Hints and Allegations


Hints and Allegations

Baking is really easy most of the time. The hard part is following the instructions. As with nearly most things, practice makes perfect.

You do NOT have to put your bowl and beaters in the freezer prior to making whip cream.

Vanilla Sauce=Creme Anglaise
Sweetened Whip Cream=Chantilly Cream

It is always advisable to coat your mixing bowl with lemon juice prior to making a meringue, just to make sure there isn't any fat left in the bowl (say from the last buttercream you made).

In my humble opinion, American Buttercream is the reason why many of us don't like buttercream. Take the time to learn how to make Italian buttercream; it's worth it.

Invest in an ice cream maker (I got mine for $35 on sale during the off season). The difference will amaze you.

Regardless of what Food Network chefs and my own instructors have taught, you can refrigerate batter overnight that contains baking soda or baking powder in them and still achieve a good rise in your baked products.

Pre-scooping cookie dough and freezing them until your ready to bake them off is a very good thing indeed.


3.22.2011

Linguine Carbonara

Tonight I needed to make dinner quickly, but I wasn't in the mood for breakfast.

Breakfast for dinner is my usual quick fix for the dinner blahs, but tonight I wanted DINNER. And we were hungry. But Rachel Ray's 30 minute meals are not quite my style.

So, enter Linguine Carbonara. Ideally, I would have made my own pasta, but like I said; we were hungry.

Carbonara is an egg based sauce with parmigiano and bacon fat. What could be better than that? According to my six year old, not much. I try to have some sort of fresh pasta on stand-by, so it was store bought tonight, but any dried pasta will do. I also always keep 4 oz packages of thickly sliced bacon in the freezer. It is amazing how much I use it. Technically, you are supposed to use guanciale (cured pork jowl), but why bother when there is bacon?

Many times you might find restaurants using cream in their cabonara, if you can find it at all. Restaurants may steer clear of this recipe because the sauce is egg based. And the sauce is only cooked from addition of pasta and bacon fat. If you are concerned, I recommend Egg Beaters or any other pasteurized egg product.

My recipe is from Ruth Reichl's book, Garlic and Sapphires.

1 # dried pasta
-Boil in salted water 9-10 minutes
-Make sauce while pasta is cooking

1/4-1/2 # thickly sliced bacon
-Cut bacon crosswise into 1/2" wide pieces
-Place in skillet and cook 2 min. or until the fat begins to render

2 cloves, peeled. Leave whole
-Add to skillet
-Cook another 5 min until the edges of bacon get crisp. Do not overcook! It's a texture thing, and you want the bacon to meld with the pasta.

2 eggs
-Break eggs into large bowl intended to serve the pasta in.
-Whisk together
-Grind in some pepper

-Drain pasta
-Place IMMEDIATELY into bowl with eggs
-Mix thoroughly
-Add bacon and a sufficient amount of bacon fat. I usually add all of it, but discard some if you think it's too much.
-Discard garlic gloves (I usually discard them to my plate).

1/2 Cup Parmigiano cheese, plus extra for your table
-Add to pasta
-Toss pasta again

-Serve and eat! It cools quickly.

Enjoy!!
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