ChefJeanPierre
Published on 5 Jan 2012Do you struggle trying to dice an onion? Chef Jean Pierre shows you the easiest way to dice an onion without shedding a tear.
July 8, 2019
Dicing an Onion by Chef Jean Pierre
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June 24, 2019
JourneyQuest: Cooking with Carrow 01
Zombie Orpheus Entertainment
Published on 21 Jun 2019Undead chef Carrow (Brian Lewis) introduces Rilk’s Wolfback, with special guest Rilk (Jesse Lee Keeter).
We don’t post to YouTube much anymore, but you can catch up on JourneyQuest, The Gamers, and Strowlers at
http://www.amazon.com/v/zombieorpheus (US/UK)
http://watch.thefantasy.network/zombi… (worldwide)
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May 9, 2019
Equipment Review: The Best Heavy Duty Cutting Boards
America’s Test Kitchen
Published on 5 Apr 2019Each cutting board model had its fans. But a few factors made certain boards more durable, more pleasant to cut on, and more foolproof to maintain.
Buy our winning heavy-duty cutting board: https://cooks.io/2HZ4oOc
Behind the testing: https://cooks.io/2Ie5yF0
Full testing details and ranking chart: https://cooks.io/2CSPWTBWatch more equipment reviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDfNw…
ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.
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May 8, 2019
How To Ferment And Make Your Own Hot Sauce, Easily
Joshua Weissman
Published on 5 Apr 2019Hot sauce has a very special place in my heart … And no I’m not talking about heartburn. We can make our own hot sauce at home with any peppers we want. That means that we now have full control over the flavor. The end result? The perfect hot sauce for you. Happy Fermentation Fridays Folks!
Kitchen Organization Video: https://youtu.be/NW6fgAu4h40
FOLLOW ME:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/therealweissman
Website: http://joshuaweissman.com/—————————————————————
Ingredients you’ll need:
Fermented peppers-
1.25lbs (540g) red fresno peppers
1.25qt (1163g) water
3.5 tablespoons (51g) fine sea saltHot Sauce:
8 cloves garlic
1/2 cup (118ml) neutral oil (canola)
1# (456g) fermented peppers (you can leave the seeds on or off)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (150ml) white distilled vinegar
3 tablespoons (42ml) brine
salt to taste
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May 7, 2019
The Science of Ginger: Why and How it Burns and Its Impact on Cooking | Ginger | What’s Eating Dan?
America’s Test Kitchen
Premiered on 22 Mar 2019Why does ginger burn? Why does ginger turn pink? How come ginger makes meat mushy? Dan answers these questions and more about one of the most interesting ingredients cooks have at their disposal in this episode of What’s Eating Dan?.
Click here to browse our ginger recipes: https://cooks.io/2FlixBy
Click here for our Ginger Snap recipe: https://cooks.io/2JuniOB
Click here for our Ginger-Scallion Everything Sauce recipe: https://cooks.io/2Yh01Tu
How to make Ginger-Milk Curd and the science behind it: https://blog.khymos.org/2014/02/24/gi…ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.
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May 2, 2019
Chicken Tikka Masala | Basics with Babish
Binging with Babish
Published on 28 Mar 2019Enter offer code “Babish” at Squarespace.com for 10% off your first purchase, or visit: http://smarturl.it/BWBsquarespace
One of my favorite curries is the beloved chicken tikka masala. You can make this dish at home by making your own curry powder and tikka masala sauce.
Shopping List:
+ For the curry powder:
1 stick cinnamon
1 whole nutmeg
2 dried bay leaves
1 Tbsp whole cloves
2 Tbsp cumin seeds
3 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 Tbsp cardamom
1 tsp red pepper flakes+ For the chicken tikka masala marinade:
1 cup full fat yogurt
2 inches ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
1 Tbsp of the homemade curry powder (above)
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
Drizzle of olive oil
3 boneless, skinless, chicken breasts (cut into 1-inch cubes)+ For the tikka masala sauce
2 inches ginger, grated
1/2 small yellow onion, finely minced
2 cloves garlic, grated
1 small bird’s eye chili, finely minced
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 heaping Tbsp homemade curry powder (above)
1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
Pinch of white sugar
3/4 cup heavy creamOptional: serve with long grain basmati rice and cilantro garnish
Special Equipment:
Spice grinder or coffee grinder
H/T to Victor for the link.
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April 22, 2019
British Ration Week Episode 5: Woolton Pie
InRangeTV
Published on 24 Jan 2018The Minister of Food who was really the heart of the rationing program was Frederick Marquis, Lord Woolton. A prominent businessman who entered government as a political novice when the war began, Woolton took his responsibility as a charge not simply to ensure that Britain survived the war, but as a mission to use the opportunity to improve public health, particularly among the lower classes. He was a refreshing example of a political figure who eschewed personal power and political strife in favor of the betterment of his society.
The head chef of the Savoy Hotel created a wartime dish which they named Woolton Pie after the Minister of Food, and which has become an excellent example of the whole rationing program in microcosm.
Woolton Pie (makes 1 pie):
½ lb potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled and cut into chunks
½ lb carrots, washed and sliced
½ lb cauliflower, broken into chunks
½ lb swedes (rutabagas), peeled and cut into chunks
3-4 green onions (we used a quarter leek, both white and green), sliced
1 tsp vegetable extract*
1 tsp oatmeal **Preheat oven to 350. Add all vegetables to a saucepan and just cover with water. Simmer until tender, approximately 10-15 minutes. Drain, reserving liquid. Put vegetables in a pie plate and add half the reserved liquid. Cover with a pastry or potato crust and bake until crust is golden brown.
Use the remaining liquid to make a gravy for serving: in a saucepan, bring liquid to a boil; in a separate cup, mix about 2 T flour with ½ c water and slowly add mixture to boiling liquid whisking constantly. Season liberally with salt and pepper.
* I don’t know what vegetable extract is, but I’m assuming something similar to bouillon cubes. We didn’t have those, so I just used turkey stock instead of water to cook the vegetables.
** This is supposed to thicken the liquid into a gravy. It doesn’t.Day 5 Menu:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with raisins, tea
Lunch: Beans with Bacon, Skillet Biscuits
Tea: Bread Pudding, tea
Dinner: Woolton Pie, aleInRange is entirely viewer supported:
https://www.patreon.com/InRangeTV
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April 21, 2019
British Ration Week Episode 4: The National Loaf
InRangeTV
Published on 23 Jan 2018One of the major initiatives of the Ministry of Food was ensuring the availability of bread and the supply of wheat to the British Isles. To help stretch the use of wheat, a national bread recipe was instituted, using minimally processed brown flour. This was not a particularly appealing item to most of the British populace, used to highly refined fluffy white bread – but they accepted it as a necessity of war. Interestingly, the National Loaf was not that unlike today’s whole wheat breads which are so popular for their better nutritional value than WonderBread.
Day 4 Menu:
Breakfast: Cheese toast, tea
Lunch: Cheese and Tomato Sandwich, pickle, leftover split pea soup
Tea: Beetroot pudding, tea
Dinner: Leek and Hamburger Gravy over toastInRange is entirely viewer supported:
https://www.patreon.com/InRangeTV
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April 20, 2019
British Ration Week Episode 3: Creative Cooking
InRangeTV
Published on 22 Jan 2018Much of the popular media about wartime rationing spends a lot of time looking at the crazy examples of weird and frightening recipes that appeared during this time – because that’s what attracts audience attention. In reality, the strange recipes are not attempts to make terrible foods palatable, but rather attempts to make repetitive ingredients more interesting. Today’s Welsh Eggs, for instance, are a way to use powdered eggs in a way that hides their lack of texture.
Day 3 Menu:
Breakfast: Potato, Bacon and Green Onion hash, tea
Lunch: Split Pea Soup (made with Spam instead of bacon)
Tea: Peach Clafouti, tea
Dinner: Welsh Eggs on toast, sauteed kaleInRange is entirely viewer supported:
https://www.patreon.com/InRangeTV
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March 26, 2019
Food Rationing – How to Make Woolton Pie – WW2 Homefront 001 – April 1940
World War Two
Published on 24 Mar 2019Rationing of goods in Europe started immediately when the war broke out. Lord Woolton, British Minister of Food came up with one of the first substitute dishes… a vegetable pie that was promptly named after him. Our team chef Joram shows you how to do it. To find out how it tasted go here: https://youtu.be/quB0yH8Qhlo
Recipe can be found here: https://the1940sexperiment.com/2016/0…
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvHosted by Joram Appel and created by Wieke Kapteijns
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
In about a month’s time (yes, I have my 1:00am and 2:00am posts lined up that far in advance), there’s an eight-part video series from Ian at InRangeTV on British rationing in WW2 that includes a slightly different Woolton Pie recipe.
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August 21, 2018
Celebrity chef accused of cultural appropriation
Tim Worstall explains why, despite jerk chicken being something like the national dish of Jamaica, accusing Jamie Oliver of culturally appropriating it makes no sense whatsoever:
Well, here’s a recipe for that jerk chicken which does seem to be close to being the Jamaican national dish.
Ingredients
8 -10 pieces of legs and thighs
1 lemon/lime
Salt and pepper to season
½ tablespoon cinnamon powder
1 sprig of fresh thyme
3 medium scallions (green onions) chopped
1 medium onion coarsely chopped
2-4 habanero pepper chopped
1 1/2 tablespoon Maggi or soy sauce
1 tablespoon bouillon powder optional
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
6 garlic cloves chopped
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 tablespoon allspice coarsely ground
1 1/2 tablespoon fresh ginger chopped
1 tablespoon coarsely ground pepperAs far as I can tell those ingredients coming from, in order – the chicken, SE Asia via land cultural exchange to Europe and then the Americas by the Portuguese and Spanish. Sure, some evidence of Polynesian delivery but on West Coast only. The lemon, SE Asia, salt everywhere, pepper India or perhaps Indonesia. Cinnamon, SE Asia but introduction to European thus Caribbean cuisines through Ancient Egypt and thus into Greece. Thyme, the Levant and Ancient Egypt, scallions at least as far back as Ashkelon and further east than that. Onions, definitely Eurasian, habaneros definitively Latin American. Soy sauce, think we’ll allow Nippon to claim that, maybe China. Bouillon powder, industrial civilisation somewhere. Sugar, Indian subcontinent, garlic central Asia we think. Nutmeg and allspice the Spice Islands, now Indonesia. Ginger, South and SE Asia.
So, someone who makes this is accusing us of cultural appropriation if we make it?
Oh Aye?
All of which is, of course, to misunderstand the basic point about human beings. We’re apes, ones with a special and remarkable talent. We’ve this readin’ an’ writin’ stuff meaning that when we spot something that works we’re able to tell other people about it. In a manner rather more efficient than just teaching junior to do what we’ve learned to do. This is the secret of our success. That things once learned can be passed onto millions, billions, of other people. If we had to go reinvent the wheel each generation then we’d not all be rolling around in cars now, would we?
The very essence of our being the successful tool using species we are is that we copy. Appropriate that is. So insistences that we don’t “culturally” appropriate are demands that we stop being us, stop being human. Well, you know, good luck with that, however delightful the concept of cultural appropriation is as a method of having something else to shout about.
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August 12, 2018
Garum, Rome’s Favorite Condiment (Ancient Cooking)
Invicta
Published on 12 Jul 2018As Rome’s military expanded the Empire’s territory it also expanded the kitchen pantry. Today we take a look at one of Rome’s favorite condiments, Garum fish sauce! Credit to: http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/…
Support future documentaries:
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/InvictaHistory
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InvictaHistory
Twitter: https://twitter.com/InvictaHistoryLiterary Sources
“Logistics of the Roman Army at War” by Jonathan P. Roth
“Garum, Rome’s Favorite Condiment” by Erich B. Anderson
(Ancient History Magazine Issue 8)
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March 4, 2018
The dirty secret of a lot of “traditional” family recipes
At Atlas Obscura, Alex Mayyasi spills the beans about a lot of secret family recipes:
When Danny Meyer was gearing up to open his barbecue restaurant, Blue Smoke, there was one recipe he knew he had to have on the menu: his grandmother’s secret potato salad recipe.
“I told the chef, ‘My very favorite potato salad in the world was the one my grandmother made,’” Meyer recalls.
That’s a big statement coming from Meyer, a successful restaurateur who has earned Michelin Stars and founded the fast-casual chain Shake Shack. At the time, his grandmother had already passed away, but Meyer remembered that she kept recipes on three by five index cards. After a search, he found the right card and handed it to the restaurant’s chef, who invited Meyer to try it in the Blue Smoke kitchen.
When Meyer arrived, the sous chefs had a big bowl of potato salad that brought back memories of his grandmother. He tried it, smiled, and told the chefs, “That’s exactly right.” They grinned back at him mischievously. Eventually, Meyer broke and asked, “What’s so funny?” A chef pulled out a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise and placed it on the table. Meyer looked at it, then realized that the secret recipe his grandmother had hoarded for years was on the jar. It was the official Hellman’s recipe for potato salad.
This actually seems to be a common phenomenon. The television show Friends even features a similar discovery, when one character, Phoebe, realizes that her grandmother’s “famous” chocolate chip cookie recipe came from a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips.
Two months ago, we asked Gastro Obscura readers to send in accounts of their own discoveries. We promised a (loving) investigation of grandparents lying about family recipes. But instead we got a delightful look at the power of imagination, the limitations of originality, and the halo effect of eating a dish or dessert made by family.
April 16, 2017
The tale of unsalted butter in French cuisine
At his new blog, Splendid Isolation, Kim du Toit explains the historical roots of a French culinary oddity:
One of the quirks of French cuisine is that most often the butter is unsalted, and at a French dinner table you will usually find a tiny cruet of salt with a microscopic spoon inside, so that you can salt your butter (or not) according to taste. To someone like myself, accustomed only to salted butter, this seemed like an affectation, but it wasn’t that at all: it was the result of taxation, and this is one of the things changed forever by Napoleon’s administrative reforms.
One of the best parts of our U.S. Constitution is the “interstate commerce” clause, which forbids states from levying taxes on goods and services passing from one state to another, and through another in transit. This was not the case in pre-Napoleonic France. Goods manufactured in, say, Gascony or Provence would pass through a series of customs posts en route to Paris, and at each point the various localities would levy excise taxes on the goods, driving up the final price at its eventual destination.
Which brings us to salt. French salt, you see, was produced mainly on the Atlantic coastline, and was a major “export” of Brittany to the rest of France. Butter, of course, was produced universally — in and outside Paris and ditto for every major city — but the salt for the butter came almost exclusively from Brittany, and having been taxed multiple times by the time it reached points east like Paris or Lyons, it was expensive. So the cuisine and eating habits in those parts developed without the use of salt — or, if salt was requested, at an added cost. It’s why, to this day, many French recipes use unsalted butter as an ingredient. (In contrast, butter for local consumption in western France was [and still is] almost always salted, because salt was dirt cheap there.)
Napoleon’s reforms did away with all that; he saw to it that the douane locale checkpoints and toll booths along the main roads were abolished (causing salt prices in eastern France to plummet and become a mainstay of French cuisine at last). And when the towns and villages protested about the loss of tax revenue, Napoleon made up the shortfall with “federal” funds out of the national treasury.
Of course, the French treasury had in the meantime been emptied out by, amongst other things, the statist welfare policies of the Revolutionary government (stop me if this is starting to sound familiar). Which is why, to raise money, Napoleon invaded wealthy northern Italy and western Germany (as it is now), pillaged their rich cities’ treasuries and garnered revenue from the wealthy aristocracy, who paid bribes to avoid having their palaces sacked and their wealth confiscated.
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April 10, 2014
Chiles, peppers, and world trade before globalization
ESR linked to an interesting discussion of the spread of chile peppers and other exotic spices from the Roman empire onwards:
Can you imagine a world without salsa? Or Tabasco sauce, harissa, sriracha, paprika or chili powder?
I asked myself that question after I found a 700-year-old recipe for one of my favorite foods, merguez — North Africa’s beloved lamb sausage that is positively crimson with chiles. The medieval version was softly seasoned with such warm spices as black pepper, coriander and cinnamon instead of the brash heat of capsicum chile peppers — the signature flavor of the dish today.
The cuisines of China, Indonesia, India, Bhutan, Korea, Hungary and much of Africa and the Middle East would be radically different from what they are today if chiles hadn’t returned across the ocean with Columbus. Barely 50 years after the discovery of the New World, chiles were warming much of the Old World. How did they spread so far, so fast? The answers may surprise you — they did me!
I learned that Mamluk and Ottoman Muslims were nearly as responsible for the discovery of New World peppers as Columbus — but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The global pepper saga begins in the first millennium bce with the combustible career of another pepper — black pepper (Piper nigrum) and its cousins, Indian long pepper and Javanese cubeb. Although Piper nigrum was first grown on the Malabar Coast in India, the taste for it enflamed the ancient world: No matter what the cost — and it was very high — people were mad for pepper. The Romans, for example, first tasted it in Egypt, and the demand for it drove them to sail to India to buy it. In the first century, Pliny complained about the cost: “There is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of fifty million sesterces.”
In one sense, the whole global system of trade — the sea and land routes throughout the known world that spread culture and cuisine through commerce — was engaged with the appetite for pepper, in its growth, distribution and consumption.
Dried chiles shipped well worldwide. From top-left: New World Capsicum annuum varieties include guajillo, ancho and New Mexico; a smaller Capsicum frutescens variety called “birdseye” chiles spread wild in Africa after birds spread their seeds from early gardens, and they are now common also in Southeast Asia; “Indian” chiles are among the most common varieties in India, which today grows and exports more chiles than any other nation. Bottom-left: Three popular capsicum peppers that took root in the Middle East — Maraş, Urfa and Aleppo, shown below in their flaked form — are used in dishes throughout the region. Bottom-right: Fresh serrano, poblano and ripe jalapeño peppers.
ESR said in his brief G+ posting:
More about the early and very rapid spread of capsicum peppers in the Old World than I’ve ever seen in one place before.
I also didn’t know they were such a nutritional boon. It appears one reason they became so entrenched is they’re a good source of Vitamin C in peasant cuisines centered around a starch like rice. My thought is that moderns may tend to miss this point because we have so much better access to citrus fruits and other very high-quality C sources.
The bit about paprika having been introduced to Hungary by the Ottomans was also particularly interesting to me. This was less than 30 years after they had reached the Old World.
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