Am I good at cooking or do my people-pleasing tendencies make me really good at following directions? Because at the end of the day, all I’m doing is reading a recipe. Something that anyone can do! I’m not being self-deprecating here. I have never set out to be a professional, nor do I want to be. I just enjoy being in the kitchen (and eating) and it’s fun to make exciting dishes (so that I can eat them).
To give myself some credit, following a recipe is lowkey a skill. You can’t skim the directions – it’s not your IKEA furniture! So here I’ve outlined a few tips that have helped me out in the kitchen.
Read the recipe. No, seriously. That’s the first tip. Read the recipe all the way through (no skimming!) before you even touch that mixing bowl. This alone can avoid a ton of mistakes. Like discovering the pie you were going to make for after dinner requires 12-hours of refrigeration. Or realizing something calls for a stand mixer when all you have is a whisk and limited arm strength.
Mise en place is your friend. This cooking term is French for “putting in place” and it means exactly that – measuring ingredients, chopping veggies and prepping all your ingredients before you start cooking. It’s a great way to get (and stay) organized as you cook. It also helps avoid the “I thought I had milk in here…” when you’re already knuckles-deep in a recipe.
Invest in a food scale. If you want to get serious about baking, I recommend getting a food scale. Any professional will tell you that precision and accuracy are keys to successful baking. The only way you can get that is by weighing your ingredients with a food scale.
Know your source. We all love a good two-hour Pinterest scroll, but personally, I avoid recipes that are from some random housewife named Pam. (No offense! After all, I too am no professional and still choose to publish this newsletter every week.) I just want recipes that have been properly vetted and tested, so I look to professionals or publications like Bon Appetit or NYT Cooking.
A few blogs that I do really enjoy are Half-Baked Harvest, Lani Bakes, The Candid Appetite, and Carolina Gelen. I’ve cooked and baked many things from them with great success!
August Cookbook: Dinner in French by Melissa Clark
I always wondered what made green bean almondine so good, or in this case, asparagus almondine (pg. 225). For this recipe, I steamed the asparagus slightly before placing it in a skillet with frothy butter to finish cooking. I toasted the sliced almonds in the butter beforehand and then I gently tossed them with the asparagus. Topped with lemon juice and herbs, it tasted way better than any almondine I have tried to make in the past. I ate it with some fresh-made green chile mac ‘n’ cheese I bought from Marczyk Fine Foods.
Gingerbread is one of my all-time favorites, so the gingerbread mousse (pg. 311) was a must-make for me. I started with the pain d'épices (pg. 263), which is the French version of gingerbread. (Fun fact: This recipe dates back to the Middle Ages!) For the mousse, I whisked together crème fraîche, heavy cream and sugar, then folded in chunks of the cake with crystallized ginger, honey and nougat. Um, is it Fall yet??
For dinner one night, I made the hake with herb butter en papillote (pg. 145), substituting the hake with haddock because that’s what I had in my freezer. Cooking anything “en papillote” (baked in a little pouch) is both dramatic and practical – dramatic in the presentation because you can rip open the parchment to eat it and practical because you can just toss the parchment when you’re done and keep it movin’! We love to see it.
More asparagus, baby! The asparagus, goat cheese and tarragon tart (pg. 112) is shown on the front cover of the book and it had my mouth watering from the moment I picked it up. It calls for store-bought puff pastry, and as Melissa states, “it’s so easy, it feels like cheating.” I’m definitely keeping this recipe in my back pocket for future dinner parties.
This scalloped potato gratin (pg. 245) recipeis enough for 6-8 people, so I did my best to cut it in half. But since I used a brownie pan instead of a baking sheet, it didn’t turn out as pretty as the photo with its perfectly scalloped potatoes. Mine looked more like a jumbled mess, but hey, it’s all about how it tastes. And it’s pretty much impossible to mess up creamy, cheesy potatoes.
Goat cheese and figs are one of my favorite combinations, especially when it comes to desserts, so the tarte au fromage with goat cheese, creme fraiche and honey-drizzled figs (pg. 280) had to make my list. Crumbled shortbread cookies (in my opinion, an underrated cookie) make up the crust and the filling is a rich, creamy custard. Soooo who's coming over for some of these leftovers?!
In other news…
I bought this heavy-ass marble pastry board. It makes a great photo backdrop!
I had an amazing jazzy dinner at Nocturne for Rebekah’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Rebekah!
I whipped up this pasta dish while hungover and it actually turned out very, very good:
Make your favorite ravioli per package instructions, cut and roast some asparagus spears in a little olive oil, top it all with a few scoops of ricotta, olive oil, lemon juice and then season with salt and pepper.
Thanks for reading, sweeties! 🍎