A Recipe: Why Size Doesn’t Matter
Vidhi Dattani
Often people come to me, gripping recipes in their hands, “Can you help me simplify this? It’s too long!”
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What Restaurants Can’t Do
Vidhi Dattani
If restaurants weren’t cautious about food costs, many would go under, quickly. Food cost is the amount of a dish’s raw ingredients taken as a percentage of its sales price.
Read MorePie Dough, A Project in Many Parts
Vidhi Dattani
Chefs prep dishes in steps to handle volumes of orders efficiently and well. Home cooks can take cues from this professional system to streamline and personalize their own kitchen work. Let’s take, for example, the making of pie.
Read MoreTeachings from Chefs’ Menus for Home Cooks
Vidhi Dattani
Today’s restaurant menus read like grocery lists. Descriptions, even prepositions, are edited out. Steak isn’t “served with.” Peppers aren’t piled “on top of.” It’s this elemental style, which makes restaurant food seem sparse, unfussy, even when it’s not.
Read MoreOtherwise, Trash: Day-Old Salad Turned to Tomato-Olive Oil Soup
Vidhi Dattani
Yesterday’s salad is hard to love. Time turns muddled and mushy what was once crisp and bright. Dressed too long, salad is the leftover without another life.
Read MoreThe “Otherwise, Trash” Trend
Vidhi Dattani
Kim Severson of the NYTimes wrote yesterday of recent trends toward efficiency in the kitchen, in efforts to reduce food waste at home. I’ve been told that being an expert of re-purposed food carries a certain culinary clout; it is a status-marker of the contemporary cook.
Read MoreThe Best Iced Coffee Ever
Vidhi Dattani
I like my coffee hot, rich, and somewhat chewy. But when the weather turns warm, I feel the pull to put it on ice.
Read MoreThe Well-Prepped Pastry Pantry: Making Your Own Dry Mixes
Vidhi Dattani
In less time than it took to make one complete fruit crisp, I made kits for two of them, plus kits for three different cookies, two different cakes, one soda bread, and six batches of pastry dough. I didn’t finish one pastry item completely, but I feel as accomplished as if I had made them all.
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