Say, for instance, that a recipe calls for the use of chicken or beef stock, and you don’t have any—what do you do? Quit, obviously. You are swine and do not belong in a kitchen, you worthless pile of elephant dung. In most cases, you may simply use water and compensate by being a little … Continue reading The Art of Substitution: Stock
Soups. Every now and then, we hear about someone who “doesn’t like soup.” This is preposterous. The notion that one can so succinctly dismiss the entire range of available food befuddles and vexes our open-minded little noggins. Yes, the entire range of available food! Anything can become soup! Anything! It won’t always make it … Continue reading Potato and Leek Soup
Really, this is quite simple, and unfairly good, and you will find yourself going out of your way to make something atop which to spread its goodness. While not overly concerned with conventional concepts of propriety, we do recommend you not completely abandon decorum by confusing your fingers for spoons (we recently made this at … Continue reading Doughnut/Pastry Glaze
From our perspective, there are only two types of doughnuts: the doughy, yeasty Krispy-Kreme style doughnut, and the cakey, dunk-me-in-coffe style doughnut. We have a soft spot for one, and a hard…err…spot for the other. Both are wonderful, and rest assured, there will be a post on the other style soon enough, but we’re feeling … Continue reading Glazed Sourdough Doughnut
Leeks are often overlooked in America, which is a certifiable shame since they are quite good. Leeks are fairly sweet, even raw, and very minimal cooking is required to accentuate that sweetness. Leeks are a part of the allium genus (like onions and garlic), but possess far less of its brother produce’s spice and sharpness. … Continue reading Leek “Mayonnaise” (Purée)
Here at Erubite, we’re all about misnomers! Well, pointing them out, anyway. “Ice-cream season” implies, rather boldly, we might add, that ice cream can be out-of-season—a preposterous and ignoble a notion as we’ve ever encountered! And while one’s duty to his or her stomach, at least from an evolutionary perspective, does not include the guzzling … Continue reading Basic Ice Cream
In our estimation, this a very good dressing. The pumpkin: seasonal. The spices: the right touch. The raw onion: the deliverer of nuance and heroic levels of “pop—” its light spice and freshness pleasantly suffuses throughout the mouth and nose, lightly tickling without inducing cough or sneeze reflex. Those same volatile (easily evaporated at room … Continue reading Pumpkin-Ginger Vinaigrette
Cattle, pigs, chickens, humans—our collective evolutionary sculpting has left little differences between land-dwelling Animalia musculature. The most pronounced differences occur in the fats of animals. Fat absorbs surrounding molecules and compounds rather indiscriminately, and as such are, for the most part, responsible for the differences in flavor between the meats that we consume. In … Continue reading On Fats and Refrigeration (a brief aside)
Get this stuff: Bone-in or deboned pork shoulder (whole or half) 1.5 Cups Beef, or pork stock 2 TBS Brown sugar 1 TB Fig preserve 2 TBS Salt 7-10 Peppercorns 1-2 tsp Mustard 5-6 cloves Garlic 1 sprig Rosemary 2 tsp Vanilla extract (really) Preheat oven to 250ºF (this is not set in stone, but … Continue reading Sous-Vide Vanilla Pork Shoulder
We’ll spare you the puns and the periphrastic descriptions this round—there’s no knead for all of that. Sorry… There is something about bread that people find intimidating. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that mixed flour, water, salt, and yeast enters an oven, and by some witchcraft, exits a baguette, or ciabatta, or boule (she … Continue reading No-Knead Bread—a.k.a The Gateway Bread
Erubite 