Tag: Warning

Spilled Milk under the Bridge

Posted on by twelfthdimensionkitchen

–Michael

Quick warning to the not-yet-wise. If you have to boil whole milk or cream or any high-fat dairy product, never look away. Ever. Probably shouldn’t even blink. The odds are astronomical that it will go from warm to overboiling in the blink of an eye.

The picture above is from an attempt at making eggnog. The recipe by Alton Brown says to bring the milk/cream mixture to “just boiling” by cooking on high heat. Okay. So. Alton Brown is magic and I’m sure he can manage doing that just fine without overboiling. But for most other people, I recommend taking it lower and slower. I cooked it at several ticks lower than “high” on my stove and still got the above result.

If this happens to you, don’t lose heart! Just keep practicing until you too are magic (not as magic as Alton Brown — let’s be realistic) and eventually you’ll be able to avoid overboiling your milk and cream. And then you won’t have to cry over it or pour it under a bridge or count it all in one basket or anything.

Want Not, Waste Not

Posted on by twelfthdimensionkitchen

-Michael

In case you’re new to cooking and haven’t considered this aspect yet, we want to warn you up front: you are going to waste a lot of food and resources. It’s inevitable. You’re going to mess up recipes. You’re going to make recipes perfectly but end up hating it anyway. You’re going to make a tart and only need three-quarters of the crust dough and wind up throwing away the rest. You’re going to make a recipe which calls for half a cup of buttermilk but then have nothing to do with the rest of the buttermilk but you’ll hang onto it just in case you do until you realize you’ve had it for three months and there’s no way it hasn’t spoiled. And then there’s all the waste of packaging and things like spare bits of parchment paper that you can’t do much with unless you’re far craftier than I am.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not offering a free pass. We should always do our best to waste as little food and few resources as possible. If you’re buying two lemons from the supermarket, you don’t need to use one of the little produce bags. If you plan on baking lots of pies or tarts or other dishes that require a blind-baked crust, it’ll eventually be better to buy reusable pie weights rather than use and toss rice or beans each time. What I am offering is a sometimes-you-just-gotta-and-that’s-okay pass.