Roosters are sometimes identified as “useless roosters.” They consume, but they do not produce and multiple roosters in a coop can create an unsettled environment (see the picture of the rooster chasing the hen!). When we buy chickens, hens cost $5, but the roosters are free. (If you [...]
Last night, we took a Kitchen Conservatory staff field trip to eat desserts at Sidney Street Cafe. Why? Because one of our own, Christie Saali (who started working at Kitchen Conservatory in 2000) is now the pastry chef at Sidney Street. We had to eat each and [...]
Now is the time to plant garlic, which will be harvested next summer. For days, it has rained and our garden was a soupy muck. Finally, we had a few warm, sunny days but a prediction of more rain tonight. We thought we had better plant while it was [...]
Over five days, 30 hours of cooking, we cooked 62 recipes! Wow, what a fun week we had for “Mastering the Art of Cooking.” This limited-size cooking class is an intense exploration of five cuisines: French, Italian, Latin, American, and Asian. One student commented on the last day, “I liked [...]
We’ve spent all week cooking: 25 hours of cooking class down, the last day — five hours — still to go on Friday. What a ride! For the classtakers, the highlights were the foods they thought they didn’t like (because they had eaten bad versions) — but now can’t wait to [...]
On her birthday, I served her favorite dessert, blueberry pie. A month later, friends were still clamoring for a chocolate birthday cake. Is it really a birthday if you can’t have your cake and eat it too? So we celebrated again.
I first made this cake for a party I catered 15 [...]
The end of summer usually means the end of fresh garlic, but we do have a few heads left from our bumper crop. We will sell it until it’s all gone — probably for another two weeks. Please drop by and pick up some garlic before the harvest is all gone. (Next year’s garlic crop arrives [...]
“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star,” wrote Brillat-Savarin in 1824.
Sheila Lukins, who passed away this weekend from brain cancer, discovered many new dishes and did so much for human happiness for countless home cooks. Her first cookbook, “The [...]
The New York Times has a front-page article in this morning’s newspaper sneering at Julia Child: her cookbooks actually use butter, pork fat, and gelatin! Instead of admiring her beautifully written recipes, the author of the article showcases a novice cook who makes beef bourguignon by opening soup cans.
No, I have not cooked [...]
Planked fish is a very old style of cooking food (Lewis and Clark ate fish cooked on planks by Indians on their 1804 tour), but is still a fashionable cooking method. Aromatic cedar wood is wonderful for imparting a wonderful flavor to food. Tonight we ate cedar-planked salmon (caught by [...]
Everyone is so excited about the movie Julie and Julia and the book Julie and Julia that we have added another session of our sold-out “Julie and Julia” cooking class on September 13.
Once a month, we offer a book club cooking class, “Novel Cuisine,” in which the class reads a [...]
Sea scallops are the single most popular menu item we offer at Kitchen Conservatory. This perfect nugget of shellfish pairs well with a multitude of sauces. Look for scallops in these upcoming cooking classes:
scallop scampi in Tuscany for Two (multiple dates) scallop paella on September 29 scallop pasta [...]
Ketchup is a simple sauce made of fruit, sugar, vinegar, and spices. But the fruit does not have to be tomatoes. Pick cherries to make a delicious ketchup! My favorite ketchup is made with cherries, specifically the tart Montmorency cherries. This year (unlike the last two years) [...]
“I want to make corn pudding.”
“Really? Do you have a good recipe?”
“Yes, it’s Julia Child’s corn pudding.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Julia Child cooked French food and corn pudding is not French.”
He searches through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Not there.
“When did you last make corn pudding?”
“Probably 25 years ago. [...]
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlights sweet corn in today’s food section: “When Anne Cori brings fresh-from-the-field corn into the kitchen, she immediately trims off a few kernels and pops them into her mouth. “I taste it for sweetness, and if it’s freshly picked and very sweet, I won’t boil [...]
So many delicious ears of corn and so many fabulous corn dishes — what’s a cornivore to eat first? Local corn is in. Fresh corn is delicious in so many dishes: soups, salads, salsas, souffles, puddings, omelets, pastas…the list is endless.
The best part of the corn is the “milk” or [...]
Our first potatoes from our garden! We grow Yukon gold and red Pontiac potatoes. I like the red Pontiac best and my husband prefers the Yukon gold. (A mixed marriage!) We steamed them, then tossed with roasted fresh garlic (yes, still available at Kitchen Conservatory), plus olive [...]
Everyone loves pasta and homemade pasta is actually very easy to make. Come learn how to knead, roll, and cut delicious homemade pasta in these upcoming cooking classes:
“The Best of All Pasta-ble Worlds” on July 14 at 6 pm with chef Vito Racanelli (cheese ravioli!)
“Journey Through the [...]
A perfectly fried food features a crispy, crunchy, yet delicately light coating. It is never soggy. It is never heavy. It is even good when it is a cold leftover. It begs you to eat more. It is possible?
Yes.
Battering up foods for the deep-fryer usually follow certain pattern. A wet [...]
On KMOXÂ radio today, a caller asked for a new pork tenderloin recipe. Here it is:
Ginger-Mustard Pork Tenderloin
1 pork tenderloin, silverskin removed 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1Â teaspoon ground cumin 1Â teaspoon ground coriander 1 teaspoon dry mustard 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground gingerCombine the pepper, cumin, coriander, mustard, salt, and ginger in a small bowl. Rub all [...]
We finished digging up the garlic today, despite the heavy heat. Here I am moving the bundles of garlic to a shed so that they can dry. (The chicken coop is in the background.) Yes, it is fun to drive a tractor!
We are eating garlic every day, so all [...]
What a great year for garlic! The heads are large and healthy. Here’s a picture of some of the garlic harvest, which we’ve tied in bundles.
“How long will the garlic last?” asked a customer yesterday. Garlic is a once-a-year crop, so I want to be able to [...]
Yesterday, my cousin exclaimed, “1200 garlic plants! What can you possibly do with all that garlic?” Today, I started to dig up the garlic and these really fresh heads of garlic are now available at Kitchen Conservatory. The crop looks beautiful. What to do with all that garlic? Pesto, roasted garlic [...]
Two years ago, we planted 12 red currant bushes and 12 black currant bushes. Currants are not a well-known berry in the United States because they were banned from commercial cultivation for most of the 20th century. They are legal now and I was eager to have [...]
In a participation cooking class recently, a student asked, “Is a tablespoon a large spoon or a small spoon?” The chef answered, “a large spoon.” The student then used a large serving spoon (about the size of 4 tablespoons) to measure the ingredients. Oops; we had to start over.
At [...]
Last year we experimented with growing tomatoes in the Florida Weave. It was fabulous, so we left the stakes in place to do it again. The Florida Weave uses twine, woven around stakes, to support the tomato plants. As the plant grows, we thread the branches through the [...]
A couple of brown bananas are sitting on the windowsill.
“How about banana bread?”
Banana bread takes an hour to bake. It’s after 8 pm.
“How about banana muffins?”
So I collect my supplies for banana muffins: muffin pan, butter, sugar, egg, flour, leavening, disher, but wait, we are out of [...]
Today I harvested 30 pounds of gooseberries, which is about a quarter of our crop. Anybody have any new gooseberry recipes? Because I think I’ll be making a lot of pie, jam, chutney, and fool!
Two years ago, I asked my husband to plant a gooseberry bush. He planted [...]
Certain food combinations are much more than the sum of their parts: tomatoes and basil; bacon and eggs; chocolate and raspberries. To this list, I must add goat cheese and honey. Just drizzling honey on goat cheese and eating on a cracker is a sensory delight. Inspired by this taste, I [...]
For those of you who are growing garlic, now is the time to snip the scapes.
Our garlic leaves are waist-high and even avid gardeners have said, “I didn’t know you grew leeks.” We don’t grow leeks, but the garlic plant looks like a giant leek. The scape (which [...]
Our chicken coop now has an addition — a nursery for chicks. The separate section protects the young birds from being pecked by the older hens. Toward the back of the coop is the wooden house with a roost and the nesting boxes where the hens lay eggs. [...]
Phyllo dough seems so simple: buy a box from the freezer case, defrost, brush with butter, and wrap around a filling. But the result tastes like paper, so is homemade phyllo dough worth the effort?
Maria Sakellariou, who teaches Greek food classes for Kitchen Conservatory (next one is [...]
Bakeries and pastry shops in Paris have a running competition on croissants: is it bread or pastry? Boulangeries sell yeasty doughy croissants and patisseries sell flaky buttery croissants. The first step to eating a delicious croissant in Paris is to go to a patisserie, not a bread shop.
So I have [...]
Parties are just more fun when they have a theme. I love duck, so why not an all-duck dinner? Great, except no one wants duck liver ice cream, so I served a mousse (not a goose or a moose) for dessert. I bought seven ducks, saved the livers, cut out [...]
My father always told me that the surest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But I have found that not any food works; there are some controversial foods that do not bring the desired outcome. But this particular dish is sure to result in satisfaction [...]
Our bees are angry and frustrated. The spring has been cool and wet, which has kept the bees inside their hives. What do you do when you are cooped up? Have sex. Yes, bees do do it. The bees have rapidly multiplied, which is good — except the crowd of [...]
When a food tastes really delicious, don’t just serve a little bit. Go all the way! Don’t just cook a couple of morel mushrooms; cook enough to satisfy demand! The morel hunting season has begun and there are plenty available. Pictured here are three pounds of morels [...]
The three ingredients that I always have in my refrigerator are butter, eggs, and heavy cream. Butter and eggs have a long shelf-life, but sometimes I run out of the more perishable heavy cream. What to do? My ace in the hole is a supply of canned [...]
The girls continue to lay; each hen lays an egg a day. We’ve been feeding them the weeds from the garden, which they love. They also snap up any bee that falls out of the bee-line to the hives. (Since chickens love to eat bugs and worms, [...]
What I learned from attending the Slow Food Trivia Night this weekend:
Pop culture sells better than slow culture. The event may raise money for “slow” foods, but the questions reflected fast foods. Topics included corporate jingles, corporate logos, and corporate cereals. Kraft and McDonald’s and Betty Crocker and KFC [...]
Today, we planted two rows of potatoes: red pontiac and yukon gold. Our garden is almost full; yesterday we put in green peas, spinach, and arugula. The garlic (on the right in the picture) was planted last October and is now ready to be weeded. Still to [...]
I have never sought the attention of clams, but never minded them when they appeared. I have scoffed at bottled clam juice, but understand that it has a purpose. When three dozen fresh clams presented themselves, my response was, maybe I should try out spaghetti with clam sauce. Wow. This dish [...]
What’s for dinner tonight? Do you want beef, pork, or chicken? It’s easy to get in a food rut. Recently I had an extra pound of tuna that needed to be eaten. The response was, let’s put tuna in the regular rotation! Nasi goreng is an Indonesian dish that compliments [...]
A customer walked into Kitchen Conservatory and asked about cookware.
“What kind of stove-top do you have?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Gas or electric?”
She had a blank look on her face. “I’m not sure.”
“Is the top of the stove smooth or is there a grate?”
“I’m really not sure,” she answered. She [...]
I love chicken-and-waffle restaurants. They combine the best part of breakfast and dinner: waffles with sweet syrup and salty fried chicken. Who needs bacon with your waffles if you can have crispy fried chicken? Chicken and waffles are a perfect Sunday food [...]
A difficult question to answer is, “how many does this recipe feed?” All depends, are you feeding football players or little old ladies? Is this dish the only food or part of an extensive buffet? Diners eat wildly different calorie amounts. I can serve what I think is an appropriate [...]
Twenty-five years ago, Kitchen Conservatory opened and started offering cooking classes and essential kitchen tools. Here are 25 things about us.
1. We love to cook and we love to eat. We are food-obsessed.
2. Our power breakfast is last night’s dessert.
3. On any given day, we make ice cream.
4. We are our own [...]
Want to impress? Bake a souffle! Here are the secrets to baking souffles. Make a bechamel sauce (white sauce), flavored with onion, salt, pepper, paprika, and freshly-grated nutmeg. Separate the eggs so that there is no trace of egg yolk (or fat) in the egg whites. Make the [...]
The first time I ate pasta was a revelation; I wanted to eat pasta every day for the rest of my life –Â it was so satisying. I was so smitten that I bought a pasta machine and learned how to make pasta. The best pasta of all was ravioli. I [...]
When I received the current issue of Gourmet magazine, I thought that there must be a mistake. The cover photo was the ugliest picture of food I had ever seen. The pasta looks cold and the sauce looks congealed. The flecks of cheese did not melt – are [...]
Longtime readers of this blog know that I have a jones for eggs. Whether the eggs are raw, semi-cooked, or fully-cooked, eggs add so much flavor and texture to food. We keep chickens and I enjoy eating freshly-laid eggs for breakfast. (We call our eggs, “Laid in Ladue.”)
The optimal cooked [...]
Would you rather eat homemade or store-bought cookies? Which cookie will taste better and be made with ingredients you can pronounce? Which cookie is safer — a cookie made in a home kitchen or a cookie made in a factory in an unknown location with unknown workers and potentially unknown ingredients [...]
Slice a baguette into 1/4-inch slices and toast on both sides. Rub the hot bread with a peeled clove of garlic. Top with one of the following toppings.
For the tomato topping, peel, seed and chop a fresh tomato. Season well with salt, pepper, chopped oregano and mint, and moisten [...]
1/2 cup toasted, ground pecans
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
7 ounces goat cheese
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Mix together the pecans, rosemary, cheese and pepper.
2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 French baguette, sliced and toasted
Heat the vinegar and sugar in a fry [...]
Over the transom came a recipe which I just had to try…because the first ingredient was a pound of butter. Reading further, the recipe instructs cooking the mushrooms for 6-8 hours in the said pound of butter. Wow. I did it and these mushrooms are indescribable. They are no mere fungi, but [...]
On a snowy Sunday, the best thing to cook and eat in front of a blazing fire is caramelized popcorn. Cracker Jack was invented in 1871 and a customer gave it the slogan, “the more you eat, the more you want.” It’s true, you cannot stop eating salty-sweet popcorn. It [...]
The most popular day of the year for a party is the first Saturday in December. Here are a few tips for successfully hosting a cocktail party:
1. Small, pre-cut morsels of easy-to-eat food are more popular than a hunk of cheese or meat that require the guests to cut and then place on a cracker. [...]
Today we roasted our turkey in the Big Green Egg — a charcoal-fired ceramic oven that is big, green, and egg-shaped. I stuffed the turkey, placed it on a v-rack in an 18-inch round aluminum cake pan, which fit perfectly in the Egg. The inside [...]
“Where’s the microwave? This chicken isn’t done!” I went over to help the lady who presented me with a beautiful chicken thigh — tender and succulent meat oozing with juice. There was the faintest trace of pink at the bone. Sigh. So many people are so scared of the horrors of [...]
It’s 6 pm and I’ve done nothing about dinner. My husband has a one-word answer: risotto. Twenty minutes later, dinner is served. Really. Risotto is our favorite fast-and-easy dinner. Sometimes we even serve it to guests, but it seems too simple.
What’s the best aspect of risotto? Creaminess. It’s so creamy that [...]
I am not fickle over fickles; I absolutely love my new-found treat: a pickled fig. The fig season is just ending, but run to make these delectables. Why? Fickles are delicious on a roasted beet-poached egg salad or as a condiment with lamb, pork, or chicken or with any gooey cheese. I’m [...]
A longtime customer called to say, “It’s green tomato season and I can’t find your gratin of green tomato recipe. I love that dish and I really want to make it. Where is it?”
Green tomatoes are not the first tomatoes of the season, but the last. The tomato plants have [...]
Do we eat like this every night? I hope not. Tonight the kitchen gods fought me. We lit the charcoal … and thirty minutes later realized that the fire did not catch. I defrosted a wonderful dish … and discovered that freezing had destroyed the texture and made it inedible. [...]
In cooking class the other night, a student asked, “What should I wrap cheese in?”
Being a smart-aleck, I responded, “cheesecloth!”
“Will cheesecloth keep the cheese fresh for a longer time?”
I don’t keep cheese in my refrigerator for a long time; I recommend buying and using it, not self-aging in your refrigerator. [...]
No, I don’t live on the shores of a raging river, but I did this morning. The excess rain of Hurricane Ike blew through and dumped five inches of water onto our neighbor – a dry creek. Suddenly the creek water was way up. Okay, I’ve seen water before. But, an hour [...]
In redoing and then posting our new website, I learned what customers really liked about the old website. So by popular demand, here are the two most requested recipes. No surprise that they are all about the butter! At Kitchen Conservatory, we use unsalted Plugra Butter in all of [...]
Twenty years ago, my husband planted two apple trees. They have never yielded any fruit until this year. I have made pie, crisp, and applesauce out of the few apples I was able to pick before the squirrels devoured the fruit.
“I stopped bothering to spray the trees years ago, because there [...]
There are two types of travelers: those who research and plan the very best possible experience (guide book in hand) and those who just wing it. I travel with a starting point and from then on, it’s anybody’s guess. My husband has been know to slam on the brakes for poultry [...]
The Culinary Book Club at Kitchen Conservatory (anyone is welcome to sign up and join us) is currently reading an especially good book. Over the last two years, we have read, discussed, and eaten from novels, memoirs, histories, and food politics and science. September’s selection is “Tastes Like Cuba,” a [...]
Fish is a source of food that can put the cook front and center with killing the animal that provides dinner — just ask anyone who cooks a live lobster. Last night, we went fishing and caught two large salmon and one small trout in the cool waters of Lake [...]
We just finished our annual Cookbook Fair (mark your calendar for next year during the first week in August), which offers such a wide and interesting variety of used cookbooks. Some of the comments written in the books are just as interesting as the printed recipes. In one cookbook, I found a type-written [...]
A weed is a plant out of place and some weeds are edible, such as dandelion greens. Last night, we tried purslane as suggested in the August issue of Sauce Magazine. Purslane is everywhere, so eating it seemed like an efficient way to weed control. Although I’ve seen purslane [...]
Today, we dug the garlic. Although the yield is quite small compared to last year’s bumper crop, the garlic looks beautiful and tastes delicious. I trimmed and cleaned the heads and now have some for sale at Kitchen Conservatory. Quantities are very limited.
To read more about using fresh garlic, see [...]
Today, we dug the garlic. Although the yield is quite small compared to last year’s bumper crop, the garlic looks beautiful and tastes delicious. I trimmed and cleaned the heads and now have some for sale at Kitchen Conservatory. Quantities are very limited.
To read more about using fresh garlic, see [...]
We have a beautiful Montmorency sour cherry tree that produced loads of fruit this year. I started picking cherries two weeks and made cherries jubilee. But the cherries were not quite ripe, so I waited for them to get better. Two days ago, I picked enough for a cherry pie. [...]
We have a beautiful Montmorency sour cherry tree that produced loads of fruit this year. I started picking cherries two weeks and made cherries jubilee. But the cherries were not quite ripe, so I waited for them to get better. Two days ago, I picked enough for a cherry pie. [...]
Today, I clipped off the garlic scapes, which are the seed pods of the garlic plant. The scapes appeared about 2 to 3 weeks later than usual, because of our chilly, wet spring. Some people enjoy cooking and eating the garlic scapes, but I find them stringy. [...]
Today, I clipped off the garlic scapes, which are the seed pods of the garlic plant. The scapes appeared about 2 to 3 weeks later than usual, because of our chilly, wet spring. Some people enjoy cooking and eating the garlic scapes, but I find them stringy. [...]
Spain’s Top Chefs Clash Over Ingredients and Culinary Innovations reads a headline in Sunday’s New York Times. Some Spanish chefs, particularly Ferran Adria, have been on the forefront of molecular gastronomy — the current food trend of changing the textures of food to create new food sensations. Molecular gastronomy applies [...]
More rain and now we have had twice the amount of rain as in a typical year. What does all this rain mean? Nothing has been planted this spring in our field of mud. The spring flowers look lush and marvelous, but the steady rain washes out the nectar in the [...]
The Belgians have invented some great foods: waffles, miniature cabbages, beer that tastes like champagne, and Belgian endive. Fully grown, endive is a curly, dark green, bitter leaf. But, over a century ago, a Belgian farmer mixed up his endive and asparagus and instead covered his endive crop with dirt to prevent photosynthesis [...]
After an action-packed week of hosting cookbook author Diana Kennedy as she taught classes at Kitchen Conservatory, here are some of the things we learned from the grande dame of Mexican cuisine:
This view is from my back yard: wild turkeys looking for love in the floodwaters. We have had so much rain and the field is so muddy, that nothing has been planted. I’m afraid we will miss the spring crops (greens and peas) and go directly to [...]
Jackie asks, “I planted garlic which I bought at your store last year and it’s about 8″ long — YEAH. What next and when — like when do I pull it out of the ground?”
For those of you who planted garlic last fall, the leaves should now [...]
If you like to cook, you can always make dinner out of the refrigerator. My refrigerator essentials are eggs, butter, and cream, so when in doubt, I make an omelet. My favorite way to complete a dish is to add a poached egg on top. Not sure what the dish [...]
Many traditional Italian cooks react in horror when they see anyone grate cheese on top of a pasta dish that contains fish or shellfish. It’s as though you just added a dollop of chocolate mousse on top of liver-and-onions. But what’s so wrong with fish and cheese; after all, the French do [...]
Have you ever read a recipe and just had to rush into the kitchen to make it? That happened to me today when I read about Hot Cross Buns. I had not made them in twenty years and they are delightfully yummy. The dough is a butter-egg rich dough [...]
Today the New York Times came out in favor of adding MSG to food on the theory that cooks cannot make delicious food without a synthetic additive.
Monosodium glutamate is an ingredient in nearly all packaged, processed, and prepared foods. Does it make food taste better? No, it gives food a chemical and [...]
By this time in February, the larder is empty from the last harvest. We’ve eaten all of our home-grown white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green peas (which we shelled and froze). We still have some garlic left, but the cloves are soft and sprouting. What should we eat on these dreary [...]
What is more controversial than religion and politics? Food. Is it possible to share love and a relationship with someone who eats different food from what you eat? In other words, can a vegan find happiness with a carnivore? Are interdietary relationships possible?
After all, couples are divided on religion only [...]
1. A beautiful fish from Bob’s Seafood at Olive and 170. Yes, timing is important, but what foodie doesn’t want fresh fish? I suggest bringing a couple dozen fresh oysters (along with an oyster knife) to the party and complete the gift by shucking the oysters [...]
