What does it mean to blind bake?
What does it mean to blind bake?
Blind baking means to pre-bake a pastry shell before it is filled to protect the bottom of your tart, pie or quiche from turning soggy.
Fully blind-baked crusts are a must for pies with fillings like pudding and custard. Pastry for quiches and delicate fruit pies is partially cooked before filling and returning to the oven to finish cooking.
To blind bake, spread the pastry into the pan, chill until firm, prick with a fork to prevent air bubbles from forming and cover with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
Cover the bottom of the pie plate with pastry weights, uncooked rice or beans to weigh down the pastry so it doesn't puff up in the oven; bake as directed. (If the edges start browning too soon, cover loosely with aluminum foil.)
Ketchup is a sweet and savory tomato-based condiment made with tomato paste, sugar, vinegar and spices such as cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Friend to hamburgers, French fries, hot dogs and other all-American favorites, it is also an ingredient in barbecue sauce and Thousand Island dressing (mixed with mayonnaise). The British like to use it to garnish their bacon sandwiches, among other things. And it is surprisingly popular in France.
Ketchup is also a more general term for sauce, and the Brits make something called mushroom ketchup. Early ketchup from East Asia (fish sauce with added nuts, anchovies, mushrooms and other flavorings) was introduced to Europe by English and Dutch sailors. Tomatoes were eventually used to make the sauce in New England in the late 1700s, and by the 1800s, recipes for tomato ketchup started showing up in American cookbooks, including the popular The Virginia Housewife, written by Thomas Jefferson's cousin Mary Randolph.
A certain Jonas Yerks (or Yerkes) is said to be the godfather of the American ketchup movement, who was selling it nationwide by 1837. (Heinz came along in 1876.)
Recipe: Fried Green Tomato Salad With Sweet Chili Dressing (Steamy Kitchen)
Recipe: Fresh Tomato Salsa (Cookthink)
A crumble is a fruit-based dessert with a crumbly topping called a streusel that's a mixture of flour, butter and sugar -- plus optional flavorings like cinnamon, vanilla extract, lemon zest or nuts -- that is baked until crisp. The flour, butter and sugar are combined until they form crumbs; some people like to add oats or nuts to the mixture.
Apple crumble is traditional, but you can make a crumble out of rhubarb, blackberries, plums or just about any fruit. A crumble is delicious warm or cold, plain or accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream, heavy cream or custard.
The crumble is said to have been invented in Britain during World War II, when food rationing made pie crusts an impossibility. Americans sometimes call the crumble a crisp.
A very stingy bishop indeed.
Traditional British port-drinking etiquette requires that the host pour for the person on his right, then pass the bottle to the person on his left (port side), and so on around the table. When your glass runs out, it's bad form to ask for more, and a thirsty drinker gets around this awkward moment by asking the person in the nearest vicinity of the bottle, "Do you know the Bishop of Norwich?"
Those who are aware of this quaint rhetorical custom will realize their error and merrily hand over the bottle. For the clueless who may answer no, the questioner gets to say, "He's an awfully nice fellow, but he never remembers to pass the port."
Queen of Puddings is the grand-sounding name for a homey traditional British baked dessert made from a breadcrumb-thickened egg custard that is baked until set, then topped with raspberry or black currant jam and covered in meringue. It is returned to the oven to color the meringue and served hot, with lots of double cream.
It's part of the British bread pudding family of desserts that go back as far as the 17th century.
Britain is famous for its blue cheeses, most notably Stilton, which is now required to be made with pasteurized milk. Stichelton is a "new" classic blue cheese made from unpasteurized milk using traditional methods. Stichelton was the 11th century name of Stilton village.
Produced by cheesemakers Joe Schneider and Randolph Hodgson of Neal’s Yard Dairy, Stichelton is an unpressed, delicately curded, full-flavored cheese with a buttery texture. The cheese is made in Nottinghamshire using very small doses of rennet and starter bacteria. The cheesemakers hand-ladle curds into a trough to mature overnight. It is salted in the morning and left for five days before being smoothed with a kitchen knife.
Marmalade is a fruit preserve that is most often spread on toast. It is made with citrus fruit, sugar, water and added pectin when needed. British marmalade, much of which is made in Dundee, Scotland, is bittersweet, whereas the American-made version is just plain sweet.
The Seville orange is widely used to make British marmalade, as it is higher in pectin than a regular orange and helps the marmalade to set naturally once pectin is released by boiling the fruit and sugar.
Marmalade comes in variations according to how thick you like the cut of the peel. Marmalade can also be made with grapefruit, limes, lemons or clementines.
You can also spread marmalade on sandwiches or scones; mix it with whipped cream and spread it between layers of cake; or mix it into a marinade for chicken or pork.
A tea sandwich is a dainty sandwich that is a fixture of the English afternoon tea. Less a meal than your typical American sandwich, it's meant as a little snack to hold you over until dinner (or supper) later on.
A tea sandwich can be eaten in just a few bites. It is typically made with thin-sliced, white bread slathered with butter or mayonnaise and a scant amount of filling. Tea sandwich classics include cucumbers, watercress, radishes, cream cheese, egg salad or smoked salmon.
Looks are important when making tea sandwiches: bread crusts are trimmed and people like to get cute by cutting them into triangles or whimsical shapes with cookie cutters.
Recipe: Open-Faced Cucumber Tea Sandwiches (VeganYumYum)
Recipe: Salmon And Caviar Croque Monsieur With Watercress Salad (Washington Post)
Watercress is a peppery, delicate, dark green leafy vegetable that has been growing wild in cool streams of running water since Hippocrates prescribed it to his patients. The Romans fed it to their emperors and took it to cure baldness. The Egyptian Pharaohs fed it to their slaves. Victorians bundled its stems into little bouquets and walked around munching it in the streets like ice cream cones.
Britain is home to much of today's watercress production. The watercress sandwich became a British institution between the world wars, when the population depended on local products. In 2003, British watercress advocates waged a public awareness campaign for the dainty vitamin-packed member of the mustard family -- which is also used in salads, soups and other dishes and has begun to replace the ubiquitous parsley sprig as a garnish on restaurant plates -- entitled "Watercress: Not Just a Bit on the Side."
Recipe: Whole Wheat Fusili With Watercress, Red Peppers, Pine Nuts, and Garlic (Cookthink)
Recipe: Sweet Cress And Fruit Salad With Grapefruit-Verjus Vinaigrette (hogwash)
British bread puddings are a family of desserts that go back as far as the 17th century and are popular in the U.S. Bread pudding is a handy way to use up stale bread. Either bread crumbs or stale bread cubes are soaked in an egg custard mixture of milk or cream, eggs and sugar -- plus vanilla or other spices like cinnamon and nutmeg -- then baked. Bread pudding can be eaten hot or cold, plain or made even more rich with a sauce like crème anglaise.
Bread pudding can be complicated with chocolate, nuts, dried fruits or other flavorings and can be made with sweet breads such as brioche. The homey traditional British baked dessert Queen of Puddings is made from a breadcrumb-thickened egg custard that is baked until set, then topped with raspberry or black currant jam and covered in meringue. It is returned to the oven to color the meringue and served hot, with lots of double cream.
Bread and butter pudding is another matter, a kind of baked French toast in which buttered bread is layered with raisins or other fruits, covered in a milk and egg mixture and baked.
Which apples are best for cooking and baking?
Which apples are best for cooking and baking?
There are no firm rules about which of the world's thousands of apple varieties are most appropriate for cooked sweet and savory dishes.
But for baking, Honeycrisp, Cortland, Golden Delicious, Gala, Newtown Pippin and Granny Smith work well because they hold their shape in pies and tarts without turning to applesauce. Some people favor naturally sweeter apples like Golden Delicious and Gala when baking desserts; Newton Pippin and Granny Smith add a tart note to savory dishes like stuffings.
To make apple sauce, Gravenstein apples have an ideal sweet-tart balance; Jonathan apples have a tender texture and moderately tart flavor.
Prepping pearl onions requires a bit of effort, but will make a difference in soups and stews or as a side dish when roasted, braised or glazed.
Start by bringing a saucepan of water to a boil (for blanching the onions). Next, prepare an ice bath -- just a large bowl with a quart of water and 1 cup of ice cubes -- that you will use to cool down the onions after blanching.
Cut off the root end of each pearl onion -- don't cut too much off, maybe 1/16 of an inch. Blanching will loosen the skins and they'll slip off easily.
Blanch the pearl onions by boiling them in water for 1 to 2 minutes until their skins look bubbly and translucent.
With a slotted spoon, remove them to the ice bath so that they stop cooking and become cool enough to peel.
Let them cool for 5 minutes in the ice bath, or until they're cool enough to handle.
Now just slip their skins off.
Since you've already removed the root, the skins will be loose and easy to peel off.
