Absinthe
We’ve all seen Dégas’s young lady, sitting in a café, paralyzed with ennui, staring at her glass of green elixir. For most of us, that’s about the extent of it. Few of us have ever seen absinthe much less tasted it. But times are changing…
Rhona’s Paris Dinners
I have a close friend who lives in Paris. She, like I, trained as a chef and knows how to cook. She’s raising her 16-year old son single handedly while she translates 6 days a week at Le Cordon Bleu where she works as many…
Artichoke Bottoms
I was once a maitre d’ at a restaurant in Montmartre. An American came in and ordered an artichoke vinaigrette which was duly presented with a bowl for the finished leaves. As he sat there, I realized that perhaps he didn’t know how to eat…
How to Prepare & Roast a Whole Round Fish (Daurade)
By “round fish” we don’t mean a fish that’s actually round, but rather a fish that swims in a “normal” way, with belly down and dorsal back fins up. This is in contrast to a “flatfish,” which is relatively flat (duh) and nestles in the…
How to Roast a Whole Round of Veal
The round of veal is a roundish muscle that resembles a flattened sphere. It usually weighs about 4 pounds but can vary a lot in either direction. It is impeccably lean and tender and is used to make the finest scallops for such things as…
How to Poach a Flatfish
Many of us have fish poachers but when it comes to poaching a flatfish like a sole or flounder, we’re lost. The standard solution to this quandary is a special fish poacher called a turbotière, diamond-shaped, with handles on the ends and a rack for…
Caramel
Caramel is one of those simple things that throws people off. Perhaps it’s the idea of heating sugar to rather shocking temperature that scares us, but as long as you stand back a bit during critical moments, there is nothing to fear. First off, most…
Chicken
Roast Chicken I recently got a call from a woman, hysterical because I had “ruined the turkey” for her Thanksgiving dinner. She had discovered pink where the thigh joint joins the back of the bird. I tried to explain that a properly cooked bird will…
Salt Cod
Don’t confuse salt cod (bacalao) with stockfish. Stockfish is air-dried and requires a longer soaking period.Salt cod comes in many different qualities, by far the best shown here. Often, it is yellow (a sign of progressing rancidity) or excessively dry and thin. Look for the…
Dashi
Dashi is the basic broth used in all manner of Japanese soups, stews and sauces. It’s as fundamental to Japanese cooking as a basic meat broth is to cooking in the West. To make dashi, a whole bonito (a relatively small tuna-like fish) is dried…