Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 88

Cultured Butter at Home

Have had butter on my mind for the past two weeks (I often have butter on my mind, but it's been acute recently), and when my thoughts turned to Indian food the combination resulted in the desire to make ghee.  Ghee, the Indian version of clarified butter, is traditionally made with cultured butter that's cooked [...:]

How To Make Grits(Sauteed Grits with Sausage and Poached Egg)

Over the weekend I was working on a recipe based on the traditional low country dish, shrimp and grits.  I'd found excellent grits from this company at my grocery store, I tapped my friend and former instructor Eve Felder for her recollections of growing up in Charleston, and I made shrimp and grits for Donna, [...:]

New Site Design!

The bright colors and bright minds I found in Ixtapa convinced me that I needed to brighten and clean up my blog.  The grays and and boxes were heavy and that combined with this winter that's already too long, made me hunger for a lot of clean white space.  So I asked my friend Joe [...:]

Why I Cook

Dicing Onion, photo by Donna

I posted yesterday on twitter that I began cooking because I was hungry but continued to cook because I loved to eat, and it got me thinking.  There are so many different reasons to cook, as a number of twitters pointed out.  Self-defense was a good one!  And with the state of our processed food, one that every cook can claim!  Can I encourage other bloggers to post about why you cook?  Spell it out.  Writing it down forces you to know what you think.  When I was n...

Photography 101: Lighting & Editing Decisions

This is the final version of this photograph of lemon confit I did recently. It was lit with strobe lights, camera on tripod with a long shutter speed (1.5 sec.) to get the evening light outside the window. It's been cropped and corrected in Photo Elements, which I will discuss next, but here is the lighting set-up:

This photo was taken with my point and shoot with the strobe modeling lights left on so that I could show how the lights effected the subject. When I took the photo, I turned off t...

Vanilla Sugar

Vanilla pods, packed in sugar, photo by Donna

James and I made popovers Sunday morning and sprinkled them with vanilla sugar, and this sugar made the popovers appealing in a surprisingly effective way.  Like fleur de sel on caramel.  It brought the flavors and textures together without overtly calling attention to itself.  When I'd posted a while ago in a recipe to discard the vanilla bean, I got what amounted to a scolding from Shuna, who found it appalling that one could so easily waste an o...

Creme Anglaise: Cream or No Cream?

David Lebovitz's chocolate cake with milk-only creme Anglaise, photo by Donna

"There's no cream in anglaise sauce," the beachcomber said.  He spoke with what sounded like genuine disdain.

"What do you mean there's no cream?" said I, waves lapping at my ankles, cold mojito in hand.

"There's no cream."

"How do you know?"

The man paused as if this were self-evident.  "Alice told me."

The man was David Lebovitz, for many years a chef at Chez Panisse.  (David just emailed to clarify: Alice did not say c...

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations In the Hudson Valley

Photo by Keith Farris/CIA

Tonight at 10 pm eastern, Travel Channel.

I haven't seen any of the footage from this and so am a little nervous about what was going on with the High Tea and that little boat ride. Original post here.

All comments welcome.

Available Light/Snow And Using Fill Cards

It snowed last night and at around noon today the sun was coming through a thin layer of clouds—perfect for shooting food with available light.

That's the view out the window and that's my setup for this photo. I did this just to talk about using available light, white fill cards and also I just wanted to take a photo of the cool pewter antique dish I found a couple of days ago.

These two photos were both shot at ISO 100, F5.6, a 6th of a sec. shutter speed on a tripod. The first is just...

Buttermilk Dinner Rolls: Making Quick Decisions

Today, this is my favorite shoot of these rolls. They were photographed last night before dinner, edited after dinner and delivered via email to Michael before I went to bed. I decided quickly and now I've changed my mind. I really want the table in the shot.

Another request to pull out the camera now because these babies are going on the table. In situations like this when you don't really have time to consider what will make the best shot; out of pan, in the pan, cutting board, pulled...