Gourmet Live Blog

Category Archives: Kemp’s Kitchen

How Fresh Is Nine-Week-Old Bread?

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

These slices of bread look fresh, right? They certainly felt fresh to me when I snapped the photograph on Friday, December 21, 2012. The crusts curled—no breakage—as I pulled the slices from the bag.

But guess how old this loaf of bread is? I bought it nine weeks ago when I was testing the Turkish Spiced Meatballs for our New Year’s Eve Party Modern Menu. I knew it was a while ago, but I was shocked when I checked my receipts to discover I’d bought it on October 12, 2012.

Here’s the kicker: the loaf has been sitting at room temperature on my kitchen counter the whole time. I never refrigerated it or froze it. The loaf got lost amidst the clutter of a small New York City apartment kitchen heavily used by someone who loves to cook.

It’s not natural for bread to last that long at room temperature. When I was a kid, bread barely lasted four or five days without showing signs of mold. I shudder to think what a green furry mess a loaf from the days of my childhood would have become in only two weeks at room temperature. That’s why my mother insisted we store our bread in the fridge to help it last longer.

Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged bread, breadcrumbs, fresh bread, Kemp's Kitchen |

A Merry Christmas Breakfast

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Mikkel Vang

Good morning and Merry Christmas! Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, a holiday morning is an ideal time to indulge in the pleasures of a homemade hearty breakfast. Christmas traditions in our household begin with a big breakfast, and potatoes, eggs, and bacon still reign as the top choices. Even though our girls have become quite proficient with their hash browns, the real family favorite when it comes to potatoes is what is affectionately known as potato gratin, but titled Crispy Oven-Browned Potatoes on gourmet.com.

Think of it as a lazy person’s Pommes Anna, the French buttery potato cake. Instead of carefully layering thin slices of potato with melted butter, you quickly toss the slices with butter in a large bowl, then slide them into a shallow baking dish, and cook the gratin in a hot oven until the potatoes are, indeed, browned and crisp on top. Former Gourmet magazine food editor Melissa Roberts developed this winner of a recipe for the Christmas breakfast menu in the December 2008 issue of Gourmet. In fact, all her recipes for that menu are winners. Thanks to Roberts, we’ll also be making her Maple and Black-Pepper Bacon, as well as her Baked Egg Custard with Gruyere and Chives.

Fortified by the potatoes, eggs, and bacon in our bellies, we have the energy for unwrapping presents, as well as the cleanup afterwards, which is then followed by a long nap before dinner. That means there are only two meals to cook on Christmas Day. Now that’s what I call a gift!

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged breakfast, Christmas, Kemp's Kitchen, potato gratin, potatoes |

The Secret To Beautiful Cut-Out Christmas Cookies

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Lara Ferroni

With a blizzard sweeping across much of the country today and tomorrow, and only four days before Christmas Eve, this weekend is shaping up to be prime cookie-making time. There are few things more tantalizing than the aroma of buttery sweet cookies baking in the oven, but as much as I love the ritual of holiday cookies, I do remember being frustrated as a kid when the shapes I’d cut out didn’t bake up the way I expected. Details disappeared as the dough puffed and spread in the oven. Snowflakes morphed into unrecognizable blobs. Stars bulged and lost their points.

I didn’t know then that the secret to clean-edged butter cookies is to chill the dough repeatedly after it’s rolled out. You want the dough firm and cold when you cut out the cookies, and when you transfer them to the baking sheet, and chilly again when you pop a sheet full into the oven. The freezer makes quick work of this process. Five minutes is often all you need to firm up the dough. The refrigerator can do it, but it takes a lot longer.

Always chill your rolled-out dough on a baking sheet or flat tray. It needs a firm foundation. Being able to fit a baking sheet of cookie dough into the freezer is the reason why I’m a fan of refrigerators with freezers that are either on top or on the bottom. Side-by-side door designs often don’t allow the space for a large baking sheet on the freezer side. If you’re a baker, keep that in mind if and when you renovate your kitchen.

So keep the mantra of chill, baby, chill in your head this weekend when you’re baking, but forget about it when you’re shoveling the snow! And if you’re looking for a terrific recipe for Christmas cookie cut-outs, we are crazy about the salted brown butter cookies pictured above.

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged baking tip, Christmas cookies, cut-out cookies, Kemp's Kitchen |

The Gift For Italian Food Lovers: Coming Home To Sicily

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Courtesy of Sterling Epicure

If you’re looking for a gift for the Italian food lover in your life—and these days that description fits most Americans—grab a copy of Coming Home To Sicily. And while you’re at it, get one for yourself, too.

It’s far more than a cookbook focused on the unique food ways of the island that forms the toe of Italy’s boot-shaped country. It’s Fabrizia Lanza’s personal rediscovery of the taste treasures of her homeland. Lanza, the daughter of Anna Tasca Lanza, who opened and ran a well-known cooking school on her family’s estate in Sicily, left the island to study art history, and worked in northern Italy for many years as a museum curator, before returning home in midlife to help her mother with the school that she eventually inherited when her mother died in 2010.

With an art historian’s perspective, Lanza shares her excitement at learning how to recreate the taste memories of her youth. Just reading about making pasta reale (almond paste) from scratch, made me want to run right into the kitchen and start blanching almonds. Her orange marmalade makes you yearn for a piece of toast mounded with the glistening orange jam.

To say that the book is loaded with gorgeous photographs by Guy Ambrosino, a documentary photographer, is true, but the statement vastly understates how beautifully his pictures chronicle a way of life in which the growing, harvesting, and preparation of food form the underlying rhythm of each season. You can’t really fathom what it’s like to make Sicilian estratto, the intense, sundried tomato paste, until you see the Old World process Ambrosino captures. You can feel how hot the summer sun is in the pictures of the tomato purée spread on wooden tabletops in the courtyard to dry.

Nor did I have any idea of what the famed wild fennel—essential to pasta con le sarda (pasta with fresh sardines and wild fennel)—looked like until I saw Ambrosino’s photos of it growing on a hillside, then harvested and tied in a bundle on the back of a motor scooter, and finally in close-ups of it cooked. You just want to be there. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged Coming Home To Sicily, italian food, Italian recipes, Kemp's Kitchen, Sicily |

Holiday Baking Made Easier

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Courtesy of Norpro

Know about pastry cloths and rolling pin covers? They’re what my mother and grandmother swore by for rolling out pastry and cookie dough, but Mon Dieu, I never saw them used at cooking school in Paris, nor were they used by anyone in the Gourmet test kitchens. No, marble was the mantra for pastry, because it stays cool for those finicky French butter-rich doughs.

I’m tickled whenever something old-fashioned is new again, and pastry cloths with rolling pin covers—my mother called them rolling pin socks, and that’s exactly what they look like—are back in vogue. I see them for sale not only in cookware shops, but in the baking aisle of my local supermarket, which says a lot because Manhattan supermarkets are notoriously small and cramped with limited shelf space.

I couldn’t be happier about this development, because pastry cloths and rolling pin covers work like a charm. You rub a little flour into the cloth and the sock-like cover (once it’s on the rolling pin), then start rolling. The cloth and the cover hold the flour, creating non-stick surfaces, which helps keep the dough from absorbing it. The less flour a dough absorbs, the better the outcome. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged baking tip, cookies, Kemp's Kitchen, pastry cloth, rolling pin cover |

The Mysterious Case of The Cremini Meringue Mushrooms

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Lara Ferroni

For the meringue mushrooms to decorate her Tiramisu Yule Log, Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez definitely did not want to go the traditional route. “Do I have to do the boring white mushrooms?” she asked. “How about I add a little cocoa to the meringue and do mushrooms that look like cremini,” she continued, her voice rising with enthusiasm.

“Great idea!” I shot back, because although I’m a fan of meringues of any kind, especially ones made to mimic mushrooms, I’ve often thought they looked too bright a white up against the chocolate brown bark of the log.

When Eriquez turned in her Christmas menu recipes, she was particularly proud of how her mushroom idea turned out. “Just wait till you try them,” she told me, “they’re really cute.”

It’s no surprise, then, that her Yule log with the mushrooms was the first recipe I tested. Everything was going beautifully until it came time to pipe the cocoa-tinted meringue onto the baking sheet. The meringue was super stiff when I began folding in the tiny amount of cocoa Eriquez called for, but when I tried to pipe the “stems,” which are supposed to stand straight up on the baking sheet, the tops kept leaning over. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged baking tip, cocoa, Kemp's Kitchen, meringue mushrooms, Yule log |

The Holiday Cookie Baker’s Best Friend

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Courtesy of Casabella

With holiday cookie swaps in full gear, my vote for the greatest—and simplest—bakeware innovation goes to rolling pin spacer bands. They solve an ongoing baking problem—one that vexs holiday cookie bakers particularly—with a design solution so ridiculously simple that you wonder why you didn’t come up with the brilliant concept yourself.

The problem? Rolling out dough—whether cookie or pie—to an even and specific thickness. Eyeballing it is fraught with error, and a ruler, if you can find one—not easy in my cluttered kitchen—is a pain in the neck when you’re talking about 1/4-inch or less. Recipe writers have gotten in the habit of also giving the diameter of the rolled out dough, but that tidbit is only helpful on the first roll of something like a cut-out butter cookie dough. It doesn’t apply to the scraps.

The simple solution? Drum roll, please: Sturdy but stretchable silicone rings in varying thicknesses that slide onto the ends of your rolling pin and raise it above your work surface to the exact thickness you want your dough to end up being. All the guesswork and estimation is gone. Just roll your pin back and forth until it no longer encounters any hills or ridges of dough. This way you know for sure that your dough is even, which means the cookies will bake and color more evenly. No more burnt Christmas cookie tree trunks.

Several companies make the rings, and there’s even a rolling pin that comes fitted with metric-sized discs, but I particularly love the wide, brightly-colored bands made by Casabella that come in four sizes, ranging from 1/2 inch down to 1/16th inch. Because of their heft and intensely saturated hues, no way will I be losing track of these bands in my gadget drawer!

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged baking gadget, Christmas cookies, cookie tip, Kemp's Kitchen |

The Must-Have Book on Latin American Food

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Cover Image: Courtesy of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Maricel Presilla’s Gran Cocina Latina is not just the most important cookbook to be published this year, I’m convinced it will also prove to be a culinary landmark of the 21^st century. The fact that people of Hispanic or Latino origin are this country’s largest ethnic group was often mentioned during this most recent Presidential election. It’s a given that if you want to understand other cultures, the best way is through their food.

Presilla has written a veritable encyclopedia on the many cuisines and customs from all over Central and South America, based on almost 30 years of travel and research to unearth the secrets behind the vast array of flavors and cooking methods within Latin American cooking, which she describes in the first chapter as “the world’s first and greatest laboratory of intercontinental culinary ‘fusion.’”

And Presilla’s got the credentials to produce such an incredible tome. A Cuban by birth, she lived in Spain for several years before coming to the United States, where she got a doctorate in medieval Spanish history from New York University. But thank goodness Presilla didn’t stay in academia. She was so fascinated by food through her research that she eventually became a chef and co-owner of two restaurants in Hoboken, New Jersey: Zafra, a pan-Latin café, and Cucharamama, a more serious restaurant featuring what she describes as artisanal South American cooking. Her food is so good, she was named the Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic Region by the James Beard Foundation in 2012.

To say this 900-page book is encyclopedic might imply to some people that okay, it’s informative, but probably a bit dry and boring. Nothing could be further from the truth! Every time I open the book to a different page, I’m instantly absorbed and fascinated by the delightful and detailed story behind each recipe. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged Cookbooks, Hispanic food, Kemp's Kitchen, Latino food, Maricel Presilla |

The Ultimate Foodie Gift: The Bocuse D’Or Cookware Set

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Courtesy of Bocuse D'Or Foundation

If you’re looking for the ultimate gift for a very special someone who happens to be obsessed with food and cooking, consider the limited edition All-Clad Bocuse D’Or Cookware Set that was curated by chefs Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, and Jerome Bocuse. It comes with a worthwhile bonus: A portion of the sales will go to the Bocuse D’Or Foundation in the United States, which was formed in 2008 to support the training of aspiring American chefs for the Bocuse D’Or competition—the Olympics of the culinary world—held in Lyons, France, every two years. An American team has yet to win the prize, but there’s hope the Foundation support will help change that.

The set consists of six pieces: a skillet, four various-sized saucepans, and my personal favorite, a universal lid that fits any of the saucepans. The pieces are not sold separately. If they were, I’d be a sucker for that lid.

I have two All-Clad pieces in my home kitchen, both of which I treasure because they’re heavy and heat evenly, without hot spots. The All-Clad pieces in the Bocuse D’Or set are extra-heavy because the bottoms not only have a copper core, but that copper core is sandwiched between two layers of aluminum, which is then sandwiched between two layers of stainless steel. In assembling the Bocuse D’Or collection, Thomas Keller, chef/owner of The French Laundry in California and Per Se in New York, chose the pans he finds the most useful in his own kitchen. Williams-Sonoma has the exclusive rights on selling the set.

The 2013 competition is coming up in January, and the American team this time around is composed of chef Richard Rosendale of the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and his commis, Corey Siegel, a culinary apprentice at the Greenbrier. We’ll be rooting for you!

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged All-Clad, Bocuse D'Or, cookware, holiday gift, Thomas Keller |

Just In Time For Holiday Bakers: Red Walnuts!

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

If ever there was a perfect nut for the December holidays, it’s the red walnut. The skin covering the creamy white nutmeat is almost uncanny in its deep, beaujolais-red color. You might be tempted to think someone got frisky with a bottle of red dye, or suspect that there’s some wacky genetic modification going on, but in fact, it’s the result of grafting Persian red walnut trees onto the more common English walnut trees, because English walnuts are larger, creamier nuts.

Interestingly, what we call the English walnut is actually native to Persia. The English became linked with the walnut, not because they grew them commercially—they didn’t—but because English sea merchants traded them all around the world. These days, California produces about three-quarters of the world’s walnuts.

You’d never know a red walnut by its shell. It’s the same shade of beige as an English walnut. It isn’t until you carefully crack one open that the scarlet hue reveals itself. If the color doesn’t hook you, the flavor will. Red walnuts have a richer, nuttier essence, without the bitter tannins you often find in English walnuts. Once you try some red walnuts, you’ll find it hard to keep your hands out of a bag of them.

I can’t wait to make our Perigord Walnut Tart with them, or our Whole Wheat Bread with Walnuts and Cranberries. Holiday baking just got a lot more fun with these red walnuts! Supplies are limited, so be prepared to pay more for red walnuts. A good source is nuts.com.

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged holiday baking, Kemp's Kitchen, nuts, red walnuts, walnuts |

Thanksgiving Turkey Gravy: The Basics

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Romulo A. Yanes

Gravy. It’s the lubricant that makes overcooked turkey palatable, and perfectly cooked turkey that much better. It’s the magical liquid that anoints and unites the potluck of sides from various family and friends that get squished together on your plate.

The fact that the best gravy can only be made after the turkey is removed from the oven, during the 30 or so most stressful minutes of the whole day, when all the accompaniments must be heated and readied for their finishing touches, adds to the angst often associated with this beloved liquid.

But it needn’t be a nerve-racking process. The two best and easiest ways I know to make it involve flour in the form of a roux (a cooked mixture of fat and flour), or a slurry (a smooth mixture of flour and water). A roux-based gravy is made in a saucepan. The slurry-style gravy is made in the roasting pan. Both methods require a large liquid measure. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged gravy, Kemp's Kitchen, Thanksgiving recipe, turkey gravy |

My Mistake in Gourmet Holiday’s Caramel Pumpkin Pie

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Romulo A. Yanes

Terror for a food editor comes in the form of a phone call or e-mail. Whether it begins timidly, as in “I think there’s a mistake in one of your recipes,” or launches swiftly into an irate tirade, “Don’t you proof these recipes?” your body wastes no time jumping into action. Your stomach grinds your innards like a food processor, while your hands quiver like a barely-set panna cotta.

I went through the agony late last week when, thanks to a reader’s call, I learned of a mistake in the latest Gourmet Holiday Special Edition. And of all the recipes for it to occur in, my luck would have it appear in one of the most popular ones: Caramel Pumpkin Pie.

How did this happen? It’s a story of food styling trumping convenience, the space limitations of print media, my passion for making recipes as user-friendly as possible, and simple human error.

Did you notice how high the fluted crust is on the gorgeous pie above? That’s because it’s baked in a 10-inch metal quiche pan with 2-inch high sides. Do you have one of those in your kitchen? Me neither! The food stylist and art director knew the pan would make a stunner of a pie, but for many of us that pan is the “Oh, sh*!” part of the recipe. If you don’t have it, and there’s no alternative, you’ll turn the page. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged Caramel, Gourmet Holiday, Kemp's Kitchen, pumpkin pie, recipe mistake |

A Springform Pan Worth Springing For

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Courtesy of Williams-Sonoma

How many times has this happened to you? You’ve gathered all the ingredients you need to bake—in my case, I was testing Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez’s recipe for Gourmet Live’s Thanksgiving apple crostata (insanely delicious, by the way)—when you suddenly realize you don’t have the right-sized pan. The springform pan stashed deep in my cupboard turned out to be a 10-inch, not the 9-inch I needed for the recipe. Arrgghhh!

The closest cookware store to my apartment—where I now test recipes in a real-life kitchen—is Williams-Sonoma, about a 15-minute walk away. I love any excuse to wander around Williams-Sonoma, but bargain is not a word I associate with the place.

The sales clerk shows me the only 9-inch springform she has. This Kaiser LaFormer Plus pan (above) looks nothing like the light-colored and stained metal springform sides and bottoms that once filled a huge drawer in the old Gourmet magazine test kitchen. This new one is heavy, for starters, because it’s commercial grade steel coated with two layers of a non-stick ceramic surface. Heavy is a good thing with springforms, because the flimsy ones bend out of shape easily. And the locking mechanism on the side is serious. No baked good is messing with that lock!

The bottom is different, too. It’s wider, with an extra lip on the outside that makes the pan leak-proof. The Gourmet kitchen staff had a regular problem with butter leaking out of the old springform pans and onto the oven bottoms, causing smoke and a general mess. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged apple dessert, Baking, baking tip, Kemp's Kitchen, springform pan |

Get To Know The Shiny New Collard: Cascade Glaze

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

Getting a bit tired of kale? Then get into collards! Kale may be the “it” green of the moment, but collards are right behind them, ready to grab the spotlight. They’re both members of the brassica family, that super-healthy group of plants that include broccoli and cabbage. Collards are distinctive for producing large flat leaves that get so big, Adam and Eve would have found them quite useful.

I’m excited about a glossy new collard that’s beginning to appear at farmers markets. The Cascade Glaze Collard is distinctive because the leaves look as though they’ve been polished to a shine with beeswax. It’s unmistakable at the top in the photograph above, and bunches of them really stand out in farmers markets when piled next to regular collards, one leaf of which is in the lower half of the photograph above.

According to Uprising Seeds, the Cascade Glaze Collard may be new to gardeners and growers, but it’s actually an almost 200-year old variety that was resurrected and improved upon by three noteworthy plant breeders: Alan Kapuler, Carol Deppe, and Jeff McCormack. Dr. Kapuler is the co-founder of Seeds of Change and the president of Peace Seeds, a self-described planetary genome pool service, while Carol Deppe, another biologist, is a freelance plant breeder and author of The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times. Jeff McCormack is the founder and previous owner of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Although many of us associate collards as the slow-cooked greens of the South, collards can be cooked quickly, in three to four minutes, the way they do it in Brazil. Just roll up the leaves like a cigar, and thinly slice them into fine shreds, then toss them in a hot skillet with olive oil, garlic, or bacon.

This video of how to do it shows me removing the center rib, but these days, I’ve stopped doing that. The stem is not only edible, it also provides a welcome textural contrast to the leaves. And Cascade Glaze Collard stems are particularly juicy. Just roll up the leaves parallel with the rib, and start slicing. I cooked up a bunch last night for dinner, and we loved them. They were sweeter than regular collards, and who’s going to complain about that?

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged Cascade Glaze Collards, collard greens, greens recipe, kale, Kemp's Kitchen |

The Easiest Thanksgiving Side? Cranberry Sauce!

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Sang An

Get a load of this startling statistic: Seventy-four percent of Americans buy cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving as opposed to making it, according to the folks at Ocean Spray. What? So only 26 percent of us are turning those bags of berries piled high at the supermarket into homemade sauce?

Come on, people! Of all the iconic elements of Thanksgiving, cranberry sauce is the easiest and fastest to make. There’s the back-of-the-bag raw version in which you grind the cranberries in the food processor with sugar and a chopped-up orange, and the cooked version, which requires nothing more than dumping a bag of berries into a pot, adding sugar and water, and cooking it until the berries pop, a mere 10 to 15 minutes.

Despite the ease of making sauce from scratch, I think I know the allure of the jellied canned stuff. When I was a kid, my mother bought it until she discovered what a cinch the homemade sauce is. My brothers and I loved to open the can at both ends, push the cylinder of jelly onto a plate, then gleefully watch it slip, slide, and jiggle as we carried it out to the table. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged cranberry recipes, Cranberry Sauce, Kemp's Kitchen, Thanksgiving |

The Newest Tomato Sensation: Mini San Marzano Tomatoes

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

The perfectly red tomatoes above look a lot like bite-size grape tomatoes, don’t they? They’re actually miniature San Marzano tomatoes grown by Village Farms, a huge greenhouse and hydroponic company with facilities all over North America. Village Farms worked with a seed company to create what they’ve trademarked as the Heavenly Villagio Marzano,” which they claim is an authentic San Marzano tomato in a miniature size.

San Marzano tomatoes have rock star status among Italian food lovers. (For more about Italian food, check out Gourmet Live’s latest issue on Italy.) It’s considered the tomato for tomato sauce, and the fruit—yes, tomatoes are technically a fruit—grown near the town of San Marzano in the rich volcanic soil of the Sarno Valley (thanks to nearby Mt. Vesuvius) gets the European Union Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) status. If you’ve spent any time in the canned tomato aisle of a supermarket, you’ve seen the labels for San Marzano.

Village Farms introduced their fresh mini San Marzano tomatoes a year ago, and I’m amazed it took that long for them to show up at my neighborhood supermarket. Cute zippered bags of them suddenly appeared in the produce section last week. According to the Village Farm website, the Heavenly Villagio Marzano is being marketed as a healthy snack, to be eaten raw. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, Kemp's Kitchen, San Marzano tomatoes, Tomatoes |

The Canned Tomato Confusion

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

Do you get confused in the canned tomato aisle of the supermarket? I sure do. Canned tomatoes come in so many different forms—whole peeled tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, tomato purée, tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, etc.—that it’s enough to drive you crazy!

All I wanted to do was make a simple tomato sauce. But between the labeling nightmare I was facing in the supermarket this past weekend, and the hysteria of shoppers around me loading up on food with the impending arrival of Hurricane Sandy, I was getting pretty darn cranky.

For years, I’ve always bought canned plum tomatoes packed in juice, not in purée. What irked me was that so many brands today fail to specify that distinction in large type on the front of the label. Notice the two cans above. Both say peeled tomatoes, but La Squisita’s are packed in purée, while Sclafani’s are packed in juice. The only way to find out is to check the fine print on the ingredient list. It also seemed as though there are fewer brands that pack tomatoes in juice. Could canned tomatoes in purée be winning out over canned tomatoes in juice? Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged canned tomatoes, Kemp's Kitchen, tomato recipe, tomato sauce |

The Story Behind The Potato Ghosts

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Stephanie Foley

Of all the recipes I developed for Gourmet magazine, these Potato Ghosts are my favorite. There’s nothing unusual or special about the simple vegetable purée. It’s just that by the mere addition of two little seed “eyes” to each pointy mound of potato, the little “ghosts” suddenly anthropomorphize into individuals with characters of their own.

I’m sure I wasn’t the first to think of it. The idea came to me in the shower one morning when I was in the midst of creating a Halloween menu for Gourmet back in 1995. In the history of mashed potatoes it’s probably been done countless times before, but that didn’t stop me from trying it out myself.

The vertical squirts of “mash”, formed by a pastry bag, looked like miniature volcanic eruptions in the shallow baking dish until those little seeds were applied. The transformation from potato to person was instantaneous. When I pulled them out of the oven, the cute alert traveled around the office swiftly, and practically the whole staff wandered in for a look and a laugh.

The ghosts, along with the rest of the Halloween menu, were first photographed in the former home of photographer, Romulo Yanes. At the time, he lived in one of the old silk baron mansions in Patterson, New Jersey (Patterson was known as Silk City in the late 19^th and early 20^th century). The house was cavernous, with high ceilings and rooms that rambled on. All it took was a smoke machine to turn it into the perfect spooky stage set.

Several of the recipes featured in Gourmet Live’s Creepy Crawly Halloween issue under the heading, Eight Great Halloween Recipes were from that October, 1995 menu, and they were reshot in 2009: Witches’ Brew, Poppy Cheddar Moon Crackers, Black and Orange Halloween Pasta (revised and updated by Melissa Roberts in 2009), and Devil’s Food Cake With Chocolate Spider Web. Seventeen years later, the ghosts, along with their pals from that menu, never fail to bring on the smiles.

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged ghost recipe, Halloween party, Halloween recipe, Kemp's Kitchen, potato recipe |

Get To Know A Better Flat-Leaf Parsley: Titan Parsley

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

Titan parsley. Sounds like a giant of an herb, right? It’s the oxymoronic name of the parsley pictured above on the right. Compared to the regular Italian flat-leaf parsley on the left, it looks downright diminutive. But what it lacks in size—and who says small is a negative, anyway?— it more than makes up for in a dynamic, slightly sweet flavor.

“It’s like parsley unplugged, without the astringency of normally cultivated parsley,” said Dan Barber, the visionary chef behind Blue Hill in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, north of the city. “We love titan parsley because of the clarity of its parsley flavor.”

I’ve been buying titan parsley for several years now from Paffenroth Gardens farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City, described as “the Target of vegetable vendors” by Regina Schrambling in the New York Times, and a more apt analogy there isn’t. Owner Alex Paffenroth provides a panoply of produce, and he’s the only farmer I know of at Union Square who offers titan parsley. But Paffenroth doesn’t just grow it. He features it with an informative sign and prominent placement amongst his many offerings, so it’s hard to miss.

Although Paffenroth supplies plenty of the usual suspects in the vegetable world, “I’m always looking to try new things,” he says. When I mentioned how much I liked the titan parsley, he replied that it had proved to be a hit among chefs. “Which chefs?” I couldn’t help asking. When he told me that Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns are his biggest customers, I put a call into chef Dan Barber. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged Blue Hill, Dan Barber, herbs, Kemp Minifie, parsley, titan parsley | 2 Comments

How To Make The Best and Healthiest Popcorn

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Kemp Minifie

Photo: Kemp Minifie

Gourmet Live’s latest issue, Dinner And A Movie, along with Melissa Roberts’ popcorn recipes, reminded me that it’s been a long time since my husband and I have actually gone out to a theater to see a movie. Two adult tickets in New York City these days is a major investment. If you add the exorbitant cost of the movie theatre popcorn, the question becomes a choice between a movie or dinner in a restaurant, not both.

We also happen to be serious fans of popcorn. So serious, that we cheat when we do go to the movies: We bring our own popcorn. In a supermarket brown paper bag. Inside a plastic shopping bag. Inside a backpack.

Why bother? Because compared to the way we make our popcorn, movie theater popcorn doesn’t come close. Movie popcorn is usually way too salty, even for me—and I love my salt—but beyond that, we just don’t like the flavor of popcorn cooked in hot oil.

Call us popcorn snobs, but we think our homemade popcorn rocks. So much so, that we never seem to tire of it. A giant bowl of it counts as dinner more evenings than I dare admit to. Continue reading →

Posted in Kemp's Kitchen | Tagged hot air popcorn popper, Kemp's Kitchen, movie theater popcorn, popcorn | 2 Comments

Gourmet Live Blog

Category Archives: Kemp’s Kitchen

A Merry Christmas Breakfast

The Secret To Beautiful Cut-Out Christmas Cookies

The Gift For Italian Food Lovers: Coming Home To Sicily

Holiday Baking Made Easier

The Mysterious Case of The Cremini Meringue Mushrooms

The Must-Have Book on Latin American Food

The Ultimate Foodie Gift: The Bocuse D’Or Cookware Set

Just In Time For Holiday Bakers: Red Walnuts!

Thanksgiving Turkey Gravy: The Basics

My Mistake in Gourmet Holiday’s Caramel Pumpkin Pie

A Springform Pan Worth Springing For

Get To Know The Shiny New Collard: Cascade Glaze

The Easiest Thanksgiving Side? Cranberry Sauce!

The Newest Tomato Sensation: Mini San Marzano Tomatoes

The Canned Tomato Confusion

The Story Behind The Potato Ghosts

Get To Know A Better Flat-Leaf Parsley: Titan Parsley

How To Make The Best and Healthiest Popcorn

Search Gourmet Live

Gourmet Live Categories

Twitter

Facebook

Blogroll

Gourmet Live Blog Archive