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Home Cooking Adventures in Berkeley Heights

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Products Worth Mentioning: How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

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Happy icy Monday from New Jersey!  I just wanted to do a quick post about this cookbook.  I received my first copy over the Christmas holiday and am really finding it a great resource.  For those of you who don’t know, Mark Bittman is a writer for the New York Times, an award winning cookbook writer, and is on the forefront of thought pertaining to healthy eating habits using whole foods as the basis for a healthy, sustainable diet and lifestyle.  Anyway, I really like this particular book for several reasons.  First, it’s a great comprehensive cookbook that is as broad and deep as say The Joy of Cooking.  However, it really is much more than that.  Rather than focusing on recipes alone, Bittman’s book also details different techniques for cooking the same ingredients and offering multiple recipes and methods.  So, for example, if you have a sunchoke and do not really know how to go about preparing one, you can simply look up sunchoke in the index and you will find multiple preparations and various alternative flavor options within the same general recipes.  Further, he delves into how to properly choose the ingredient at the grocery store so you can understand what to and not to look for when picking specific produce, dairy, or meat items.  So really, more than a cookbook, this book provides you with lots of advice and options when cooking and, even better, helps you choose to very best, freshest possible ingredients.  Further he often discusses how to store those ingredients.

If you are a home cook just beginning this a great, indispensable resource and tool to get started.  If you are more advanced and experienced with your cooking, this book offers lots of interesting variations on classic preparations that will surely entice you to either try his ideas or better yet, inspire you to try some of your own!


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Products Worth Mentioning: Black Garlic

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Black garlic is simply garlic that has been roasted, fermented, and aged in a controlled temperature and humidity level for a period of time, usually about a month.  It has a super interesting flavor with notes of sweet garlic, molasses, and perhaps even some vinegar notes.  I read about it a few months ago and decided to order it (on Amazon) over the holidays and made a flatbread with black garlic and mushrooms last week (recipe for some flatbreads to follow in the coming days).  Tara and I both agreed that we had never really had anything like it.  It, as I said above, has just a really interesting flavor.  You can read more about black garlic here.

Oh, I almost left out the best part of using black garlic:  it is very, very good for you.  If you are into food (and I assume you are since you are reading a food blog), you’ve probably noticed an increase in conversation about the benefits of fermented food and it’s link to helping improve and balance the bacterial world that resides in our guts.  Black garlic,since it is fermented, has a number of health benefits.

Interestingly, scientists are finding ever increasing evidence that these bacteria provide us with a huge number of important health and wellness benefits.  It’s one of the reasons you have been hearing more and more about yogurt with bacterial cultures left in tact, sauerkraut, and kimchi among others and how all of these fermented foods truly benefit a number of biological functions and environments within our body.  As an aside, I made yogurt, kimchi, and sauerkraut last year and all are easy to pull off.  Please experiment around.  I’ll try to post a couple of recipes on these myself but, for example, homemade sauerkraut consists of cabbage and salt at its most basic level and only requires time to ferment.  The end result is infinitely better (I mean way better) than the store bought variety and is so very good for you.  I digress…

Along with the flatbread last week, I am planning on making fresh ravioli with black garlic tonight.  Right now the plan is to use it with some marscarpone and something else with savory notes (as you can tell, I’m still working that out).  However, assuming it turns out well, I’ll post the recipe for the black garlic ravioli at some point next week.  In fact, I’m making a number of different pastas from scratch tonight so hopefully, with luck, they will turn out and you can expect those next week too.  I’m sort of excited about the pasta as I know a good number of readers here love pasta and I’m planning on making some unique flavor combinations that use a number of different flours, etc.

Further, I’ve been experimenting around with various types of flours in hopes of coming up with a better quality pizza crust (which can double as a flatbread crust) that can work for home cooks.  By experimenting and having some rather lackluster results at times (ask Tara), I think I’ve come up with a winner of a recipe using two different types of flour and a drastically reduced amount of yeast.  Also, I spoke to a chef in Florence about their pizza crust (which I loved) and he gave me a great tip/hint as well and I’ll share that too.  So, I will be posting another pizza night extravaganza suite of recipes similar to what I did a few months back but reflecting my new crust recipe and cooking technique…plus new topping ideas.

Until then…try the black garlic and other fermented foods.  You will love the taste and you will reap a good number of health benefits to boot!


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Products Worth Mentioning: Biagio’s Ristorante Bread

Biagios

So, I usually don’t mention local restaurants and I really don’t want to get into the habit of doing so for a number of reasons.  However, I want to mention the bread from Biagio’s Ristorante as I think it’s very, very good.  I hadn’t tried it before and I’d never been there but had heard good things about it.  That said, a couple of weeks ago, Tara and I had a holiday party at our home and I was planning on cooking lots of things, including bread.  I love making bread and make it quite often…at least a couple times a week if we are home.  At any rate, as I mentioned in a previous post, I burned my hand pretty badly and I ended up having to change the menu for our party as I just couldn’t handle food in my usual manner.  I definitely couldn’t handle kneading bread so bread making was out of the picture.  However, we did need several loaves of bread as we were serving various main dishes and appetizers that required it.  So, I asked Tara to get some bread while she was out and she suggested going to Biagio’s as she was going to be in that general area.  I thought it was a great idea as I had heard they had a good product and I was hopeful that it would exceed the quality of supermarket loaves.

When Tara arrived home, I was knee deep in cooking so I didn’t really do anything with the bread except look at it (and it looked great).  Tara said it had just come out of the oven and it smelled great.  She also said the two people who helped her at Biagio’s were very nice and very helpful, taking time to help her despite being crazy busy due to the rush of the holidays.  Later in the day, I got to the point where I needed to deal with the bread.  I started cutting it and noticed that it had a nice crispy crust and an airy soft interior.  I tasted it and I was very surprised that I liked it as much as I did.  I don’t know the ingredients of their loaves, but I would guess there aren’t a whole lot…which is to say that it’s fresh and quality ingredients are used.  That’s a high compliment for me because if you are into bread, then you know that you really only need four ingredients for a basic loaf.  Usually the farther away you stray from that number, the worse the bread generally tastes and generally the worse it is for you from a health standpoint.  I know, there are exceptions but for a basic loaf of French or Italian bread, four is a good number for ingredients.

I still plan to make my own bread here at home as I love it.  However, if we ever need to purchase bread again, I am absolutely sure that we will go back.  In fact, I’m not sure I’d bother buying it anywhere else.  So if you are local to Berkeley Heights and the surrounding areas, a trip to Biagio’s is definitely worth it!

As an aside, I still have not been to Biagio’s (I plan to go sometime soon) and I have no affiliation with them.  I just think the quality of their bread is worth a little space on the blog.  Enjoy!


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Products Worth Mentioning: Chemex Coffee Maker

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Happy New Year!  It’s been a long time and I hope you are well.  I had planned on posting some additional Holiday sweets, some Holiday dishes that I cooked for a party, and what I cooked for my family but I burned my hand pretty badly and baking was put on hold for a while.  I did cook over the holidays but I was severely limited with how I could use my hands. I really only did basic things and I had to use rubber gloves to go over the bandages to protect the whole thing while I cooked…no fun.  My hand has pretty much healed at this point and the holidays are over, so let’s start the new year off with this:  my favorite new way to brew coffee.

I bought a Chemex a few months ago and figured I’d use it much the same way as I do our French press, which is to say just from time to time. As it turns out, though, I have put our drip coffee machine away and use only this for day to day coffee.  Since it doesn’t have a burner mechanism, the coffee remains pure and free from that bitter taste that distracts from the flavor of the actual coffee.  Chemex comes in different sizes but the scientific beaker-like shape remains the same.  You can purchase the Chemex on Amazon (which is where I bought ours) as well as William Sonoma and other kitchen stores. I also purchased a thermal pitcher and after the coffee is brewed, I pour it into the pitcher and it keeps warm the whole day.

New recipes and other kitchen experiments will start rolling in the coming days.  Until then, look into the Chemex…it’s definitely worth a look.


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Products Worth Mentioning: America Farm to Table By Mario Batali

My wife bought this book for me and I love it thus far.  I started reading it last week and it’s great.  I haven’t cooked a recipe from it yet but they look interesting and creative…exactly what you would expect from Mario Batali.  The best part of the book, however, is that contains anecdotes regarding farms and farmers from around the country.  The farm to table movement isn’t new but it has certainly gained steam in recent years and this book celebrates the farm, eating seasonally and locally produced food/ingredients, etc.  If you read this blog regularly you know that I’m a fan of farmer’s markets and getting ingredients as directly from the source as possible and that’s the reason I was interested in reading this book…and it doesn’t disappoint in that way.  At any rate, it’s a good read and certainly worth your time if you are interested in purchasing another cookbook.

…and a little housekeeping:  recipes for chili, a classic French apple tart straight from culinary school, apple butter, pita bread, and curing your own bacon are all forthcoming.  Winter vegetable salad is on the horizon as well.  Putting that out there will hopefully set expectations so that I can keep to a schedule and catch up on writing the recipes and getting them to you!  I’m woefully behind and I apologize for that.  This fall has been crazy busy…I’m not sure where the time goes but it certainly is moving quickly these days.  Anyway, stay tuned for new recipes and I hope all is well with everyone!


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Products Worth Mentioning: My Paris Kitchen by David Lebovitz

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I’ve cooked a few things using this cookbook and I’ve found that the recipes here are easy to follow and quite good.  I also like the idea of an American chef living in Paris doing a cookbook on French food…an interesting perspective.  Beyond the recipes, one of the best things about this book are the anecdotes and advice.  I like the fact that the end of the book provides sourcing for the vast majority of ingredients used in the book.  If you are looking for a great introduction to French cuisine or if you, like me, look for French inspiration from time to time, the book is both a great starting point as well as a useful tool to learn and grow.

I made this French bread using a recipe from the book and it was great…it will definitely go into the bread rotation as a favorite of mine.  The bread uses whole wheat pastry flour, unbleached bread flour, pumpkin seeds and flax seeds among other things.  I’ll post the recipe in the coming days but here’s a picture of my final product.  I followed the recipe from the book pretty much exactly…well, not exactly as I omitted some seeds, but as close as I get to exactly.  That’s for sure!

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Products Worth Mentioning: Pimenton

 

 

I think I might have mentioned it here before but I can’t exactly remember.  Of late, I have definitely enjoyed delving into cooking Spanish food and exploring that cuisine.  My last recipe I did for Alternative Press, which I also posted here on the blog, featured a Spanish pepper stuffed with a white bean and fennel sofrito.  The one spice featured in the sofrito was Pimenton, Spanish paprika.  It can be sweet (Dulce, pictured above) or it can be spicy/hot (pictured below).  The best Pimenton generally is “De La Vera” which comes from a specific region in Spain, so if you buy it, look for that on the label.  I have a tin of sweet and a tin of spicy.  They last quite a while as the spice is quite strong and pungent.  I love it…it imparts a ton of flavor and color to anything I add it to.  I’ve used it in everything from slow cooked beans to roasted chicken to simply adding a dash or two to veggies.  I have looked high and low for Pimenton locally and have come up empty.  So, my advice, if you are interested in buying some is to either look in NYC or order it on-line.  Amazon sells it.  There’s also a great little website called La Tienda, which features all sorts of Spanish specialty food items and recipes and they sell it as well.  At any rate, you’ll have to do some digging beyond simply picking it up at the grocery store.  However, in my opinion, it’s definitely worth the effort!

Pimenton-de-la-Vera-from-Spain

 

 

 

 


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Products Worth Mentioning: Sel Gris

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First things first:  you can find sel gris on-line and at a number of gourmet markets.  I purchased this at the Summit Cheese Shop.  They actually have a good number of great products beyond cheese including pate, salts, mustards, and all sorts of goodies from Europe (mainly France and Italy from what I could tell).  I didn’t buy any cheese there.  I was sort of disappointed that they don’t make their own cheese.  I figured they’d make at least a few and actually went in there to find out where they were sourcing their milk for cheese making as I am dabbling in cheese making myself.  At any rate, I bought this salt at the Summit Cheese Shop.

Sel gris, or gray salt, is very similar to fleur de sel but typically comes from a specific region in France and it is allowed to come into contact with the drying pans, which causes the grayish color.  The salt is course and flaky but it has a higher water content that almost any other salt I’ve tried.  The moisture gives it a different texture and taste.  It’s a bit more mineral-y and I think it has a strong taste.  Unlike Maldon or fleur de sel, sel gris can be used to both cook and finish dishes.  The other two salts really are more of finishing salts both because of taste and price. 

I definitely have been enjoying cooking with the sel gris and if you happen upon it during your own trip to a specialty food store, I certainly recommend investing in a jar or bag and giving it a whirl!

As an aside, this will be the last post for the next couple of days…unless I find some time to post a fresh ham recipe.  However, likely it will be a few days.  So, I’ll look forward to checking back in then. 


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Products Worth Mentioning: Garden of Eden, Berkeley Heights

So, obviously Garden of Eden isn’t a product.  However, it carries all sorts of them.  This gourmet grocery store opened up a couple months ago right across the street (basically) from where we live.  It’s such a great addition to the choice of local grocers.  My wife and I lived in Hoboken for a good number of years and we became familiar with Garden of Eden there.  So, when we saw the signs posted that it was coming soon, we waited excitedly until it opened.  The downside of Garden of Eden really is the price point…it’s expensive.  However, the great thing is that they carry SO many items that no one else in the area carries.  There’s a myriad of olive oil choices.  They have a large number of hard to find produce items.  They stock high quality goods and brands.  We don’t purchase the majority of our groceries at Garden of Eden due to price (and a couple other reasons) and since I cook pretty often, we have not tried their prepared foods.  However, if you are looking for a special, hard to find cheese, go there.  If you are looking for Serrano ham, they have it.  If you want high quality anchovies packed in olive oil, go there.  They have a number of choices.  They stock high quality meats in their butcher area and they have high quality produce. They also have a great bakery.  They also have probably the most robust choices of charcuterie in the area.  At any rate, it’s a great addition to the grocery store landscape in Berkeley Heights and the surrounding area.  If you live in the area and haven’t checked it out yet, it is definitely worth doing.  You never know what little goodie you’ll find there.  Enjoy!

 

Update 6/18/2014:  Garden of Eden just announced free grocery delivery for people living or working within a ten mile radius from the store providing that the order is over $50.00!  Another great reason to give Garden of Eden a go.

 

 


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Products Worth Mentioning: In the Charuterie by Boetticher and Miller

 

So, I’ve mentioned this before, but my wife and I travelled over the holiday weekend to Montreal.  We had a great time enjoying all the city has to offer from classic architecture to museums to water front bars to a vast array of culinary adventures.  Given all we ate and the various delicacies we tried, my personal favorite was the charcuterie platter at the restaurant Lawrence.  They make their own cured and smoked meats, pickle their own vegetables, and make their own bread.  As an aside, Lawrence was recommended by friends of ours who lived in Montreal and it did not disappoint.  In fact, we ate dinner there and enjoyed it so much we went back for brunch the next morning.  I think I can speak for my wife too in that we both highly recommend going if you are ever in Montreal.  Anyway…

The charcuterie in Montreal has fueled a renewed interest in making charcuterie at home, which is where the book In the Charcuterie comes into focus.  I own this book.  I’ve personally used this cookbook a good number of times and each time, it did not disappoint.  The downside of the book stems from the fact that a large number of recipes require some hard to find ingredients.  Overcome that barrier, and you will find an easy to follow guide to making great sausages, roasts, terrines, bound meats, and other meaty goodness.  So, if you, like me, are interested in and enjoy charcuterie and need either a place to start or a way to continue along the path, this book works great. 

I purchased my copy at William Sonoma and, it is at least available at the store near us (Short Hills Mall).  Amazon also carries it.  I’m sure it’s available elsewhere including at the restaurant The Fatted Calf, located in the San Francisco area.  The Fatted Calf is owned and operated by the authors of the cookbook.