Chloe Cullen's Blog, page 11
February 5, 2024
Self-Taught Homework #11: You rediscover efficient mania & bake 4 desserts in 7 hours
In anticipation of disappearing from your regularly scheduled life for a bachelorette on Thursday, you bake cheesecake bars, apple turnovers, individual soufflés, two layers of chocolate cake in a seven-hour stretch on Tuesday.
Thank goodness you did. Your Sunday hangover after the six hours in the car dissolves your thoughts as soon as you formulate them. You lost your credit card, your glasses. Even taking a bath and narrowing down a dinner option drains your brain. Any time you have to bend t...
February 1, 2024
Self-Taught Lesson #11: What's the difference between baking soda and baking powder?
When I walked into this, I thought that this week would just be about desserts you stick in an oven. In contrast to yeasted breads, this would be about “things you bake with flour that don’t rise.”
I underestimated how much of a world there is to desserts.
This could be its own series, breaking down pastries from cupcakes from custards from cheesecakes.
January 29, 2024
January 28, 2024
Self-Taught Homework #10: I revolutionize my writing by describing food as food
Over the last ten weeks, you’ve written about food as a vehicle to discuss gift-giving, anxieties, patience, seasonal growth, and dead bodies.
The project builds week after week, none of it moving how you expected it. More questions accrue: have you ever properly cooked a chicken breast? how do you make paneer tikka masala? how do you roll sushi?
You’re not always conscious of technique, flavor profiles, or plating presentation in the real world. In fact, as much as you would like to think of yo...
January 25, 2024
Self-Taught Lesson #10: Wait, WHAT is a suckling pig?
Considering how much I became attached to shellfish, I’m hoping I don’t become existentially paralyzed by pork and their meat curators, pigs.
Because, shoot, pigs are really stinking cute!
So now that I’m already formally attached to pigs, I suppose it’s time to talk about the best ways to eat and cook your dead pig’s pieces.
For today’s research, Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique were invaluable foundational sources in addition to the links below from pork experts!
What is the history of...January 22, 2024
Dinner Party #10: Getting porky
Pork and beef are cows and pigs. Literally different animals. So when expanding the calendar, of course it made sense to give each their own week vs. combining them all in one!
Here are some recipes for inspiration to get into pork this week:
Gordon Ramsey’s Pork Chops
Food & Wine’s Pork Larb Lettuce Wrap
Serious Eats’s Carnitas tacos
Ina Garten’s Baked ham
January 21, 2024
Self-Taught Homework #9: I get clammy & scared of shellfish
Shellfish made you think of Plato’s ideas of forms.
You know, absolutely intolerable and pretentious. You can circle back to that.
Everything about a shellfish makes them extraterrestrial, aliens of an underwater realm that evolves their features to a world we as mammals can’t survive. While a cow, a pig, a chicken, even a lizard can embody signs of life and their eyes in lock with your own, shellfish are as alive as a houseplant.
Shellfish have existed in layers of your life since you were a ch...
January 18, 2024
Self-Taught Lesson #9: Does octopus count as a shellfish?
Shellfish is consists of two groups, crustaceans and mollusks.
A crustacean is an animal with an exoskeleton and the ability to traverse and live on land and underwater. They have legs, sometimes claws. Think of crabs, lobsters, crawfish, and shrimp.
A mollusk is an underwater-living organism with a hard, exterior shell and a soft pulp of meat inside. It pumps water in and out of its shell. Mollusks with two even shells that hinge together like a compact mirror, like cl...
Self-Taught Lesson #9: Shellfish
Shellfish is consists of two groups, crustaceans and mollusks.
A crustacean is an animal with an exoskeleton and the ability to traverse and live on land and underwater. They have legs, sometimes claws. Think of crabs, lobsters, crawfish, and shrimp.
A mollusk is an underwater-living organism with a hard, exterior shell and a soft pulp of meat inside. It pumps water in and out of its shell. Mollusks with two even shells that hinge together like a compact mirror, like cl...
January 16, 2024
Dinner Party #9: Feeling shellfish
As a second part to cooking seafood, we’re going to look at the different types of shellfish this week. (Those with allergies, proceed ahead, and I’ll catch you next week.)
Here are some recipes for inspiration!
