gallery at ruhlmanphotography.com. I'm on vacation from now [...]

Green

Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman Long enamored of black and white, my wife and collaborator has been working on a series of food shots featuring not food so much as the color of food. If you like her work, let her know or have a look at her gallery at ruhlmanphotography.com. I'm on vacation from [...]

NYC Notes: Bouchon Bakery Cookbook Begins

I spent the first week of March in Manhattan digging into the work of writing The Bouchon Bakery Cookbook with Thomas Keller and executive chef Sebastien Rouxel, whom Keller calls "easily one of the 10 best pastry chefs in the country." This project is especially exciting to me because I've spent my whole culinary career [...]

A New Ratio: Biscotti

Biscotti is the perfect accompaniment mid-morning when I'm into my fifth or sixth cup of coffee.  I drink coffee all morning long and I'm able to do so because I don't use one of those horrible drip machines, but rather what I think of as my personal 1956 Lincoln Continental of a coffee machine. The [...]

Eggs Benedict From Scratch

This eggs Benedict post has new recipes for Hollandaise sauce and sourdough English muffins but I have to begin with the angry comment on my Tomato Sauce post. A reader was clearly miffed that I would suggest that anyone who works make their own tomato sauce. Well, I do suggest this, but I hasten to [...]

How To Cook Dried Beans

Dried beans and salt. Dried beans and soaking.  Ask some chefs and they'll tell you add salt in the beginning and the beans will never get soft.  Some chefs have suggested that salt slows the rehydration of beans.  Others say, the slower the rehydration, the better the finished bean (fewer broken ones), so it's important [...]

Modernist Cuisine

Tomorrow, I review Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking for The New York Times, the heavily hyped and praised 6 volume, 2400-page romp through the whole world of cooking, a manifesto pronouncing the arrival of a new cultural movement.  I'll be happy to answer questions here tomorrow about the book or the review [...]

Tomato Sauce

A basic tomato sauce is easy and delicious on its own and an elegant cooking tool as well. Braise beef, pork or lamb in it, add it to ground meat for a pasta sauce, poach eggs in it. It's delicious plain. I returned from New York on Friday and saw a 24-ounce jar of a [...]

Lemon Confit

With all this curing going on over at charcutepalooza, I thought I'd mention a common item that anyone can easily cure, given enough time.  Lemons.  Lemon confit or preserved lemon, is a powerful seasoning and a great pantry item to have on hand. A common ingredient in North African and Middle Eastern cuisines, it adds [...]

Something To Say: Not Funny

On a lighter, more serious note, one of my true regrets. And nothing to do with food. Thank you, Todd & Diane the White on Rice Couple—we need to do a video on how to roast a chicken (seriously, that's not a come on). If you liked this video interlude, check out these other posts: [...]