On episode 5 of this season’s Top Chef, contestant Chef Kenny Gilbert prepared a curried eggplant dish that won him first place in the challenge. The competition took place on a local farm in Virginia, and given that eggplant is in its peak season right now, he couldn’t have chosen a better ingredient to work [...]

In the first part of this series I focused on vinaigrettes, which are usually my go-to choice for dressing a salad. I can’t resist a properly made Caesar salad, though, and once I learned how to make an exceptional one from scratch it was hard to have it any other way. Creamy emulsifications have their [...]

Part I: Vinaigrettes
It has been many years since I have counted a store bought salad dressing among my pantry staples. In my opinion, it is pointless to prepare a fresh homemade salad only to offer a selection of prefabricated bottled concoctions along side it. The veggies quickly become muted by an overbearing blend of artificial [...]

I have had a lot of people ask me to include a post on basic knife skills. Like anything else, the more hands on practice you have, the more natural and comfortable a skill can become. Most home cooks don’t spend enough time repetiitvely chopping, slicing and dicing ingredients to have it become second nature, [...]

Investing in a personal ice cream machine may seem like a frivolous expense, but when you compare the cost and quality of making your own against what’s available from the store, it’s worth another thought. That is, if you’re serious about good ice cream.
I’m guessing that most people who attempt to make the homemade variety [...]

When I was in culinary school, in order to pass Basic Cuisine, the entry level course in savory food, every student needed to perfect the art of making an omelette. I say “art” because according to my French instructor, there is a very precise way of cooking this egg concoction so that it turns out [...]

With the start of December I start to notice signs that Winter is quickly approaching. Darkness begins to descend earlier, the streets are hushed as people bustle indoors, and the stark chill in the air is broken only by the distant smell of smoke coming from a chimney.  Instinctively I look for ways to create [...]

Properly cooking a piece of fish is a technique that seems to elude many home cooks. I believe that it stems from an insecurity of cooking at high temperatures and the fear that fish is too delicate to withstand serious heat. The reality is that cooking fish can be one of the easiest things to [...]

Learning to make the trinity of stocks is one of the most essential skills you can add to your repertoire of cooking techniques. If there is a “secret” to really good cooking it is the fact that there are no shortcuts. It is a labor of love, and every layer of a recipe, regardless of [...]