Archive for January 14th, 2008

I often hold to the dictum once communicated through his 1990s cable TV show, when David Rosengarten said that great cuisine can be had by using simple ingredients of the highest quality.

Simple here. Not sure these were all best-in-class ingredients, although it was satisfyingly delicious.

Mix the cut berries in 2 tsp. sugar, and set aside for at least 10 minutes. Hand-whip heavy cream in a chilled bowl with 1 Tbsp. sugar. Towards the end, add the scraped-interior of a vanilla bean. (Add the spent-bean to your sugar canister.)

Fill glasses with the berries, and top with the vanilla whipped cream. The smell is amazingly wonderful. (For a close-up showing the vanilla specks, see here.)

I have found various wine experiments interesting; the one where a red-colored white wine tasted “better” than the plain white one… and now this, that our brains fool us into thinking that pricier wines taste better.