Archive for January, 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.

I’ll never forget the first time I had Chai tea. It hadn’t become “trendy” yet; you couldn’t order it in a boxed concentrate.

This thread at Starbucks Gossip blog, regarding how to make Chai, is fascinating.

One poster mentioned that we’re in a war, and yes, you folks are fighting about whether or not to add water to Chai. Yes, that is amazing.

The way I first had it was in a Bodum tea kettle, with the spices, tea, and honey all added separately into milk.

The last time I had a “Chai latté” at Starbucks, it was lackluster. Something had changed. I wonder if it was a water or no-water variety.

Today I began listening to a recent podcast episode from The Splendid Table. Look for them on iTunes! It’s a public radio program I hadn’t heard before.

Here’s a variation on “broccoli cheese” soup that I think you’ll enjoy, especially for garlic lovers.

My ingredients are:

• water
• vegetable stock
• Gruyere cheese, cubed
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed
• salt, pepper
• 1 medium baking potato, boiled

Boil the potato in water until soft, 25 minutes. Add to a blender with the cubed cheese. Next, in the same water, boil the stalks of the broccoli for about 6 minutes. Add these, along with some of the cooking water, to the blender. Pulse the blender until all these are chunky. Add the garlic to the blender. Finally, cook the broccoli heads for 4 minutes, and add them to the blender, with some boxed vegetable or chicken stock.

Purée until smooth.

Cook this mixture over heat for 3-5 minutes, until it returns to the simmer. This soup does not use cream, but it does get thickness from the potato and body from the cheese.

I also made some bread to go along with the soup. Okay, I didn’t bake the the bread, but I did make the little dipping sauce.

In a blender, combine EVOO, a splash of vinegar, and garlic and salt. Purée. This is a very strong dip. If you want it less biting, cook the garlic in the boiling water for 3 minutes before adding it to the blender.