I find it amusing to be excited about a lifetime of school. What school could I possibly want to go to for the rest of my life? Cooking school, more specifically Rouxbe’s online cooking school. To have such a wealth of knowledge and expert video instruction at my fingertips 24/7 is almost like having a secret cooking super power.

If you have been toying with the idea of becoming a lifetime Rouxbe member, you need to make your move! Rouxbe is discontinuing the lifetime membership offer after tomorrow, but you can get in on it before it’s gone and save $50!

For $249 you’ll lock in endless access to their stellar content. The offer ends Wednesday Sept. 15^th, so there’s no time to waste.  

I’ll share a Rouxbe technique video on how to butterfly a chicken as a little reminder of what great content they provide.

Don’t wait or the offer will be gone.

TableFare is an affiliate site to Rouxbe and if you buy a membership to Rouxbe by following our link we donate our commission to Share our Strength.

I grew up in a food family. Cooking and talking about food was an integral part of every day. Phone conversations with my parents quickly turn to what we have been eating and cooking. The recap of a recent trip they took to Tahoe, for example, was a riveting 15 minute discussion about a leek tart they’d had at a restaurant, oh yes, and the skiing was good.

My kitchen skills are basically self-taught with a few weekend or evening classes thrown in here and there over the years. I’ve always done fairly well following recipes, but have certainly had my share of spectacular disasters, excuse me, “learning experiences.” Though rather competent at producing a dish with the aid of instructions, I was utterly baffled by the knowlege that chefs make up their own recipes. How do they do this? I figured it was their special talent and that’s why they are chefs.

My secret dream has always been to one day have enough spare time and money to go to culinary school for the fun of it. Schools like the Culinary Institute of America do offer week-long boot camps for obsessed hobbyists like me, and I read Martha Rose Shulmans’s  book, Culinary Boot Camp: Five Days of Basic Training at The Culinary Institute of America, with great envy.  That is, until I got to the part about them having to create a meal themselves, inventing the recipes. That struck me as terrifying, would I really be able to do that?

Then I discovered www.Rouxbe.com, an online cooking school with the curriculum of a professional culinary program. It wasn’t long after working through my first few lessons that it started to click; cooking techniques are independent tools applicable to any food, and recipes are just ingredients and flavors layered over these core techniques. Having been an avid cook for 20+ years, I knew ingredients, flavor combinations, and had experience making countless recipes, but for the first time I was seeing cooking approached from a technique perspective rather than a recipe and it was exhilarating. It was as though a secret code had just been unlocked. All of the sudden I understood how it’s possible to just go in the kitchen and cook; to create a fabulous dish without a recipe.

One of the first videos to really change what I was doing in the kitchen was this one on using a chef’s knife. I knew about the tucked finger technique, but I never really mastered it until I watched this.

Once I learned how to properly heat a pan, food didn’t stick. Once I learned how to properly control the heat on my pan, I could actually make a pan sauce because the highly coveted “brown bits” were brown rather than black. Once I learned how to pan sear a piece of meat, I could cook any piece of meat, with any flavors and any additions. Who needs a recipe?

Rouxbe has had a profound impact on my cooking skills and I am ecstatic to be able to share this magnificent resource with you now that we are an official Rouxbe affiliate site. Not only will you see Rouxbe videos tucked into my posts here and there to illustrate this or that, but I get to offer you a free 14-day premium membership! The text versions of their recipes are available for free, but you need a membership to access the video demos and cooking school content, so take advantage of the 14-day free trail to explore all the content on their site. If you get as much out of it as I did, you will be like me and  buy a membership without hesitation.

Click here to get your FREE
14-day membership to Rouxbe!

Rouxbe donates 10% of every premium membership purchased to hunger relief agencies. In that spirit, TableFare will donate 100% of our Rouxbe affiliate commissions to Share Our Strength (Please use any Rouxbe link on our site so we get credit for your purchase). This organization does outstanding work to end child hunger in the US. I am an enthusiastic volunteer in their Operation Frontline program helping to teach six-week cooking and nutrition classes to low income families in Seattle. I hope you love the Rouxbe site and will become a member and help us raise some money for Share Our Strength! Also, I encourage you to volunteer for Operation Frontline in your community.

I’d like to introduce you to one of the founders of Rouxbe and let him tell you about the inspiration behind their unique approach.

Please visit Rouxbe and enjoy your complementary 14 day premium membership! I’d love to hear about what you are learning, so come back and leave a comment once you have a chance to poke around their site.

Visit our Rouxbe affliate page for more information.

I was thinking ahead when I made all that dulce de leche over the weekend. As it happens, for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie group it’s Dulcle de Leche cookies!

I’ve made these before so I knew they would be good, which is one of the reasons I wanted to try making my own dulce de leche, which if you read that post you will see was only marginally successful. I ended up with dulce de leche that was too thin to act as a cookie filling, so my solution was to mix in some leftover chocolate ganache I had in the fridge. It turned out to be a deliciously perfect solution!

This recipe suggests spooning out rounded teaspoons of dough, but I found making such tiny cookies it to be entirely too slow a process. The last time I made these I must have scooped out much larger cookies. I reached for my pastry bag and had an entire sheet pan piped out in no time.

Piping Tip
A gental tap on the top of each cookie with a wet finger will press down the points. This wet finger trick works for smoothing piped meringue and pâte à choux dough as well.

My pastry bag fitted with a smaller tip made quick work of filling the cookies . To avoid filling too many halves and being caught without tops or having to hunt for a similarly sized top, I stacked the cookies in stacks of similar diameter. Grabing them two at a time I placed each duo upside down on a sheet pan, piped the filling, and sandwiched them together.

These are soft cookies and I preferred the ones I let bake to a deep golden color because they had a nice crispy outer crust.  After storing them in an airtight container overnight, they became very soft and cakey. Serving them the day they are baked is the way to go. The soft texture of the cookie screamed  ice cream sandwich to me and I have no doubt that someone in the Tuesdays with Dorie group will have had the same idea and filled their cookies with dulce de leche ice cream.

Thank you to Jodie of Beansy Loves Cake for selecting the recipe this week. She has it posted on her blog if you feel a dulce de leche craving coming on.

Disposable pastry bags
I always keep a stash of disposable pastry bags on hand. You can buy them at any restaurant supply store, most kitchen stores and online. I find the fabric bags difficult to ever get clean after filling them with buttercream or chocolate, so I prefer the disposables.  

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 118 recipes completed 103 to go!

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is supposed to feature raspberries, but berry season is just a fantasy this early in the year, so the ever diligent understudy to fresh berries, dried cherries, stepped in and delivered a delicious performance.

I soaked the cherries in ¼ cup Armagnac along with a couple of sprigs of fresh sage, and then enjoyed a showy flambé before layering the cherries in the bottom of the crust.  The chocolate custard filling has the texture of pot de crème; rich, velvety and dense. Beautifully satisfying on the tongue and perfectly accented by the shortbread-like crust.  The cherries softened and plumped without giving up the nice chewy quality of a dried cherry.

As has happened before when baking with Armagnac, the flavor completely disappeared in the finished tart, but it did the job of hydrating the cherries so all was not lost. Next time I will choose a different liquor or use orange juice. I was very excited about the sage infusion, the flavor of which was also nonexistent in the final product. After getting the filling mixed and ready to pour in the shell, I realized my missed opportunity. I should have infused the sage in the cream and butter as it was brought to a simmer. It’s already noted in my book for next time. There is something powerfully appealing to me about the combination of chocolate, cherry and sage.

Once again I managed to over whip the cream. I have a slow brain relay when it comes to noticing that the cream looks perfect and actually turning off the mixer. Crumbly looking cream flirting with the idea becoming butter is no way to garnish a dessert. I prepare for the inevidable indiscretion by never pouring all of the cream in the bowl to be whipped. Hand stirring in a bit of liquid cream recreates the lovely billowy softness that existed in the bowl 20 seconds before I generally manage to turn off the mixer. 

Thank you to Rachelle of Mommy? I’m Hungry! for selecting such a fantastic recipe this week.  I’ll be revisiting this one when fresh berries are abundant. You will find the recipe posted on Rachelle’s blog if you are interested in making a really straight forward exceptionally lovely chocolate tart for yourself.

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 117 recipes completed 104 to go!

The most important thing to establish about this cake is that you don’t need a birthday to make it because it’s easy and tasty enough to make for no specific reason at all. This cake has kicked me back in gear with posting my Tuesdays with Dorie baking adventures after completely losing my blogging rhythm due to all the traveling I did during November and December selling SpiceCare.

I am excited to share this because it’s such a classic chocolate cake with no funny business; it’s the kind of cake Mrs. Cleaver would make. There is the wonderful little twist of malt powder in the frosting, but chocolate malts were popular in the 50’s, so it’s not so out of character really. The frosting is sweet making a cold glass of milk the perfect pairing to serve alongside a slice. I found the texture to be much improved after spending some time in the refrigerator rather than eating as soon as it was baked and frosted (we just couldn’t wait!). The cake became a little denser and slightly fudgy after being chilled. If you  usually buy cakes or bake from a box, I encourage you to give this recipe a whirl. There is something so special about a homemade cake; it will be worth the baking adventure.

I didn’t mess with this classic one bit. I even stuck with the two layers to be true to a classic birthday cake. I usually prefer to split layers and assemble four layer cakes, but that just seemed too fussy for this recipe. For my taste, in the future I will bump up the malt a touch because it’s really subtle and substitute at least half of the bittersweet chocolate in the frosting with unsweetened chocolate just to tame the sweetness a tad. Because it is such a sweet cake I highly recommend using a dark bittersweet chocolate, something in the 70% cocoa solids range. Trader Joe’s sells a nice bittersweet chocolate that is very reasonably priced, Cost Plus generally has a nice selection of imported dark chocolates as do many grocery stores. Standard chocolate chips would be far too sweet, but if that’s all you have, just substitute some unsweetened bakers chocolate to compensate.

Since I’ve encouraged non-bakers to give this cake a try, here are a few cake baking tips that might be helpful if you are new to baking.

• Invest in a roll of parchment paper to line the cake pans with. Just cut out circles of parchment that will fit right in the bottom of the pan. I don’t find it necessary to grease the parchment paper. Don’t forget to peel off the parchement before assembling the cake!
• Check your oven temperature and adjust accordingly if it runs hot or cold.
• Room temperature butter is considered to be about 66-68 degrees F. Easy to cut and spread, but not so warm it’s squishy.
• Room temperature ingredients incorporate better than cold.
• Take the chill off eggs before adding them to a batter by placing whole eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for 3-5 minutes before cracking them.
•  Take the chill off milk or other liquids with a quick blast in the microwave; just enough to remove the chill, not enough to make it hot.
• Avoid leveling a measuring cup of flour by shaking it. This compacts it and you’ll end up adding too much flour. The best method is to spoon flour into a measuring cup and then scrape it off level using a knife. Or even better weigh it; 1 cup of all purpose flour weighs 5 ounces.
• Take your time letting the butter and sugar cream. This process beats air into the ingredients which will enable the cake to rise in the oven.

For the recipe for Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake visit Laurie of Slush. She is the mastermind behind creating this baking group which has been cranking out weekly treats for two years now! She selected this week’s baking task and has the recipe posted on her blog.

Though I haven’t been blogging lately, I have been cooking and baking and will have a lot to share in the coming month as I catch up with my posts. Happy New Year!

Over 350 baking bloggers are baking our way thorough Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: From My Home to Yours. 107 recipes completed 114 to go!

I had  fun over the weekend doing a cooking demonstration of low cost meals at a community fair organized by The City of Lake Forest Park, WA. They brought together all sorts of community resource agencies sharing information to help people navigate these difficult economic times. 

One of the agencies participating was Solid Ground, an organization I volunteer with. In partnership with Share our Strength, a national anti-hunger organization, Solid Ground runs a free six week cooking and nutrition program called Operation Frontline, designed to help people on a low income build skills to maximize their resources by learning to cook healthy low cost meals

All of the meals in the program are designed to cost less than $1.68 per serving, which is the amount of money a person on food stamps has to spend for each meal. In the demo I made a White Bean and Chicken Chili with Fresh Basil and a Northwest Apple Salad. These are quick and really flavorful dishes that aren’t fussy to make and can easily be adapted to all kinds of variations. These dishes won’t remind you of your starving student days, in fact I wish I had eaten like this when I was a starving student.

The chili is finished with fresh lime juice and basil, which delivers a bright flavor and fresh satisfying aroma.  The apple salad is simply dressed with a little plain yogurt, but of course I turn to spices to take it in a variety of directions. At the demo I had three versions for sampling, one with cinnamon, one with ground fennel, and one with ground coriander. All work great with apple and it was fun to see apprehension turn into delightful surprise as people tasted the different versions. The different spices pull differnt flavors of the apple forward and lend a nice flavor complexity to what couldn’t be a simpler salad.

It might seem like cooking with a variety of spices would be too extravagant when on a limited budget, but I did some research to show that’s not the case at all if you know where to shop. I expected bulk spices to be cheaper, but I didn’t realize how much cheaper, even when buying from a specialty spice store. The difference in cost per ounce is dramatic enough, but when you consider that with bulk purchasing you only buy what you need for a few months, which in most cases an ounce is more than enough, so cash isn’t tied up in large expensive jars of spice that just sit in the cupboard. The jar of grocery store brand cinnamon was priced at $3.89 (1.75 oz.) , whereas buying an ounce of bulk cinnamon only requires  $0.41, or a $1.00 out of pocket.

Share our Strength partners with different organizations all over the country to implement the Operation Frontline classes. Visit their site to see if there is a group in your community you can get involved with. It’s a great program.

Crystallized ginger sounds difficult and time consuming to make, at least that’s what I thought until I actually did a little research on how to make it. It’s easy, and if you are fearful of candy making because of the fussy steps involved with washing down the sides of the pan to avoid sugar crystal formation, this is the project for you; it’s all about creating sugar crystals!

photo by David Peterman

It seems like Asian markets always have the most gorgeous, fresh, young, ginger for sale, so that’s where I shop when I am making this. The most potentially tedious part of the process is peeling the ginger, but I have a great tip for you if you haven’t already discovered the spoon technique. I learned this years ago in an evening cooking class. To me, this tip alone was worth the entire cost of the class and it wasn’t even the point of the class, just a passing comment. Simply scrape the skin of the ginger off with the side of a spoon. A spoon takes off the thin skin easily and without removing a bunch of ginger with it. It also leaves the ginger root nice and smooth. When I use a peeler or a knife, I seem to leave all kinds of angles and cut marks behind. The spoon is fast and really easy to maneuver around the bumps and contours of the root.

photo by David Peterman

I experimented a bit with this batch to see what would happen if I added a vanilla bean, cardamom and cinnamon. Something good happened. The vanilla, cardamom, and cinnamon are subtle but noticeable right up front in the sugar coating, then the bite and heat of the ginger hit followed by a lovely soft lingering vanilla flavor. Home-made crystallized ginger is darker in color than commercial product and the added spices add even a little darker color, but I like the look of the speckles.

photo by David Peterman

In addition to a wonderful stash of crystallized ginger this recipe generates a sugar by-product that is fantastic to baking with. The excess sugar is infused with the ginger and spice flavors and would be wonderful in your next batch of brownies, pancakes, or cookies. It is very clumpy, but a quick spin in a food processor breaks it down to a nice fine texture.

Spiced Crystallized Ginger

1 lb. fresh young ginger root
water
1 vanilla bean
20 whole cardamom pods, cracked open
2″ piece of True Cinnamon stick or Cassia Cinnamon stick
1 lb. granulated sugar, plus 1/2 cup
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

Peel the ginger and slice into 1/4-1/8 inch thick slices. Place the ginger slices in a 3 qt. sauce pan and add enough water to cover. Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds from the pod, then add the seeds and pod to the ginger. Add the cardamom pods and cinnamon stick. Bring the ingredients to a boil and cook at a simmer for about 40 minutes until the ginger is tender.

Drain the ginger and remove the pieces of spice. Don’t worry about the little cardamom seeds, but be sure to remove the tough pods. In the empty sauce pan, mix 1/3 cup water with 1 lb. of sugar and bring to a boil. Add the ginger and cook at a boil, stirring frequently, for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to cook and stir until the syrup begins to thicken, another 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix 1/2 cup sugar, ground cinnamon and cardamom together in a medium bowl and set aside. As the ginger mixture begins to thicken the syrup will look like foamy bubbles when stirred rather than bubbles in liquid. At this point, using tongs or a  fork, lift the ginger pieces out of the pan into the sugar mixture and toss to coat. Once the ginger is well coated spread it out on a sheet pan to cool. Let it sit for a few hours to dry and then transfer to an airtight container. It will keep at room temperature for 6 months.

Collect all the extra sugar and process in a food processor until it is a nice fine consistency. Store in an airtight container to use in your next baking project. This sugar would be great in brownies, pancakes, or cookies.

Back in August ’08 I posted a tip on freezing egg yolks, so here is the other half of the story. Freezing egg whites doesn’t require any tricks; they freeze well and when thawed behave like egg whites that haven’t been frozen, even retaining the ability to be whipped into a nice foam. The trick for me was figuring out a good system for freezing egg whites.

photo by David Peterman

Over the years it seems that whenever I generated a lot of spare egg whites during a cooking project I would freeze them. I would even get around to using the frozen whites, but forgetting to label the container with how many whites it contained made using them annoying, as it required digging out a book to look up the measurement of a typical large egg white (2 tablespoons per white and 1 tablespoon per yolk). It was the single egg white that tripped me up. I would think, “I should freeze this,” but usually feeling pressed for time, I wouldn’t want to bother and would toss it justifying that it was just one egg white. Over time, I started feeling like those “it’s just one egg white” moments were adding up and it was bugging me.

What I needed was as system! Something easy to do in the middle of cooking that I would do every time I was faced with a spare egg white. Small Ziploc plastic containers were the answer.

I have a stack of these little bowls with snap-on lids (no spills) and anytime I separate an egg and will not be using the white, I separate the white into this container, snap on the lid and toss it in the freezer. Every time! Only one white is allowed per container. The next day, or the next time I open the freezer and have a moment, I process the frozen white. It takes all of about 30 seconds: run warm water over the outside of the container, pop the frozen white out onto a piece of plastic wrap, wrap, date, toss in a zip-top freezer bag with the other frozen whites.

I now have a nice collection of frozen egg whites at the ready and have taken advantage of them numerous times when making buttercream frosting and various other things. Buttercream is particularly gratifying because I use six whites and don’t end up generating a bowl full of orphaned yolks in the process. The best part is it’s saving the random single white that really builds my stash. Having a system in place makes freezing them an automatic process. I feel good!

I have been caught on more than one occasion needing citrus zest for a recipe and buying a lemon or an orange just so I can harvest the zest. Annoyingly, I have often just used a lemon or eaten an orange a day or two earlier and the now much needed zest is languishing in the compost bin.

photo by David Peterman

It finally occurred to me to harvest citrus zest when I have it even if I don’t need it at the moment.  I place the zest of one lemon or one orange in an ice cube tray compartment and add enough juice just to bind the zest and keep it hydrated. Once frozen, pop each one out and store them in a freezer container.

I find it helpful to do the same thing with lemon juice when I have extra lemons around that might go bad before I can use them. The joy of being one step ahead of myself by having zest and juice in the freezer when I need it, is immensely satisfying.

Ice cube trays are great for freezing extra chicken stock, tomato paste, and pesto as well. I especially like the trays with flexible silicone bottoms, the frozen contents pop right out with a little push.

More cookies this week for the Tuesday with Dorie bakers. Ulrike of Kuchenlatein selected Grandma’s All-occasion Sugar Cookies as our task for the week. Sugar cookies are so festive and pretty, but often don’t actually taste very good. The two pitfalls most likely to doom adorable cut-out cookies to being just pretty decorations rather than something you actually want to eat, is too much flour in the dough and over-handling the dough. Dorie Greenspan’s recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours, sets the baker up for success with a butter-rich formula that also uses an extra egg yolk for added tenderness. 

When it comes to rolling out dough, I say you get two shots and then it’s game over. Careful planning to minimize wasted dough between cut-outs is critical. Or, you can simply roll the dough into a log and slice off cookies, wasting nothing; efficient, but not quite as decorative. The problem with  butter-rich dough is it is very soft and sticky, so patients is required while giving the dough frequent chill breaks in the fridge. After last week, rolling dough out between waxed paper sheets is my new way to deal with rolled cookie dough. Not only does the dough not stick to the counter or rolling pin, but I don’t get flour all over the kitchen or work any additional flour into the dough which reduces the risk of ending up with tough cookies. The key to rolling out dough between paper is to flip it over every few rolls to smooth out any wrinkles that form.

Icing Cut-out Cookies

Working with a standard royal icing made of meringue powder (available at baking, cookware, or craft stores), powdered sugar and water, mix up the icing so it is thick enough to hold its shape if piped in a thin line. Pipe a thin outline all around the cookie with this slightly stiff icing (colored to match the background color of the design) to act as a boarder. Thin the remaining icing to the point that when drizzled on the surface, the ribbon of icing disappears after about 5 seconds. Color multiple portions as desired. Thin the portion of icing that is the background color to the point that a ribbon drizzled on the surface of the icing disappears almost immediately. Spoon enough of this thinner icing to flood the space inside the piped boarder. Spread the fill-icing out to the piped boarder with the help of a small knife and by simply tilting the cookie and letting gravity do the work. While the fill-icing is still wet, pipe on the color decorations. This slightly thicker icing will melt into the background icing creating a perfectly smooth surface, but still retain its shape and design. It ends up looking like a painted design.

Below is a great video on how to make a paper cornet. I think paper cornets are the easiest way to handle a multitude of different colors of icing. You don’t need to buy pre-cut parchment triangles, just tear off some parchment or waxed paper and fold the bottom right corner of the piece to line up perfectly with the left edge. You should have a double-layer triangle with an extra strip of paper sticking out one side. Trim off the excess paper and you have a perfect right triangle for making a cornet.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X8FnXBhPw

In addition to my “Good Little Kitten” mittens, I made Chocolate-Filled Ravioli Cookies. I have been thinking about this idea ever since coming up with the chocolate paste filling for the rughelach a few weeks back. The filling is rather stiff and bakes well because it holds its shape. I rolled the cookie dough a bit thinner than for standard cut-outs because it is double layered. Simply place small balls of the chocolate paste on one layer of rolled-out sugar cookie dough, cover with another layer of dough and gently press the dough together working out any air pockets around the filling. Cut the ravioli apart and bake at 350 degrees F for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browning around the edges.

photo by David Peterman

Chocolate Filling