Cooking and Gadgets

Mastering the Perfect French Omelette...or Not

perfectomelette I was never a fan of the omelette until I tried the one at Petit Trois, Chef Ludo Levebvre’s LA-based French bistro. It is quite rich and intense - thanks to a very generous helping of Black Pepper Boursin cheese - yet light and creamy, just melting in your mouth. What other cooks call an omelette is just a dry, tasteless, overcooked travesty compared to this version. It is a simple plate of food perfectly crafted each and every time. Chef Ludo has exacting standards in the kitchen and he expects his cooks to make it the same, classic way plate after plate.

We aren’t overly talented in our kitchen, so we figured this dish would be relegated to our sporadic visits to the restaurant. Lucky for all of us, in his new video series, Ludo à la Maison, he shares the recipe and shows you how it’s done. Now you don’t have to live in LA to enjoy the Perfect French Omelette. The Boursin is a must - though thankfully widely available and inexpensive - and most kitchens should readily have the other ingredients on hand - butter, eggs, salt, pepper and chives. Only six ingredients. Totally easy, right?

After watching the video a few times - he talks you through it, but it’s still sort of freeform - we gave it a try and did, for two amateur cooks, a pretty good job. Yes, it took two of us. There were some tense moments in the middle when it looked like it was too wet and was going to color before it set, but we managed to keep it from browning (a super big no-no) and properly wrapped it. While not perfectly pretty, it disappeared from our plate as quickly as the true version does. Success!

French Bread Times Two

Snow days keeping me tucked inside my warm, cozy house with my favorite guy, a sweet puppy, a fire in the fireplace, hot soup, homemade bread and a bottle of red wine — winter life in northern Minnesota really doesn’t get much better than that.

Making your own bread does not have to be difficult. French Bread Times Two proves it.

I learned of this recipe that makes two loaves of French bread from an energetic friend of my mom’s years ago. This friend loved to cook and bake and entertain. She excitedly shared the recipe with my mom, explaining how she loved being able to conveniently pull the chilled loaves from her refrigerator and bake them just before her dinner guests arrived, bringing her all kinds of raving compliments and incredulous ooohs and aaaahs.

Well, my mom was duly impressed. Unfortunately, she was never very interested in making bread from scratch. After all, those frozen loaves of dough from the freezer case at the grocery store were awfully good and demanded no effort at all.

My mom passed the recipe over to me.

About Pepper

Today I want to discuss Pepper.

Yes, Pepper.

I feel the eye roll. You think you know what there is to know. It's sat on the table, every day, for a lifetime in an arranged marriage to Salt. A couple. Separate but not equal. I mean, really, isn't Mr. Pepper, in our culture, sort of the lesser of the two? The sides of the shaker by the stove are not as greasy. Pepper is....

A kick. A punch. A jab.

Salt knows her boundaries. She comes to you in the right size. Pepper, the guy, has to be ground down, beat up, knocked into shape.

But what is he really....?

What is the nature of the love affair – not just between them – but between us?

What to do with Chutney

I'm a cheater, in the kitchen anyway. While I may not be a fan of mac and cheese from a box, I positively love using gourmet specialty products. What kinds of products? Jams, mustards, chutney, tapenade, Chinese sauces, so many things! Two of my favorite secret weapons are in the freezer--phyllo dough and puff pastry.

You could easily write a book on all the things you can make out of phyllo dough and puff pastry. I suggest the title "How to Succeed in Baking Without Really Trying". Once you learn how to handle them, the possibilities are endless. They even turn something mundane into something special. For example you could make a stew into an elegant pot pie. You could turn a fruit compote into pastries. You could make fancy little appetizers to serve hot from the oven. How fancy? I suggest little napoleons or tartlets. It's really easy.

A few weeks ago I had a lot of goat cheese languishing in the fridge. I had promised my friend Alison I would develop some recipes for her fabulous chutney and it dawned on me that using puff pastry I could make a delicious pastry with nothing more than goat cheese, puff pastry and chutney.

My First Cookbook

When I was very young, one of my favorite books was The Campbell Kids at Home. While it may have lacked the pathos of another favorite on my list, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, I found it equally fascinating. The narrative was slight, no more than a frame story, but I read the recipes over and over again, and I considered it my cookbook.

The Campbell Kids at Home was published in 1954 by Rand McNally; the back cover lists it as one of its “Famous Book-Elf books,” and it was just one of dozens of the Campbell Soup Company’s product tie-ins in the fifties. Part of the post- WW II surge in advertising, the company had already been involved with promotional objects since the start of the 20^th century, and you can still send in soup labels in exchange for calendars, bowls, and mugs, although the Kids themselves have slimmed down quite a bit. (The “Kids” always go by this capitalized designation; they have no first names—and they always speak as one.) While I still have the book—my older daughter also went through a period of obsession with it—I destroyed all potential (hefty) re-sale value by inserting my name into the title on the first page. (But isn’t that what we do with books we love? Don’t we want to climb right into them and join in the adventure?)

Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets