Friends hello, Last week, one of you (hi Lauri 👋) emailed me sharing a solution to the overdone-at-the-edges-but-needs-more-time-in-the-middle problem that arises when baking crackers, specifically these sourdough discard crackers: Crediting a Cooking Light cracker recipe from years ago, Lauri wrote: "After rolling, scoring, and seasoning, I’ve been sliding the parchment onto upside-down sheet pans and baking them at 325. It works fabulously!!" I tried the method immediately as I had a vat of...
10 days ago • 2 min read
Friends hello, Earlier this summer, I shared a recipe for this charred cherry tomato salsa. It was something I started making this time last year, when the local sun golds abounded everywhere, from my little co-op two blocks away, to all the farmers' markets, to friends' gardens. But by the time I got photos and a recipe together, sun gold season was nearly over, and everyone, I feared, had moved on to butternut squash, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. So I waited to share the recipe till...
17 days ago • 2 min read
As noted a few newsletters ago, recently my daughter and I dined at a local restaurant whose menu featured eggplant meatballs with Hazan tomato sauce and housemade ricotta. I ordered them, loved them, and began experimenting with various recipes in the days that followed. One method called for sautéing diced eggplant, skin and all, before puréing the flesh with seasonings and binders; another called for roasting the eggplant whole before doing the same. One method called for pan-frying the...
24 days ago • 1 min read
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is how to add X, Y, or Z ingredients to my loaf of sourdough bread. I have always added inclusions during the stretch and fold phase of the sourdough bread baking process, and as such, I have advised doing so upon being asked. Recently, I saw a recipe for an olive sourdough bread recipe that employs a different technique: lamination. Lamination calls for spreading the dough into a thin rectangle, scattering the inclusions over the top, then...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
This week I found myself at home with one child and a broken refrigerator. It felt like the universe was telling me to go out to eat, to go have dinner with my 15-year-old, to go anywhere that won't distract from a conversation with my eldest, who seems happier and happier to slip away to her room for hours on end. And so I did, first to a local sushi restaurant, Wasabi, which we know and love, and last night, to Innovo Kitchen, a place I don't know well at all but whose patio, this time of...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive on this brioche bun recipe is if it can be used to make hot dog buns. It sure can! is how I always respond, supplying a rough guideline on how to do so. And while these exchanges in the comments section have been sufficient over the years, I thought it was time to give a hot dog bun recipe its own space. Here it is, a no-knead recipe, the dough identical in makeup to these brioche buns, with the mixing process simplified even further. If...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
... perhaps we should brush up on our bagel-making? 🥯🥯🥯 Hi Friends, There is a bakery* in Bolton Landing that makes excellent bagels, chewy but light and perfectly seasoned. Every time we visit Lake George, we pick up a dozen and eat them all week, toasted, slathered with cream cheese, and topped with juicy, thick tomato slabs: It's heaven. This week I found myself missing those bagels, so I decided to make a batch. I hadn't made bagels in ages, and I had forgotten how quickly the dough comes...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Friends, hello! As you may know, we've spent the week at Lake George with Ben's family. The weather cooperated, our simple meal plan delivered, and the kids spent every second on the lake, swimming, fishing, wakeboarding. As planned, we grilled every night, until the last, yesterday, when the groceries ran out, forcing us to order pizza instead 🍕🍕 It came from the Hulett's Landing Marina, which has a lovely little shop with all the essentials from coffee and beer to pizza and dried pasta to...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Friends, hello! This weekend we head to Lake George for our annual trip with Ben's family. We are a small crowd of 12, but a crowd nonetheless, and over the years we have learned to keep the nightly mealtime formula very, very simple: something grilled + a salad + bread. Minimal prep, minimal clean up is the name of the game with minimal kitchen space and without all of the tools/gadgets we rely on regularly. This year, for the first time ever, I made a few things ahead of time — some loaves...
2 months ago • 2 min read