→ November 23, 2015
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Cookbook recommendations, 2015.

I rewrote this post from scratch last year, but since this year I only have a few titles to add, I’m retaining most of last year’s text underneath a top section outlining a few new books I like (and one I’m going to recommend sight-unseen because of who wrote it). So as with last year, I’ve grouped them into categories: The essentials, which any home cook regardless of experience level should own; the advanced books for expert home cooks; a few cookbooks from Top Chef-affiliated folks that I recommend; and bread-baking books, all by one author because I’ve never needed any others.

New for 2015

I was fortunate enough to get an advance copy of Hugh Acheson’s second cookbook, The Broad Fork: Recipes for the Wide World of Vegetables and Fruits, this spring, and it’s become a staple in my kitchen – one of the books I go to first when I am looking for a new idea for a vegetable dish, or when I bought something at the local farmstand despite lacking an actual plan for it. Acheson conceived the book in response to a neighbor’s question about what the hell to do with the kohlrabi he got in a CSA box, and the whole book works like that: You have acquired some Vegetable and need to know where to start. Organized by season and then by plant, with plenty of fruits and a few nuts mixed in for good measure, the book gives you recipes and ideas by showing off each subject in various preparations – raw, in salads, in soups, roasted, grilled, pureed, whatever. There are main course ideas in here as well, some with meat or fish, others vegetarian or vegan, and many of the multi-part dishes are easy to deconstruct, like the charred-onion vinaigrette in the cantaloupe/prosciutto recipe that made a fantastic steak sauce. Most of us need to eat more plants anyway; Acheson’s book helps make that a tastier goal.

The book I recommend but haven’t bought yet – I think Santa will be bringing me this one – is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s mammoth The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, named for Kenji’s acclaimed and indispensable column over at Serious Eats. (Speaking of which, I’ll be spatchcocking my turkey this year, per Kenji’s column, with a salt rub the night before.) He’s shared a bunch of the recipes and essays from the book on various sites already and did a great too-short interview with the Sporkful’s podcast as well. His science-based thinking is kind of like a Mythbusters approach to cooking: People say you should do X, but does X actually work? And what’s the science behind it? Alton Brown has always argued that cooking is the science of applying heat to food; Kenji takes that to a new extreme in his writing, and assuming I can lift the 960-page tome (there’s a Kindle edition too) I expect I’ll use it heavily.

Also new to my shelves this year: Top Chef contestant Korean-American chef Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles, which offers his fusion of Asian (mostly Korean but occasionally other cuisines like Filipino) flavors with classic Southern dishes, like his fried chicken, which he partially poaches first in a Filipino adobo vinegar mixture, or his seasonal kimchi recipes to replace the boring cole slaw on your table … Kevin Gillespie, the runner-up to the Bros Voltaggio on Top Chef’s epic season 6, put out a new book this spring called Pure Pork Awesomeness, which a reader was kind enough to send along; it’s all about the pig, with a lot of big, heavy dishes that are probably best suited to feeding a crowd … April Bloomfield’s A Girl and Her Pig has the duck fat-fried potato recipe that got my daughter hooked on the dish, as well as a good selection of staple sauces, dressings, and starches to go along with the numerous meat dishes, including some offal recipes, one of which (made from minced pig’s heart and liver, with bacon, onion, and breadcrumbs) can’t be named here.

Essentials

There are now two cookbooks that I insist any home cook have. One is the venerable Joy of Cooking, revised and altered through many editions (I own the 1997, now out of print), but still the go-to book for almost any common dish you’re likely to want to make. The recipes take a very easy-to-follow format, and the book assumes little to no experience or advanced technique. I still use it all the time, including their basic bread stuffing (dressing) recipe every Thanksgiving, altered just with the addition of a diced red bell pepper.

The other indisputable must-have cookbook is, of course, Ruhlman’s Twenty, by the best food writer going today, Michael Ruhlman. The book comprises twenty chapters, each on a technique or core ingredient, with a hundred recipes, lots of essays to explain key concepts or methods, and photographs to help you understand what you’re cooking. It’s my most-used cookbook, the first cookbook gift I give to anyone looking to start a collection, and an absolute pleasure to read and re-read. Favorite recipes include the seared pork tenderloin with butter and more butter; the cured salmon; the homemade mayonnaise (forget the stuff in the jar, it’s a pale imitation); the pulled pork; all three duck recipes; the scrambled eggs with goat cheese (using a modified double-boiler method, so you get something more like custard than rubber); and the homemade bacon. I’m trying his weekday coq au vin recipe tonight, too. Many of these recipes appear again in his more recent book, Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient, along with more egg basics and a lot of great dessert recipes; and Twenty itself builds on Ruhlman’s Ratio, which shows you master formulas for things like doughs and sauces so you can understand the fundamentals of each recipe and extend as you see fit.

I’ve long recommended Baking Illustrated as the perfect one-book kitchen reference for all things baked – cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and more. It’s full of standards, tested to ensure that they will work the first time. You’ll need a scale to get maximum use from the book. I use their pie crust recipe, their peach pie recipe, their snickerdoodles recipe (kids love it, but moms seem to love it even more…), and I really want to try their sticky toffee pudding recipe. The prose can be a little cloying, but I skip most of that and go right to the recipes because I know they’ll succeed the first time. That link will get you the original book from the secondary market; it has been rewritten from scratch and titled The Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book, but I can’t vouch for it as I haven’t seen the new text.

If I know someone already has Ruhlman’s Twenty, my next gift choice for them is Nigel Slater’s Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch, a book about vegetables but not strictly vegetarian. (There’s a lot of bacon here.) Each vegetable gets its own section, with explanations on how to grow it, how to choose it at the market, a half-dozen or more basic ways to cook it, and then a bunch of specific recipes, some of which are just a paragraph and some of which are a full page with glorious pictures accompanying them. The stuffed peppers with ground pork is a near-weekly occurrence in this house, and the warm pumpkin scone is the only good reason to buy and cook an actual pumpkin. I own but have barely cooked from his sequel on fruit, Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard.

You know, a lot of people will tell you go get Julia Child’s classic books on French cuisine, but I find the one I have (Mastering the Art) to be dated and maddeningly unspecific. Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom is a slimmer, much more useful book that focuses on the basics – her explanation of vinaigrettes is still the gold standard, and her gift for distilling recipes and techniques into simple little explanations shines here without the fuss of three-day recipes for coq au vin. Oh, that’s in here too, but she does it in two and a half hours.

Experts

The The Flavor Bible isn’t actually a cookbook, but a giant cross-referencing guide where each ingredient comes with a list of complementary ingredients or flavors, as selected by a wide range of chefs the authors interviewed to assemble the book. It’s the book you want to pull out when your neighbor gives you a few handfuls of kale or your local grocery store puts zucchini on sale and you don’t know what to do with them. Or maybe you’re just tired of making salmon the same way and need some fresh ideas. The book doesn’t tell you how to cook anything, just what else to put on the plate. Spoiler: Bacon and butter go with just about everything.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty is an outstanding vegetable-focused cookbook that uses no meat ingredients (but does use dairy and eggs), although Ottolenghi’s restaurant uses meats and he offers a few suggestions on pairing his recipes with meat dishes. The recipes here are longer and require a higher skill level than those in Tender, but they’re restaurant-quality in flavor and presentation, including a mushroom ragout that I love as a main course over pappardelle with a poached egg (or two) on top and my favorite recipe for preparing Belgian endives (a pinch of sugar goes a long way). As of this writing, the kindle edition is only $7.28, over 60% off the hardcover price.

Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery is is easily the best baking book I’ve ever seen, but unlike Baking Illustrated, the recipes are written for people who are more skilled and incredibly serious about baking. Ingredients are measured to the gram, and the recipes assume a full range of techniques. It has the best macaron recipe I’ve ever found – close second is I Love Macarons, suggested to me by Richard Blais’ pastry chef at the Spence, Andrea Litvin – and the Bouchon book also the homemade Oreo recipe I made for Halloween (but you need black cocoa and real white chocolate to do it right).

Bobby Flay has an absurd number of cookbooks out there, but the one I like is from his flagship restaurant Mesa Grill, which includes the signature items (including the blue and yellow cornbread) and a broad cross-section of dishes. There’s no instruction here at all, however, just a lot of recipes, many of which have an absurdly long list of ingredients.

For the really hardcore, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is an essential kitchen reference, full of explanations of the chemistry of cooking that will make you a smarter cook and help you troubleshoot many problems at the stove. I haven’t read it straight through – it’s 700-plus pages – but I’ll go to the index and pull out some wisdom as needed. It also explains why some people (coughmecough) never acquired the taste for strongly-flavored cheeses.

Top Chef Division

Richard Blais’ Try This at Home has become a staple in my kitchen both for about a half-dozen specific recipes in here that we love (his sweet potato gnocchi are now a Thanksgiving tradition for us; the lemon curd chicken is at least a twice-a-month dish around here and perfect for guests) and for the creativity it inspires. Blais has lots of asides on techniques and ingredients, and if you actually read the text instead of just blindly following the recipes, you’ll get a sense of the extensibility of the basic formulas within the book, even though he isn’t as explicit about it as Ruhlman is.

Hugh Acheson’s first book, A New Turn in the South, and Top Chef season one winner Harold Dieterle’s Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook have both recently entered my cookbook rotation as well. Acheson’s book reads the way he speaks – there’s a lightly sardonic aspect to much of his writing so that it comes off more like you’re hanging out with the guy, talking food, rather than taking instruction. His bacon-wrapped whole fish recipe is unbelievable, more for the powerful aromatics (winner, best use of fennel) than for the bacon itself. Dieterle’s book requires a lot of harder-to-find ingredients, but his side essays on specific ingredients run from the mundane to the esoteric and drop a ton of knowledge on how to choose and how to use. My particular struggle with both books is that they use a lot of seafood, with Dieterle’s including a ton of shellfish; my wife is allergic to shellfish, so I don’t even bring that into the house any more, which requires some substitutions and means there are some recipes I just have to set aside.

Bread

I’ve owned and given away or sold a lot of bread-baking books, because nothing has been able to beat the two masterworks by baker/instructor Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads. Reinhart’s books teach you how to make artisan or old-world breads using various starters, from overnight bigas to wild-yeast starters you can grow and culture on your countertop. If that seems like a little much, his Artisan Breads Every Day takes it down a notch for the novice baker, with a lot of the same recipes presented in a simpler manner, without so much emphasis on baker’s formulas.

And finally, while it’s not a cookbook, Anthony Bourdain’s first book, Kitchen Confidential, is just $3.99 right now for Kindle, and it’s a riot regardless of whether you like to cook.

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→ May 28, 2015
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Chicken cutlets (The grade 20 cook, part one).

My latest mock draft is up for Insiders, and I held a Klawchat this afternoon to discuss it. I also appeared on the Dbacks Insider podcast (direct link to mp3) with my friend and former colleague Steve Berthiaume to talk about the Dbacks’ options at the first pick.

A friend of mine confessed to me recently that he’s completely incompetent in the kitchen – a “(grade) 20 cook,” in his terms, and asked me for a suggestion on a book or even a few go-to recipes for someone with kids who wants to learn how to cook. I made a few suggestions from my cookbook recommendations post, but was thinking about the most basic, extensible meal I make that most kids would like. The answer kind of came from my own childhood, even though I’ve modified the recipe from the way my mom made them: chicken cutlets. Here’s my recipe, written and explained for someone who has as much experience as a cook as Craig Counsell and Dan Jennings had as managers.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are derided by most chefs, for good reason – they have no taste of their own (unless you’re buying heirloom or pasture-raised birds), and because the meat is so lean, it dries out very quickly. Most cooking methods do more damage than good, as the protection provided by the skin and bone is lost. You can marinate it in something strong (citrus works well, like orange-garlic-soy) and grill it, but you almost have to undercook it and let carryover finish. But chicken breast meat fries beautifully, especially if you break the breasts down into a more amenable shape.

Chicken cutlets are thinly sliced pieces of breast meat, ideally pounded slightly to give them even thickness. I season them, dip them in beaten egg, and then press them into panko bread crumbs before pan-frying them. They require no particular skill and no specialized equipment. You don’t even have to measure anything.

Most good supermarkets sell chicken breasts already sliced into cutlets, and any butcher should do that for you on request. If you have a good chef’s knife and a steady hand, you can buy boneless skinless breasts and cut them into cutlets yourself; it’s a horizontal cut, parallel to the cutting board, and therefore more dangerous than most knife cuts you’ll undertake. I typically get three cutlets from a half breast, two the length of the breast half and one smaller one sliced off the top. However you get your cutlets, you want to pound any thicker parts out so that each cutlet is as close as possible to a uniform thickness. I have a metal mallet for this, but a ceramic custard cup or even flat-bottomed mug or glass will work too (cover the meat with plastic wrap before pounding). If you buy whole breasts, however, make sure you pull off the tenderloins, the narrow pieces on the underside of the breasts. You can cook them as you would the cutlets, but you have to do it separately.

Season each cutlet liberally with salt (preferably coarse) and pepper. You can add other seasonings if you’d like; paprika works well, including smoked Spanish paprika, as does cumin. Michael Ruhlman has a similar recipe in his book Egg where he coats the cutlets with Dijon mustard before they hit the egg wash, but I haven’t tried this yet. Any dried spice will work well here because it will get to bloom when hitting the hot oil.

Now set up your assembly line. In a wide-bottomed bowl, beat two eggs until well combined, as if you were going to scramble them, adding a pinch of salt before you beat them. Take a dinner plate and spread a layer of panko bread crumbs over it – you can use other bread crumbs but panko gives a superior texture.

For the cooking vessel, I use a 12-inch cast-iron skillet; both iron and oil are poor conductors of heat but excellent insulators, so once hot, they’ll hold their heat well. You can use any skillet or saute pan that is deep enough to keep the oil from splashing or spilling over the sides. Pour about ½ inch of oil into the skillet – olive oil is the best for flavor, but anything would work, even shortening or duck fat or beef tallow if that’s how you roll although I admit I’ve never tried the last two – and heat it over medium to medium-high heat until you can see the surface of the oil shimmering and perhaps even catch a wisp of smoke. (It’s about 350 degrees F.)

Once the oil is at temperature, you’ll need to work quickly, so you want all of that setup ready before you turn on the stove. Take each cutlet, dip it in the egg wash, hold it up for a few seconds to let the excess drip back into the bowl, then press each side into the bread crumbs. Lay it gently in the pan – don’t let it drop unless you enjoy getting hot oil all over you. You should hear sizzling immediately; if you don’t, the oil isn’t hot enough. Fit no more than three cutlets in the pan at once, often stopping at two, because each cutlet you add drops the oil temperature, and crowding the pan will result in the chicken steaming rather than frying. If the oil is at the right temperature, the cutlets will require about two minutes per side; at 90 seconds, check by lifting up a corner with tongs or a spatula, flipping them (gently!) if the bread crumbs are a deep golden brown.

Tongs are ideal, but if you use a spatula, the safe way to flip anything in a saute pan or skillet is to use a fork or second spatula on the other (raw) side to hold it up against the first spatula. Just don’t confuse the utensils: Once something has touched raw chicken, it can’t touch anything that’s cooked.

When you remove the cooked cutlets from the skillet, you have two options. If you’re serving them immediately, move each cutlet to a plate lined with paper towels to drain off some of the excess oil, then serve. You can also hold them in a warm (200 F) oven on a sheet pan if you need to wait a half-hour or so before serving. They keep well as leftovers; reheat them in a 350 degree oven rather than the microwave to restore the crispness of the exterior. One serving suggestion of many: Top them with fresh mozzarella, basil leaves, and some crushed red pepper and serve them on a crusty baguette.

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→ March 11, 2015
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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?

Andrew Lawler’s brand-new book Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization doesn’t quite measure up to the bravado of its subtitle – it’s neither epic nor is it a saga – but it is full of fascinating anecdotes on the history and near-future of the bird that is the most important source of animal protein in the world.

Lawler’s story repeatedly takes us back to the modern domesticated chicken’s (Gallus gallus domesticus) ancestral roots in south and southeast Asia, where its distant relative, the red jungle fowl, still lives in remote areas but is under threat from deforestation and human predation. The story of its evolution – yep, I said it – into the tame, flavorless, fast-growing and productive egg-laying creatures we consume today is the strongest narrative thread in the book, as Lawler traces the bird’s move across land and sea, through several crazes of breeding and development, into an industrial revolution that have made chicken popular and cheap. Along the way, however, it’s lost most of its taste and been bred into a bird that suffers greatly during its short life, often unable to stand under the weight of its enormous breasts (stop snickering), as its musculoskeletal system doesn’t grow fast enough to support it by the time it’s shipped off for slaughter.

While the history of the bird was interesting, it’s Lawler’s notes on the present state of the chicken and the issues in the near future of poultry farming that formed the book’s most compelling passages. In a chapter that reminded me of Vice’s tremendous mini-documentary on foie gras, Lawler visits a traditional French chicken farm where the birds are raised as they were a century and a half ago, resulting in meat that’s much more flavorful and tender, but at a much higher cost. That ties into interwoven discussions (little in the book is linear) about animal rights and what might constitute cruelty to birds that appear to be much more intelligent than we typically assume; Lawler writes, “Chickens are excluded from US laws regulating humane treatment of animals raised as food, and there are no international regulations,” although he mentions that the EU bans battery cages and refuses to import US-grown poultry for health and safety reasons.

These digressions lead to the most horrifying aspect of the book – Lawler’s descriptions of the conditions of factory-farmed chicken, and how recent changes may not even be as positive as they seem on the surface. Dr. Janice Siegford at the Michigan State University’s Department of Animal Science says that her preliminary research indicates that “cage-free” may not be that much better for the birds than the old-style battery cages that (rightly) earned the ire of animal-rights activists. Cage-free birds are typically reared indoors, in giant aviaries that still keep the birds out of direct sunlight and away from their natural diet, all in the name of encouraging them to lay as many eggs as possible before they wear out after a year or so. Research into hen behavior in various settings seems to point to enhanced cages that grant more room to each bird while still giving them some of the privacy they seem to want while avoiding the violent behavior often exhibited by chickens in close quarters, even in the open environment of the aviary. (Irony alert: Michigan banned homeowners from raising chickens or any livestock in their yards. Gotta protect Big Egg, I guess.)

Lawler’s focus on telling the story leads to some unfortunate choices and mistakes along the way. He gives physical descriptions of the various experts, farmers, and executives he meets – I can’t think of anything less relevant to this story than a description of a professor’s haircut – but then refers to an unnamed paper by “two academics.” He botches an amusing tangent on the myth of the basilisk, which was supposedly born from an egg laid by a rooster (not a biological impossibility, as he later explains), by placing the creature’s appearance in the wrong Harry Potter book, and later misplaces Mali in sub-Saharan Africa when more than half the country is within that desert. The details themselves are unimportant to the whole narrative, but it’s a distraction that, when I’m reading any non-fiction book, makes me worry there are other mistakes I won’t catch.

In all fairness to Lawler, I wonder to what extent a narrative was pushed on him by his editors, as these food-history books don’t typically lend themselves well to that kind of structure; Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt were both very well-received by critics and food-industry folk, but neither has anything resembling a narrative. Dan Koeppel’s Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World has an actual narrative – the fight between man and fungus – but he had the benefit of working with one of the few foodstuffs that has no genetic diversity whatsoever. Trevor Corson’s The Story of Sushi is one of the best food books I’ve ever read, but he wove a separate narrative of a session at a sushi-chef school around his story, allowing him to tie together chapters on different fish or sushi-making traditions that otherwise would have been separate essays connected only by theme. Lawler’s book stands up much better in that light, as a series of diverse commentaries and histories connected by a common subject without a unifying thread. It probably doesn’t need one, given how important the chicken and its eggs are to feeding the world, and if anything Lawler could probably write a Pollan-esque sequel expanding on the last few chapters on the future of poultry farming, explaining where that part of the industry needs to go to remain productive while improving the welfare of the birds themselves.

Next up: Marlene Zuk’s Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live.

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→ February 27, 2015
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Chicken with bitter orange marmalade.

This recipe happened largely because of Paddington.

I’ve been reading my daughter one chapter of Paddington a night for the past few weeks – we’re about to start book four, Paddington At Large – and she kept asking about marmalade, since she’d never had any. Of course, I read a book set in London that involves marmalade and I think true English marmalade, which is made with bitter oranges (like Sevilles), so I pick up a few blood oranges (also bitter, but I think less so than Sevilles) and make some gorgeous but definitely bitter orange marmalade, which my daughter, of course, does not like. So now I have nearly two pints of the stuff and no idea what to do with it.

My first thought was duck breasts, but I’m the only one in the house who’d eat those, but I know orange and chicken go quite well together too, so I bought a whole broiler-fryer (which usually means a bird between three and five pounds; this one was about four and a half) and decided to somehow put the orange marmalade and the bird together. I took some inspiration from Richard Blais’ lemon curd chicken recipe (from Try This at Home) and an old Jamie Oliver recipe that put a compound butter with herbs and lemon zest under the chicken skin and made a compound butter with orange marmalade.

This recipe is a little rougher than most of mine, for which I apologize but, for better or worse, this is how I cook these days. You may choose to brine the chicken first, a process that I find helps the white meat a bit but does nothing for the dark meat; pulling the chicken at or before the breasts reach 160 degrees will still result in moist white meat without requiring that extra step.

1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
¾ cup to 1 cup bitter orange marmalade
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp ground coriander
1 tsp kosher salt or more as needed
1 chicken, 3-5 pounds, without which this recipe would not make much sense

1. Make the compound butter: Combine the butter, marmalade, thyme, pepper, and coriander in a food processor until well-mixed. If the mixture is too soft, chill briefly in the refrigerator; you want it to be soft enough to rub over the chicken, but not pourable.

2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Clean the bird and pat dry with paper towels. Loosen the skin gently with your hands, down to the joints that connect the thighs to the drumsticks.

3. Season the bird liberally inside and out with salt. No salt = no taste.

4. Place the chicken in a roasting pan. Rub the compound butter all over the chicken, mostly under the skin and over the breast and thigh meat, saving about a fourth to a third of the butter to rub over the outside. If you get any butter on the sides of the pan, which I do every single time I roast a whole chicken and put butter or lemon curd in it, wipe it off with a damp paper towel, unless you enjoy scrubbing with steel wool. Pour a cup of water in the bottom of the pan to avoid smoke from the drippings. You can also stuff an aromatic like half an onion or lemon in the cavity of the bird.

5. Roast the chicken for 30 minutes at 450 degrees. Turn the heat down to 325 and continue roasting until the breast meat measures 158-160 degrees. You’ll get a few degrees of carryover when you pull the bird from the oven. If the bottom of the pan becomes dry at any point during the roasting, add a little more water – you don’t want that stuff to burn because it’s the foundation for a good, quick gravy.

6. Optional: If you want to make a gravy or sauce, deglaze the pan with white wine or brandy, then boost it with some chicken stock and simmer hard until reduced by about half. You can thicken this with any starch you like; I love tapioca starch because it’s clean on the palate and easy to integrate. For any starch but flour, just dissolve 1 tsp or so in 2 tsp of water, then whisk into the hot liquid. Flour is best integrated with fat, so knead it into some softened butter and whisk it in. Add lemon juice, 1-2 tsp, and salt or pepper to taste.

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→ December 1, 2014
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My 2014 gift guide for cooks.

My analysis of the Mariners’ deal with Nelson Cruz is up for Insiders.

I’ve seen a few “Christmas gift guides for the cooks in your life!” go by already this fall, but most of them are like this one from Grub Street, with recommendations for things that no one could possibly need – a “rosemary stripper” (I have two of those; I call them “hands”); a “banana slicer” (use your paring knife, genius); a $140 toaster (makes toast); and a $1600 set of Thomas Keller-branded pans, which, unless he forged them personally out of pure adamantium, are a colossal fucking waste of money. These are not gifts to by the cook in your life; these are gifts to buy the person in your life who pretends to cook but really just likes playing with toys. Toys don’t make you a better chef; they just make you a less socially responsible one.

I do have a few pricier toys in my kitchen, but aside from one, they’re all highly functional, at the middle to low end of the price range for their jobs, and built to last a long time. I’ve had my chef’s knife for over a decade, my food processor for 17 years (new bowl but original motor), my Dutch oven for about eight years, and just replaced my 18-year-old stand mixer when we moved last June. You are free to call me cheap, but I think I’m just prudent. I’ll spend money in the kitchen if it gets me something I need. I will not spend money to get a famous name, a fancy design, or a paperweight to live at the back of a gadget drawer until we move again. If I can make do with something I already have in the house – binder clips, a (clean) putty knife, a (clean) paintbrush – I’ll gladly do that instead. I’d rather be cheap when it doesn’t matter and spend the money when half price means a quarter of the value.

Therefore, what I recommend here – for your cheffy friends or for yourself – is largely what I own and use. If what I own isn’t available, or isn’t good value for the price, I recommend something else. I am also willing to answer any and all questions about these or other suggestions; if I include it here, that’s an endorsement that it’ll be money well spent. I’ve already posted my cookbook recommendations in a separate entry.

The most important tool for any cook is a good chef’s knife, and I love my Henckels 8″ chef’s knife, the “four-star” model (which just refers to the handle style). It’s a workhorse, has only needed professional sharpening once, and is a comfortable grip and weight for my rather small hands. However, it’s $100, and I doubt it’s worth the premium over the $30 Victorinox 8″ chef’s knife, which America’s Test Kitchen has long recommended and, therefore, so have I.

The basic knives any home cook must have are a chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a bread (serrated) knife. The bread knife is good for more than just slicing bread – serrated blades are safer for slicing tomatoes, and they’re excellent for chopping chocolate and other hard foods. I have another Henckels four-star model, also eight inches, but the same blade is available with a different handle for just $9. You might look at a 10” blade if you get a lot of large, artisanal loaves. Any strong paring knife will do, such as this OXO 3.5″ paring knife for $7. With a modicum of knife skills, you can tweak and hull strawberries with one of these without any risk to your fingers or waste of fruit. It’s also good for cutting citrus supremes, slicing apples and pears, pitting olives and cherries, and other fine-motor-skills work.

I do have two other knives I use frequently, but they’re not essential for most cooks. One is the santoku, a very sharp knife with a thin edge but wide body that’s ideal for slicing vegetables and hard fruits; I recommend a 7” blade, which you can get in this two-santoku Henckels set for $21 and just … I don’t know, regift the 5” version or something, because I can’t see any use for it. I also own this exact Henckels boning knife, which is ideal for breaking down a whole chicken – it’s substantially cheaper to buy a whole chicken (sometimes called a broiler-fryer, usually 3-5 pounds total weight) and cut it into parts, and you get the bones to make stock – or for deboning other cuts of meat like short ribs. Some folks recommend a flexible blade instead, but I have never used that kind so I can’t give an opinion. I do not own a home sharpener.

My pots and pans aren’t a single set any more; I have some remnants from an All-Clad anodized aluminum set I got with rewards points in 2001, but have swapped out certain pieces to get better nonstick (coated) skillets. What you really should get for your loved one (you may include yourself in that category) is a a 12″ Lodge cast-iron skillet, an absolute workhorse that can handle about 90% of what I need from a skillet or a saute pan. I still use a nonstick skillet for egg dishes, and a saucier (sadly one that’s no longer made) for sauces or custards, but the Lodge skillet is past a decade old and just keeps getting better. The work of seasoning them is nowhere near as arduous as you’ve heard.

If you want to splurge on something, get an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, great for soups, stews, braises, deep-frying, jam-making, and caramelizing huge batches of onions. Cast-iron doesn’t distribute heat well, but it holds heat for a long time. These pots are heavy, but I use mine for every saucepan duty that doesn’t involve boiling water or cooking grains on their own. They go stove to oven (as do the skillets) and can take the hours of low heating required for a proper braise. I own a Le Creuset that I got on sale at an outlet store because the color was discontinued; if you’re not quite that fortunate, try the 7.8 quart Lodge model for $85.


                           Isn’t she lovely?

I don’t own a proper mandolin slicer, but I do pretty well with a handheld mandolin for about $20 that works great for things like root-vegetable chips or thinly slicing onions. I love this digital instant-read thermometer, which at $10 is cheap enough that I don’t feel bad when inevitably I drop it into something and ruin it. (I’ve only done that once.) Amazon tells me that I bought my Microplane classic grater in November of 2003, and I’ve had their coarse grater for almost that long. The former is great for zesting citrus fruits or grating nutmeg; the latter is ideal for creating a snowfall of hard cheese over a pasta dish. In that same 2003 order, I bought my first Silpat silicone baking mat; I now own two and won’t bake cookies without them.

I own two scales – a chef I’m friends with on Twitter made fun of me for this – one, this American Weigh pocket scale for weights up to about 2 kg, which is ideal for precise measurements like grams of coffee (more on that in a moment), and a larger scale that’s long discontinued. This $13 Ozeri scale looks like a more than adequate replacement, measuring up to 12 kg; I rarely need to measure more than about two pounds of anything, maybe a little more for some large-batch baking but that’s about it. You need at least one good scale if you’re serious about baking, though; the best bread and pastry recipes all use grams, not cups or liters. I’ve also done horrible things to this digital oil and candy thermometer over the ten years or so that I’ve had it, including making forty or more batches of jam, dozens of batches of macarons, and engaging in numerous deep-frying experiments, and it still rocks. You absolutely must have one of these to make caramel, any kind of jam or preserves, or true buttercream frosting.

Other things I always appreciate getting or often end up buying for myself: Wooden spatulas (not spoons), silicone spatulas, good (not decorative) metal measuring spoons, Pyrex or similar measuring cups for liquids (never measure liquids in a plastic cup designed for measuring solids).

Now, for the expensive stuff:
* I believe this Cuisinart classic 7-Cup food processor is what I own; we got ours in 1996, and in all that time I’ve just had to replace the plastic bowl, which cracked during a move. At $100, it is an essential, at least in my mind; it makes so many things easier, from pie doughs and biscuits to pesto and hummus and nut butters and mayonnaise (although I do that by hand because I’m a wacko) … and the pumpkin pie I make every Thanksgiving.

* I have this Vitamix 1782 TurboBlend “food preparing machine” (it’s a blender, stupid), and it’s amazing. I can make smooth vegetable soups with it, no cream required; don’t toss those broccoli stalks, just peel, quarter, and roast them, then blend them with some vegetable stock and season to taste, maybe with some basil oil and toasted pumpkin seeds on top. It’s nearly $400, however, too much if you’re just making milkshakes and smoothies (and there is nothing wrong with just making milkshakes and smoothies). You’ll probably be fine with just a basic blender and the food processor.

* I have the 5-quart KitchenAid stand mixer, which is down to $229 right now after a $50 rebate. I kind of wish I had the next model up, mostly for bread-baking, which is still a bit of a chore for this model, but it’s great for everything else – mixing up cookie dough, brownie batter, quick breads, whipped cream, and Italian meringues (for macarons). The pasta-maker attachment is overpriced, but it does the job, and the grinder attachment has been good for me in a handful of uses, especially for turning stale bread into bread crumbs.

* Coffee is my big kitchen weakness, at least when it comes to spending money; I’m fortunate to have a few friends in the industry (whom I met through social media) who work for direct-trade roasters and have tipped me off to good sources of coffee and helped me pay for the gear I own, which is wonderful but expensive. The Baratza Virtuoso burr grinder is the least expensive grinder of its kind and caliber; when my first one had an issue with the motor, I sent a quick video of it jamming to Baratza and had a new machine within two weeks. I do make pour-over coffee at home using this 8 ceramic dripper, but my preference is espresso, for which I use a Rancilio Silvia machine that is a wonder. The boiler is huge, so it bounces back quickly between shots and you can heat up the steam wand before your shots go cold. If you get your ratios right (for me it’s 17.5 to 19 grams per double shot, depending on the bean and roast), you’ll get great crema, 32-35 grams of output in 25-30 seconds, with almost no bad pulls. I use it every morning and I miss it when I travel.

I’m also a big fan and customer of Penzey’s, a chain of spice stores that also does a brisk mail-order business. They offer gift boxes and a la carte purchases; I buy nearly all my bulk spices from them as well as vanilla beans and Dutch-processed cocoa powder. Buy a box of bay leaves and a jar of whole nutmeg seeds and the recipient will have reason to remember your gift for years to come.

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→ November 25, 2014
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Cookbook recommendations, 2014.

I can never decide whether to copy and update last year’s post or to rewrite it from scratch, but this year chose the latter course of action to try to reflect how I’m cooking and using cookbooks right now in my (brand-new!) kitchen. I’ve grouped them into categories: The essentials, which any home cook regardless of experience level should own; the advanced books for expert home cooks; a few cookbooks from Top Chef-affiliated folks that I recommend; and bread-baking books, all by one author because I’ve never needed any others.

Essentials

There are now two cookbooks that I insist any home cook have. One is the venerable Joy of Cooking, revised and altered through many editions (I own the 1997, now out of print), but still the go-to book for almost any common dish you’re likely to want to make. The recipes take a very easy-to-follow format, and the book assumes little to no experience or advanced technique. I still use it all the time, including their basic bread stuffing (dressing) recipe every Thanksgiving, altered just with the addition of a diced red bell pepper.

The other indisputable must-have cookbook is, of course, Ruhlman’s Twenty, by the best food writer going today, Michael Ruhlman. The book comprises twenty chapters, each on a technique or core ingredient, with a hundred recipes, lots of essays to explain key concepts or methods, and photographs to help you understand what you’re cooking. It’s my most-used cookbook, the first cookbook gift I give to anyone looking to start a collection, and an absolute pleasure to read and re-read. Favorite recipes include the seared pork tenderloin with butter and more butter; the cured salmon; the homemade mayonnaise (forget the stuff in the jar, it’s a pale imitation); the pulled pork; all three duck recipes; the scrambled eggs with goat cheese (using a modified double-boiler method, so you get something more like custard than rubber); and the homemade bacon. I’m trying his weekday coq au vin recipe tonight, too. Many of these recipes appear again in his more recent book, Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient, along with more egg basics and a lot of great dessert recipes; and Twenty itself builds on Ruhlman’s Ratio, which shows you master formulas for things like doughs and sauces so you can understand the fundamentals of each recipe and extend as you see fit.

Baking Illustrated is the perfect one-book kitchen reference for all things baked – cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and more. It’s full of standards, tested to ensure that they will work the first time. You’ll need a scale to get maximum use from the book. I use their pie crust recipe, their peach pie recipe, their snickerdoodles recipe (kids love it, but moms seem to love it even more…), and I really want to try their sticky toffee pudding recipe. The prose can be a little cloying, but I skip most of that and go right to the recipes because I know they’ll succeed the first time.

If I know someone already has Ruhlman’s Twenty, my next gift choice for them is Nigel Slater’s Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch, a book about vegetables but not strictly vegetarian. (There’s a lot of bacon here.) Each vegetable gets its own section, with explanations on how to grow it, how to choose it at the market, a half-dozen or more basic ways to cook it, and then a bunch of specific recipes, some of which are just a paragraph and some of which are a full page with glorious pictures accompanying them. The stuffed peppers with ground pork is a near-weekly occurrence in this house, and the warm pumpkin scone is the only good reason to buy and cook an actual pumpkin. I own but have yet to cook from his sequel on fruit, Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard.

You know, a lot of people will tell you go get Julia Child’s classic books on French cuisine, but I find the one I have (Mastering the Art) to be dated and maddeningly unspecific in its directions. Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom is a slimmer, much more useful book that focuses on the basics – her explanation of vinaigrettes is still the gold standard, and her gift for distilling recipes and techniques into simple little explanations shines here without the fuss of three-day recipes for coq au vin. Oh, that’s in here too, but she does it in two and a half hours.

Experts

The Flavor Bible isn’t actually a cookbook, but a giant cross-referencing guide where each ingredient comes with a list of complementary ingredients or flavors, as selected by a wide range of chefs the authors interviewed to assemble the book. It’s the book you want to pull out when your neighbor gives you a few handfuls of kale or your local grocery store puts zucchini on sale and you don’t know what to do with them. Or maybe you’re just tired of making salmon the same way and need some fresh ideas. The book doesn’t tell you how to cook anything, just what else to put on the plate. Spoiler: Bacon and butter go with just about everything. I gave a lot more detail on this book in last year’s guide.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty is an outstanding vegetable-focused cookbook that uses no meat ingredients (but does use dairy and eggs), although Ottolenghi’s restaurant uses meats and he offers a few suggestions on pairing his recipes with meat dishes. The recipes here are longer and require a higher skill level than those in Tender, but they’re restaurant-quality in flavor and presentation, including a mushroom ragout that I love as a main course over pappardelle with a poached egg (or two) on top and my favorite recipe for preparing Belgian endives (a pinch of sugar goes a long way). As of this writing, the kindle edition is only $2.99, over 90% off the hardcover price.

Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery is is easily the best baking book I’ve ever seen, but unlike Baking Illustrated, the recipes are written for people who are more skilled and incredibly serious about baking. Ingredients are measured to the gram, and the recipes assume a full range of techniques. It has the best macaron recipe I’ve ever found – close second is I Love Macarons, suggested to me by Richard Blais’ pastry chef at the Spence, Andrea Litvin – and has the homemade Oreo recipe I made for Halloween (but you need black cocoa and real white chocolate to do it right).

Bobby Flay has an absurd number of cookbooks out there, but the one I like is from his flagship restaurant Mesa Grill, which includes the signature items (including the blue and yellow cornbread) and a broad cross-section of dishes. There’s no instruction here at all, however, just a lot of recipes, many of which have an absurdly long list of ingredients.

For the really hardcore, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is an essential kitchen reference, full of explanations of the chemistry of cooking that will make you a smarter cook and help you troubleshoot many problems at the stove. I haven’t read it straight through – it’s 700-plus pages – but I’ll go to the index and pull out some wisdom as needed. It also explains why some people (coughmecough) never acquired the taste for strongly-flavored cheeses.

Top Chef Division

Richard Blais’ Try This at Home has become a staple in my kitchen both for about a half-dozen specific recipes in here that we love (his sweet potato gnocchi are now a Thanksgiving tradition for us; the lemon curd chicken is at least a twice-a-month dish around here and perfect for guests) and for the creativity it inspires. Blais has lots of asides on techniques and ingredients, and if you actually read the text instead of just blindly following the recipes, you’ll get a sense of the extensibility of the basic formulas within the book, even though he isn’t as explicit about it as Ruhlman is.

Top Chef judge Hugh Acheson’s A New Turn in the South and season one winner Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook have both recently entered my cookbook rotation as well. Acheson’s book reads the way he speaks – there’s a lightly sardonic aspect to much of his writing so that it comes off more like you’re hanging out with the guy, talking food, rather than taking instruction. His bacon-wrapped whole fish recipe is unbelievable, more for the powerful aromatics (winner, best use of fennel) than for the bacon itself. Dieterle’s book requires a lot of harder-to-find ingredients, but his side essays on specific ingredients run from the mundane to the esoteric and drop a ton of knowledge on how to choose and how to use. My particular struggle with both books is that they use a lot of seafood, with Dieterle’s including a ton of shellfish; my wife is allergic to shellfish, so I don’t even bring that into the house any more, which requires some substitutions and means there are some recipes I just have to set aside.

I’ll mention here that several readers have suggested Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles to me as one of the best of the many Top Chef contestant books out there, but I do not currently own it.

Bread

I’ve owned and given away or sold a lot of bread-baking books, because nothing has been able to beat the two masterworks by baker/instructor Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads. Reinhart’s books teach you how to make artisan or old-world breads using various starters, from overnight bigas to wild-yeast starters you can grow and culture on your countertop. If that seems like a little much, his Artisan Breads Every Day takes it down a notch for the novice baker, with a lot of the same recipes presented in a simpler manner, without so much emphasis on baker’s formulas. His pizza dough recipes are fantastic, and unlike a lot of the crap I’ve found online or in other books, you don’t need any sugar to make them.

And finally, while it’s not a cookbook, Anthony Bourdain’s first book, Kitchen Confidential, is just $2.99 right now for Kindle, and it’s a riot regardless of whether you like to cook.

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→ October 28, 2014
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Ruhlman’s Egg.

Chris Crawford and I posted a (too-early) ranking of the top 30 prospects for the 2015 MLB draft, plus some honorable mentions. This isn’t a mock draft or projection, which I won’t do until May of next year. It’s just a ranking. And it’s too early to get all twitchy about it. But please read it anyway.

When Michael Ruhlman publishes a cookbook of any sort, I pay attention. My favorite food writer not only writes beautifully but approaches cooking methodically, thinking in ratios and master formulas, approaching food from standpoint of science. If, like me, you were reared in the kitchen on the shows of Alton Brown, you need to read the works of Michael Ruhlman as the next step in your culinary education.

Ruhlman’s Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient came out earlier this year, and it is devoted to that one indispensable ingredient, the one item in your fridge that really ties the whole room together. He approaches the egg from every angle, all the different ways you can prepare it on its own or use it as a building block in other recipes. That means you get instructions for all of the basic egg dishes – fried, poached, scrambled, hard- and soft-boiled, shirred, baked, and more. Ruhlman’s poaching technique is one I haven’t seen before, and it is easier to anything I’ve tried before, with better results.

The real value in the book, though, is the long list of techniques and recipes that use the egg as a building block. You’ve got the ones you’d expect – the hollaindaise (traditional and blender), the mayonnaise, the meringue, the custards – but also a huge series of dishes, especially cakes and desserts, that all rely on the egg for structure, emulsification, leavening, or cohesion. So while the book is about the egg, both how it works and how to use it, you’re getting a slew of useful recipes to put them to immediate use.

I’ve tried a handful of recipes already, with the typical high rate of success I’ve had from every Ruhlman cookbook I own. I posted a photo the other day of the corn-red pepper fritters I made from this book, a recipe that depends on the proteins in the egg to hold the batter together. Ruhlman’s a big fan of frying – responsibly, of course, working fast at a high temperature and getting the goods out before all the moisture is gone and they become sponges for oil. These fritters use a small amount of flour…

The dipping sauce is a chipotle-lime mayonnaise that you can make with store-bought mayo or with Ruhlman’s very simple homemade mayo recipe, which takes two minutes of whisking and will change everything you ever thought about mayonnaise. (I hate the stuff in the jar, but homemade is a sauce.) It’s also a great base for a long list of spreads or dips, many of which Ruhlman suggests.

The biggest hit in the house was the rum-soaked cherry and almond bread, even though I had a few small issues with the execution. You soak dried sour cherries in rum (!), then mix the dry ingredients except the baking powder with the wet and let it sit overnight. Then you add the baking powder and the cherries, drained and dusted with flour, and top the loaf with a streusel of sugar, butter, and a mix of flour and almond meal. The flavors are great, with cherry and almond a natural combination, but despite the flouring the cherries sank to the bottom of the loaf, and the streusel didn’t brown properly – in fact, some of the batter puffed up through it and pushed it out of the pan. We still loved the taste and the quick-bread texture with the crisp crust; next time I’ll try it without the overnight rest.

A close second: the potato-onion frittata, easily the best frittata I’ve ever made and probably the best I’ve ever eaten. The technique is simple, but Ruhlman’s instructions are precise, and the contrasting textures between the potato and egg made it something between a frittata and a Spanish tortilla. It’s a highly extensible recipe – swap out the vegetables, the cheese (his recipe called for cheddar, but I used gruyère), the herbs, whatever. If you have six eggs and a good skillet, you can figure the rest out.

Ruhlman also includes a duck hash recipe that calls for a poached duck egg, a delicacy I have not yet spotted at any farmer’s market here or at Whole Foods. The hash itself is glorious – chopped duck confit (or braised duck legs if you prefer) with potatoes and onions and some herbs to finish it. It’s also extensible; hashes are, by nature, a way to use what’s left over in the fridge.

What I have not yet gotten to try from Egg is the lengthy list of desserts, some rather decadent. You’ve got your profiteroles and your brownies, of course, but you’ve also got chocolate/mocha cake, coconut cream cake, mango-lime semifreddo, bourbon brioche bread pudding, île flottante, and chocolate espresso Kahlua souffle. There’s also yet another recipe for homemade marshmallows, this one using honey rather than liquid glucose, which I assume is to keep the sugar syrup from crystallizing while you cook it to the soft-crack stage. So, needless to say, I still have some work to do.

If you don’t have Ruhlman’s Twenty, I’d suggest you get that before you pick up Egg, but really you should own both and Ruhlman’s Ratio too.

As a side note, amazon (to whom I always link, as their affiliate program provides nearly all the income I earn from this site, because I don’t and won’t belong to any ad services) is in a lengthy dispute with Ruhlman’s publisher, Little Brown/Hachette, over ebook pricing. You can buy the Kindle edition for $15, but if you want an indie bookstore option, you can buy Egg through that link, which uses a pretty new independent bookstore affiliate program I’m trying out. I’m still pretty pro-amazon in general, but if you who want to go a different route for ethical reasons, here’s an option.

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→ October 24, 2014
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Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook.

My weekly Klawchat transcript is up. I have filed a 2015 draft top 30 ranking, but it’s not up yet.

Harold Dieterle is probably familiar to most of you as the winner of the first season of Top Chef back in 2005, when he was just 28 years old. (I suddenly feel lazy and underachieving.) He’s also a rabid baseball fan, and a fellow Long Islander, so we have followed each other on Twitter for some time and talked both sports and food. He was kind enough to send me a copy of his first cookbook, Harold Dieterle’s Kitchen Notebook, which just came out earlier this month.

The volume is really two books in one: a standard cookbook of recipes, most of which are on the intermediate to expert level, due to techniques or harder-to-obtain ingredients (I’d love to try goat neck, but I’m not even sure where to start to ask for it); and a reference work that really does look like a chef’s “notebook,” which thoughts on how to pick out or use various ingredients from the common to the exotic (I don’t think I’ve ever seen another cookbook discuss huckleberries), and brief sketches of dishes involving each one. Given the size of my collection and the number of recipes here that involve shellfish – to which my wife is allergic – I’ve found the notebook part much more valuable and interesting than the recipes.

I did try a few recipes as I do for any cookbook I review, with mixed results. The pancetta-wrapped pork tenderloin was a hit – how could it not be? – as was the side salad of shaved Asian pear and endive with a simple lemon juice/EVOO vinaigrette. My daughter, no fan of salads in general or bitter vegetables in particular, loved it, and has since consumed an Asian pear a day (not a cheap habit, but at least it’s a healthful snack). Getting the pancetta thin enough to wrap the pork was difficult, and I needed more than the 2 ounces of pancetta per tenderloin to get good coverage. The recipe’s rutabaga puree didn’t work out well for me; I had no problem cooking the root vegetable, but needed half to three-quarters of the dairy called for to get the right texture. Some of that is on me for not thinking about adding a little liquid at a time, and some is on the book for measuring everything in volume but not weight. (I’m an absolute stickler on this subject now; I have two scales in my kitchen and I am damn sure going to use them.)

His asparagus gnudi (a hand-shaped pasta made with ricotta in the dough) were outstanding, although anything that dairy-heavy is tricky for my lactose-hating metabolic system … but he also includes a recipe for making your own ricotta, which might allow me to make a form less antagonistic to my stomach, or even to make something fun like goat’s milk ricotta. The recipe called for rolling out the gnudi to 1 1/2 inches thick, but I believe that’s a typo and should be 3/4” instead. The best part of the gnudi recipe was the Parmiggiano-Reggiano broth, made with rinds you can save from the cheese you use or you can buy (for too much money, really) at any decent supermarket or cheese chop); I strained out what was left and had it the next day as a starter soup with some grilled bread. His lemon gnocchi, a side recipe to be served with swordfish confit, worked well as long as I cooked the potato a lot longer than the time the recipe called for – it has you roasting it in the skin, but I might cube and steam it instead to get there faster, even though that preserves more moisture.

I have yet to tackle the dessert section – I need company for that kind of undertaking – but there’s a warm flourless chocolate and peanut butter soufflé cake with coffee crème Anglaise in here, and five varieties of scratch doughnuts, including vanilla, nutella, and foie gras mousse-filled versions.

The notebook pages live throughout the book, next to a recipe that calls for a particular ingredient or technique, at which point Dieterle goes on what reads like a length digression about, say, huckleberries, farro, saffron, goat cheese, sausage (with recipes for five different kinds), or duck fat. It’s like downloading from a chef’s brain – as if you sent in a query that said “tell me what I can do with watermelon” and you get back five recipes, some obvious, some less so (watermelon and jícama chimichurri). He tells you how to make that Parmiggiano broth and four things to do with it. He tells you how to candy, brandy, or pickle cherries. Sunchokes, a vegetable I love and yet never think of cooking, get an entry that describes them and gives four suggestions. He even follows the S’mores recipe with instructions for making your own marshmallows (although it calls for “liquid glucose,” so I’m on the prowl for that too).

The recipes do require a higher skill level than most other cookbooks aimed at the mass market, and you’ve got to be near a major city or a great set of farmers to find all of the ingredients. If you have some experience in the kitchen, however, there’s nothing in here that I found out of reach, and coming up with substitutions or just doing part of one recipe and part of another isn’t hard. It’s an invaluable resource as a reference and idea generator, the way I feel about The Flavor Bible (a book without recipes, listing what ingredients pair well with what other ingredients), another book I turn to repeatedly when I want inspiration more than I want instruction. So if you need me, I’ll be at Whole Foods looking for sunchokes.

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→ November 29, 2013
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Thanksgiving, 2013.

I hope all my U.S. readers had a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I have a new piece up today for Insiders covering the Nolasco and Haren signings as well as the Pirates/Padres swap of minor leaguers.

I also want to take a moment to thank all of you who read my work here or on ESPN.com. Your readership and loyalty make it possible for me to do something I love for a living, and write about all this other fun stuff on the side here at the dish. It’s an honor to write for you and I feel very fortunate to be able to do it.

My tweets this week describing my daily prep work leading up to Thursday (tagged frivolously with #gameplan) had a small point, that doing all of that stuff ahead of time could make the holiday itself a lot easier. I’ve tried to do the whole thing on Thursday, or just on Wednesday evening and Thursday, and it’s miserable. This year, I even slept in Thursday morning, since we weren’t eating the main meal till 5 pm. That alone made a huge difference, but it wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t done so much cooking and prep work in advance.

The final menu for yesterday:

* Sweet potato gnocchi with kale and brown butter (recipe from Richard Blais’ Try This at Home)

* Turkey two ways: Roast turkey breast and turkey leg confit

* Gravy: brown turkey stock reduced by 75% plus drippings from pan deglazed with white wine, thickened with a flour-butter roux (2 Tbsp each)

* Basic bread stuffing with pain au levain (recipe from Joy of Cooking)

* Cranberry-port gelée (recipe from Canal House via food52)

* Roasted Brussels sprouts with sweet-and-sour sauce and sesame seeds (dressing based on one from The Whelk in Westport, CT, via Bon Appetit)

* Cucumber-pomegranate salad with lime-cilantro dressing (recipe from Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life)

* The awful green bean casserole (the less said about this, the better)

* Pumpkin pie (recipe from Baking Illustrated)

I probably would have pulled the turkey breast and the pie a little sooner from the oven, but otherwise it was a fairly smooth week. Doing so much prep ahead of time, like quartering, blanching, and shocking the sprouts on Wednesday, made a huge difference on Thursday; I was only actively cooking for about two and a half hours, which includes the standing-around-and-waiting parts. And when the day was over, I was tired, but not a wreck. I hope those of you who cooked had a similarly pleasant experience, and only set off the fire alarm once (par for the course in my kitchen) rather than, say, deep-frying your entire house to the ground.

For the sprouts, I made a few changes to the Whelk’s recipe linked above. I blanched them as mentioned above, and tossed them with canola oil rather than olive, because I roasted them about 25 minutes at 475 degrees, a temperature that will cause olive oil to smoke. (Any neutral oil, like soybean or safflower or even rice bran oil, would work.) I used rice wine vinegar rather than red, and honey rather than pure sugar (2.5 Tbsp instead of 3, as honey is sweeter than sugar). I only finished them with toasted sesame seeds, trying to stick with the Asian flavor theme without losing the crunch added by the Whelk’s pumpkin seeds; if I had had toasted sesame oil in the house, I would have used some of that in the vinaigrette as well. The idea is simple: Cook the sprouts through while browning as much of the exterior as you can, then toss in a vinaigrette that hits sweet, sour, salty, and umami flavors, as the sprouts themselves will provide a hint of bitterness. You can alter ingredients in the dressing at will as long as you maintain the balance across those four tastes.

Some final admin notes – my updated board game rankings for 2013 will go up Wednesday or Thursday of next week, most likely, and my top songs of 2013 list will go up two weeks later on the 19th, after the winter meetings. I’ll chat again at ESPN.com on the 5th and 19th, with the winter meetings week chat possibly pushed to the 13th due to travel. Thanks again for reading.

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→ November 25, 2013
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Gift guide for cooks, 2013 edition.

Back in 2010 and 2011, I wrote a pair of posts offering gift ideas for the cooks in your circle, but never put together a single omnibus post that covered what I use in the kitchen on a daily basis. Here’s my attempt to do so, covering three core categories: Knives, pots and pans, and essential tools. If you think something’s missing, you’re probably right, so throw a note in the comments for me.

Knives

You need three, at least, but might not need more if your cooking needs are basic. Everyone needs a chef’s knife, and as long as the blade is good, the only variable that matters is the comfort of the handle, which is a personal choice. I own a Henckels model I got in the late 1990s, but the folks at Cooks Illustrated have long recommended the Victorinox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife, which is cheaper but just as strong, lacking Henckels’ brand-name and maybe losing a little comfort on the handle. The best value among Henckels knives is this 8-inch chef’s knife, only $12 more than the Victorinox model; I can’t compare them directly but have been very happy with the Henckels knives I own.

You also need a bread knife, which is a long knife with a serrated edge, for slicing bread but also cutting grapefruits and tomatoes and even for chopping chocolate. This Henckels 8-inch model is identical to the one I own except for the handle style.

The third knife you probably should own if you want to cook is a paring knife, great for … paring things. Actually, the main thing I use my paring knife for is hulling strawberries, which is quick and safe work (you rotate the berry, not the knife) once you get the motion down. It’s good for fine work, but I use mine less often than I use the other two knives. This Victorinox paring knife is under $8, a better value than the Henckels model.

If you want to expand your set, the next two I’d suggest would be a slicing knife and a santoku. The slicing knife has a narrower blade, so it’s not for chopping but rather for long, even cuts in something like a steak or cooked turkey or pork loin. You could also get an electric carving knife for the latter, which does make life easier although I admit blades with motors make me somewhat nervous. A santoku is a Japanese knife for chopping and dicing vegetables, with an extremely narrow cutting edge on a wider blade, great for plants but not so much for animal products. Amazon has a two santoku set from Henckels over half off, $22 total, which has to be a temporary sale. I own a Henckels santoku with a different handle and it’s very useful for thin, precise cuts of vegetables, and it’s frighteningly sharp.

The last knife I own is a boning knife, used for basic butchery (breaking down a chicken or a duck, but not, say, a whole cow) where you’re separating meat from bone. The key there is a flexible blade that bends without breaking and is extremely sharp. I bought a Henckels boning knife off eBay a decade ago for $20, under half what they go for now on Amazon. I don’t have a specific recommendation as the Victorinox models all look too thin for the way I use mine – which, by the way, I used to take apart a 13-pound turkey this morning so I can cook the legs (confit) and breasts (roasted) separately.

Pots/pans

I’ve owned some All-Clad anodized aluminum pots for over a decade, but have gradually adjusted to add some stainless steel pieces, non-stick skillets, my trusty 12” cast-iron skillet from Lodge, and one Le Creuset Dutch oven that I got as a gift several years ago. The anodized aluminum pots are easy to clean and heavy-duty enough for everyday cooking, but you don’t need to spend for All-Clad (I actually didn’t pay for them either, getting through a credit card rewards program).

For non-stick, I’ve had good luck with fairly cheap pans from Wearever, who now offer a three-pan set for $23 via amazon that includes both of the ones I own. Treat them right – no metal utensils, don’t let them heat up all the way while empty, don’t put them in the dishwasher – and they should last for years. For eggs, which will stick to pretty much anything, these skillets are essential, but they’re also great for frying a potato rösti or fish fillets.

I tweeted about my Lodge 12-inch cast-iron skillet, which I’ve had for at least a decade and still use all the time. I originally bought it because Alton Brown told me it was the only way to cook proper Southern fried chicken, which was true, but it’s now my go-to vehicle for any kind of pan-frying where I’m using a half inch of oil or more, up to deep frying (which I do in my Dutch oven). I also cook pancakes in here, using bacon fat as the grease. The only issue I’ve had is that smaller stoves don’t play that nicely with its wide base, so if you have a 30” stovetop or just know your burners are small, go for the 10.5” model (found in the same link) instead.

The stainless steel items I use are both from Calphalon’s Simply Calphalon collection, a 2.5-quart saucier and a 3-quart lidded saute pan, although I don’t think either is available any more. Calphalon does offer a ten-piece Simply Calphalon starter set, with a saute pan and two skillets but no saucier, and while I’m sure the skillets are wonderful I’d still want to supplement them with non-stick ones like those I mentioned above.

The Le Creuset Dutch oven is a luxury item, although you can get one a lot cheaper if you have an outlet near you and don’t mind buying a discontinued color. Le Creuset products are made of cast iron but the surface is enameled, so it’s nonstick and doesn’t require seasoning. If you can afford one, you won’t regret the purchase, as they’re so heavy-duty they’re perfect for any kind of braise or stew, or even stovetop dishes like risotto, where you want even eating and a wide opening for steam to escape. It is also by far the best way to deep fry anything, as long as you have a candy or frying thermometer; it holds its heat and the deep sides limit spatter. (Don’t buy an electric deep-fryer; the reviews on those are consistently terrible.) I’ve linked to the size and model I have, a seven-quart version, as the nine-quart is too big for consumer stove burners and is also too heavy for easy transport when it’s hot. The seven-quart is fine for cooking a five-pound pork shoulder or enough short ribs to feed 3-4 people.

The one essential addition to your pots and pans, based on my own usage, is a slow cooker, sometimes called a crockpot. If you don’t like the idea of leaving the oven on all day while you’re at work, or want more precise temperature control over a praise, a slow cooker allows you to program time and temperature and just forget about it until it’s done. I’ve used mine for short ribs, stews, carnitas (braised pork shoulder with onions and some herbs, in which the pork ends up braising in its own fat and juices), even sauces. I own this Hamilton Beach six-quart model and have been very satisfied with it, as it’s big enough for my needs and the ceramic liner is heavy enough to retain its heat for a long time after the cooking has stopped.

Essential tools

One new recommendation for this year is Freshpaper, which you can buy direct from Fenugreen, the manufacturer, and can also buy in any Whole Foods as well as many other health-food stores. The product is amazing: small squares of paper soaked in various herbs that have antimicrobial properties, so fruits and vegetables placed on the paper or in a bin with the paper won’t spoil as quickly. I’ve been using Freshpaper for a year or so, and it absolutely works, even on quick-to-mold foods like berries. I keep one in each crisper drawer in the fridge, one in the fruit bowl on the counter, and one in any clamshell package of berries we buy. The manufacturer also donates a package to a food pantry or charity for every package they sell. The paper is even compostable, if you roll that way, so it’s more environmentally friendly than the ethylene absorbers you’re supposed to throw in your crisper drawers.

I don’t think any kitchen tool has had the impact of the Microplane grater, which is now ubiquitous in professional kitchens and on cooking shows, replacing the rougher cheese-grater style in many applications, including grating nutmeg and zesting citrus fruits. Amazon reminds me that I bought my Microplane classic grated ten years ago this past weekend, which is a little eerie, but it’s as good as new and I just busted it out the other day. I also have their coarse grater, which I use more for grating hard cheeses to finish a dish, since it produces light snow-like flakes and doesn’t tear apart whatever you’re grating.

I’ve previously recommended this Kyocera hand-held mandolin and am actually due for a replacement, as I managed to crack the frame of mine through overuse. The blade never lost any sharpness, though, which is what they promised. It’s great for making very thin slices (with four thickness settings) of vegetables for salads, for quick pickles, or for potato or other root vegetable chips. (Sweet potato chips are my favorite, fried till just slightly colored, dusted with sea salt and smoked Spanish paprika. Way, way better than sweet potato fries.)

The rest of my kitchen tools are prosaic – tongs, rubber spatulas, and wooden utensils, the latter mostly flat-edged spatulas. I mostly use metal tongs, but for working with nonstick cookware or the cast-iron skillet, my OXO nylon tongs is indispensable. Others you can pick up just about anywhere that might make good gifts, especially as stocking stuffers: small digital thermometers, a metal steamer basket, good vegetable peelers (I like Oxo’s Y-shaped and straight peelers, and a OXO Good Grips Serrated Peeler, Black for fruits like peaches), whisks from 10” long to miniature ones (great for whisking salad dressings or hot cocoa), Silpat non-stick baking mats, dishers/cookie scoops (a #20 size is great for dishing muffin batter into tins), these silicone ingredient cups (which I own and love), a Rabbit Corkscrew (I got one years ago on sale for $10 and it’s fantastic), Vacu-Vin wine stoppers to keep wine fresh (I believe they work, but I’m not a wine expert by any means) … I could go on and on. These are just things I find useful on a regular basis around the kitchen, so you’ll have some confidence that the gift you’re giving won’t end up at the bottom of a drawer until the recipients sell their house. At this point, in an era when none of us actually needs anything for Christmas, that seems to me like the ideal kind of gift.

You can see previous versions of this post here (small items) and here (larger items).

If you liked this post, please check out my updated list of cookbook recommendations too.

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