The more I cook and the more I read about cooking, the more I realize how much I have yet to learn about cooking.  Sound familiar?  Perhaps not, but then again if you haven’t read “The Elements of Cooking” by Michael Ruhlman it may be a realization you have yet to undergo.  Ruhlman is a compelling writer who expounds on what he firmly believes are the definitive elements of cooking; starting with essays that discuss stock, sauces, salt, the egg, heat, tools, cookbooks and the finesse of cooking.  Following these essays, Ruhlman provides an A to Z description of the elements of cooking with entries ranging from ingredients, to cooking techniques, to cooking equipment.  Throughout Ruhlman presents his views, as exemplified by the following excerpt on Veal Stock which Ruhlman reveals as the home cook’s most valuable ingredient.  While you may not agree with everything Ruhlman says, there is no doubt that while reading The Elements of Cooking, even experienced cooks will find much to learn in this interesting book.  You may even, as I did, learn just how much more their is to learn.

Veal Stock—a personal reflection on the home cook’s most valuable ingredient

From The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman, Scribner 2007

Veal stock is distinguished from all other stocks by its neutrality and its gel­atin: the meat and bones don’t have a strong flavor of their own, and so magnify the flavors of what they’re combined with; as they are the bones from a young animal, they contain abundant collagen, which breaks down into the gelatin that creates excellent body in the finished stock.

From such simple material comes not only one of the most exquisite tools in the kitchen, but something more akin to a natural wonder or a great work of art. Few people put veal stock in the same category as, say, the Goldberg Variations or Plato’s cave allegory, and this lack of understanding amazes me. There’s a reason why veal stock is considered the backbone of the finest culinary tradition of the Western world, what many consider to be, in the hands of the right chef, true artistry.

But it’s almost never used in the home kitchen, and this is as unfortunate as it is unnecessary. It’s no more difficult to make than chicken stock, it’s one of the most powerful tools in professional kitchens, one of the biggest guns in the professional chef ’s entire arsenal, and it’s virtually unknown to the home cook. If there is a single ingredient that could transform a cook’s repertoire at home, it’s veal stock.

Perhaps one reason for its absence in the home kitchen is that most books geared toward the home cook don’t offer veal stock recipes. Or they offer recipes for meat stock, not bothering to distinguish between beef, pork, chicken, and veal. Both Joy of Cooking and Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cookbook, excellent all-purpose books, contain veal stock recipes without explaining why one would make it, as if it were inter­changeable with chicken stock. The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook con­tains no recipe, nor does The Essentials of Cooking, by the respected author and teacher James Peterson. I’m not sure why this is. Recipes for chicken stock abound in cookbooks and seem not to need a justification. Veal stock is no more difficult to make than any other stock, it’s a hundred if not a thousand times more useful, and it’s a rarity.

Veal stock is the essential. If you could only have one preparation in a book of essentials, veal stock would have to be it. In a book with many essentials, veal stock is the only logical choice for the lead-off preparation.

About The Elements of Cooking

Modeled on Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, The Elements of Cooking is an opinionated reference work destined to stand alongside the shelf among the great works of the kitchen: On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, Escoffier, The Joy of Cooking and the CIA's The Professsional Chef. Unlike those monoliths of the kitchen, this book is slim, clear and very to the point: here are the things you need to know how to do, here are the words you need to speak the langauage of food, and, most importanly, here are the ways you need to think about and approach food, the absolute essentials that every, not only good but great, cook knows. Simply written, this is a book that can be read in an afternoon and it's lessons be practiced for a lifetime.

Simple, straightforward dessert recipes – that’s what you’ll find in “The Complete Baking Cookbook” by George Geary.  Unlike many baking focused cookbooks, this cookbook isn’t aimed at amazing or dazzling you, instead the focus is to provide you with a collection of accessible dessert recipes to make and enjoy at home.  The recipes range from cookies, to pies, to cakes, along with breakfast breads and holiday favorites.  They consist of traditional favorites such as carrot bread, chocolate chip cookies, fruit pies, scones, muffins, and brownies.  Many common recipes are presented with lots of variations such as the brownies and cheesecakes.  One example is this mouth-watering Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake recipe below.  The recipes are easy to follow and offer tips on getting the best results from your efforts.  If you are looking for a collection of baked good recipes to make for your family that’s what you’ll find in “The Complete Baking Cookbook”.

Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge Cheesecake

From The Complete Baking Cookbook by George Geary, Robert Rose, 2007. 

Serves 6 - 8

Here’s a chocolate fudge cheesecake that’s so rich you’ll need a glass of milk to wash it down!

• Preheat oven to 325°F (160°C)
• 6-inch (15 cm) cheesecake pan, or spring form pan with 3-inch (7.5 cm) sides, lined with parchment paper

Crust

• 7 chocolate sandwich cookies (about 3 oz/90 g)
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted (25 mL)

Filling

• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate, (125 g) melted and cooled
• 2 packages (each 8 oz/250 g) cream cheese, softened
• 3⁄4 cup granulated sugar (175 mL)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (5 mL)
• 1⁄4 cup semisweet chocolate chips (50 mL)

1. Crust: In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, process cookies until finely ground, about 20 seconds. You should have 3⁄4 cup (175 mL). Transfer to a bowl and mix in butter. Press into bottom of cheesecake pan and freeze until filling is ready.

2. Filling: In a microwave-safe bowl, microwave chocolate on medium (50%), stirring every 30 seconds, until soft and almost melted, 1 to 1 1⁄2 minutes. Stir until completely melted and smooth. Let cool slightly.

3. In a clean food processor work bowl fitted with a metal blade, process cream cheese and sugar until smooth, about 20 seconds. With motor running, add melted chocolate, eggs and vanilla through the feed tube and process until blended.

4. Pour over frozen crust, smoothing out to sides of pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips over top. Bake in preheated oven until it starts to pull away from sides of pan and center has a slight jiggle to it, 35 to 45 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for 2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

Variation

Use white chips in place of the semisweet for a black and white cheesecake.

Tip

Make sure the chocolate is cooled to room temperature after melting; otherwise you’ll get strange chunks in your batter.

About The Complete Baking Cookbook

Nothing says comfort food like freshly baked cookies, a cake, muffins or homemade bread cooling in the kitchen. Creating those mouthwatering baked treats to share with family and friends is one of life's great pleasures. The Complete Baking Cookbook provides the inspiration to explore the wonderful world of baking. And of course it includes the tested recipes to make it easy and tasty. Written by baker and pastry chef George Geary, this collection of 350 easy-to-follow recipes offers a tantalizing variety of goodies from pies, tarts, cobblers and crisps, to cookies, cheesecakes and holiday pastries. With hundreds of recipes and an abundance of luscious photographs, this book will be cherished by home bakers everywhere.

Photo by Andrea Grablewski

Miss Mancini's Rice Pie

From Sweety Pies by Patty Pinner, The Taunton Press 2007

• One 9-inch single Flaky Pie Crust (see recipe below), rolled out, fitted into a pie plate, and edge trimmed and crimped
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 3/4 cups ricotta cheese
• 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1/4 cup cooked white rice
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon  
• Makes one 9-inch pie

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare the pie crust and set aside.

Crack the eggs into a large bowl and beat until well blended. Beat in the sugar, then stir in the ricotta and lemon juice and rind until thoroughly incorporated. Add the cream and stir until smooth and creamy. Fold in the rice, then stir in the cinnamon. Pour the filling into the pie crust. Place in the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is nicely browned, 45 to 60 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack before serving.

Flaky Pie Crust

From Sweety Pies by Patty Pinner, The Taunton Press 2007

For 9 or 10-inch single crust

• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chilled vegetable shortening
• 3 tablespoons ice-cold heavy cream or evaporated milk, more or less as needed

For 9-inch double crust or 9-inch deep-dish single crust

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chilled vegetable shortening
• 5 to 6 tablespoons of ice-cold heavy cream or evaporated milk, more or less as needed

Sift the flour, sugar, and salt together in a medium-size to large bowl. Using a pastry blender, a big serving fork, or the tips of your fingers, cut in or pinch or squeeze the shortening until the mixture resembles a bowl of sweet peas. Tossing the mixture quickly and lightly with a fork, sprinkle in the cream or milk 1 tablespoon at a time. (It's better to err on the side of not having enough liquid than to have too much; you don't want a soupy crust.) Continue tossing until the dough holds together when lightly pressed.

With lightly floured hands, loosely gather up the dough into a flat ball, place it in a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until you are ready to roll out the crust. I try to chill at least 30 minutes but not too much longer than overnight. 

Gather together your pie dish, rolling pin, flour canister, flour sifter, and a small, sharp knife. Prepare a clean surface for rolling out the dough. Sift enough flour over the surface to prevent the dough from sticking to it. Lightly flour your hands and the rolling pin. Place the chilled dough on the surface. If you are making a double-crust pie, divide the dough into two balls, one ball (it will be used as the bottom crust) slightly larger than the other (top crust). Keep the top crust covered and refrigerated while you roll out the bottom crust. Press it into a small, flat disk. Using the rolling pin, roll the dough into a circle, working from the center to the edges.

Starting at the center, roll straight up to the edge, turn the dough slightly, and roll straight up to the edge. Repeat the process - turning the dough and rolling - until the dough has formed a circle that's slightly larger than the pan. (Make a 12-inch circle for a 9-inch pan, or a 13-inch circle for a 10-inch pan, or a 12 x 16-inch rectangle for a 9 x 13-inch pan.) Be careful to keep the dough as even as you can, about 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick.

Place the pie plate upside down on top of the rolled-out dough. Using a small knife, cut a circle around the plate, leaving a 1-inch border of dough around the plate. Set aside the scraps. Remove the pie plate. Gently fold the crust in half. Now, fold the crust into quarters. Gently pick up the crust and place it in the pie plate so the center point of the crust is positioned in the center of the plate. Unfold the dough and press it firmly into position in the plate. Trim all excess dough from the edge, except for a 1/2-inch flap of dough around the edge.

If you are making a single crust pie, crimp the edge first, then fill with the pie filling. If you are making a double-crust pie, fill the pie, then roll out the second crust the same way you rolled the bottom crust. Cut the top crust so it extends beyond that of the bottom crust. (Cut an 11-inch circle for a 9-inch pie, a 13-inch circle for a 10-inch pie, and a 10 x 14-inch rectangle for a 9 x 13-inch pie.) Place the top crust on top of the filled pie. Trim the overhang to 1/2 inch. Fold the top flap of dough under the edge of the bottom crust, until the edges are even with the rim of the pan. Using the tines of a fork, flatten the hem evenly against the rim of the pie plate, moving completely around the pie. To prevent sticking, dip the fork in flour, if needed. Cut a few slits on top of the crust to let out the steam, then bake as directed in your particular recipe.

About Sweety Pies

Women sharpen women. I'm convinced that you can learn a lot about a woman based on what she feeds herself and the people she loves; a woman's recipes--especially her prized recipes--are a revelation of who the woman is: what she thinks, how she behaves, what she values, and how she lives her life." Sweety Pies, is a collection of 70 such pie recipes, gathered from the women in author Patty Pinner's life--family, friends, women who are part of her own personal history. What distinguishes this book is its utterly beguiling storytelling--each recipe is accompanied by a story told on the woman known for making the pie, from Sister Baby's Buttermilk Pie to Miss Hatfield and Her Jelly Pies. It's also filled with the truths handed down by our mothers (or that we wish had been handed down by our mothers) like: "An unhappy husband will ask for toasted snow" and "You don't want a man who is jealous of nothing or everything." This is a cookbook that's about love, life, family, friendship, and community as much as it is about the recipes.

There is something about James Peterson’s latest cookbook, “Cooking”, that simply draws me to it.  What exactly it is I’m not sure.  In fact, I think it's a bunch of things including the wonderful design, the detailed photographs (all 1500 of them) and perhaps most luring is his wonderful instructive prose aimed at “steering us away from the mistakes he and his students have made” while instilling “a real passion for food”.  Cooking doesn’t focus on any single food, technique or tool; instead cooking aims to help you do just that – cook.  Following the introduction and a discussion on basic cooking assumptions, James provides a description of 10 basic cooking techniques.  After that the rest of the book is recipes that James suggests we learn. 

Although this is an everyday cookbook, James livens the recipes up with a mix of fundamental recipes and personal favorites leaning towards recipes from France and Mexico.  Sprinkled throughout the book are sidebars with photos on various techniques, needed for the related recipes, such as how to make glazed pearl onions or how to trim an artichoke.  But, the recipes are not just instructive they are also practical recipes for everyday food such as the “Scallops in White Wine-Herb Sauce” below.  As the scallops recipe shows, many of the recipes also provide you with variations so that once you learn how to make the general recipe you can recreate it in other forms to enjoy (and further improve upon the method).  If you are looking for a general purpose book to help you learn more about cooking or to improve your cooking skills take a look at Cooking, but be forewarned you may find you love it.

Scallops in White Wine–Herb Sauce

From Cooking by James Peterson, Ten Speed Press 2007 

One of the easiest sauces for scallops and other shellfish is a white wine sauce with shallots, finished with a swirl of butter. You can add chopped herbs to the sauce, either at the beginning with the shallots if using oil-rich herbs, such as thyme or marjoram, or at the end if using delicate herbs, such as parsley or chervil. This sauce is fairly liquid, so you will need to serve the scallops in soup plates. If you want a thicker sauce, reduce the wine twice as much and double the butter.

Makes enough for 4 main-course scallop servings

• Sautéed Sea Scallops (see recipe below)
• 1 large shallot, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme or marjoram leaves, chopped (optional)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley, chervil, or chives, or a combination
• 6 tablespoons butter
• Salt
• Pepper

Wipe out the pan used to sauté the scallops with a paper towel to rid it of any burnt oil, add the shallot and thyme, and stir them around in the still-hot pan with a whisk for about 30 seconds, or until the shallot smells toasty (the heat retained in the pan is enough to bring out the flavor of the shallot and thyme). Pour in the wine and boil it down to about 2 tablespoons. Whisk in the parsley and the butter. Season with salt and pepper and spoon over the scallops.

Variations

Compound butters can be used in two ways to top scallops and other seafood: Put it right on the scallops when they are served or melt it in the sauté pan, heat it until it is frothy, and then spoon it over the scallops. Some compound butters, such as escargot butter (garlic and parsley) are delicious when cooked in the pan until they break and turn frothy. More delicate butters, say, chervil or parsley butter, should be left emulsified, which is to say the pan should be deglazed with a liquid, such as wine, and the butter whisked into the liquid. 

Sorrel Sauce for Sautéed Sea Scallops or Other Shellfish

Because of its tartness, sorrel is the perfect accompaniment to seafood. You can cream it as you would spinach, except that you don’t blanch it first or it will melt into nothing. The leaves, which look very much like spinach, are cut into little strips, or chiffonade, and then swirled into a white wine sauce. Sorrel can be hard to track down, so when you see it, usually in the summer, buy it up for making soups, for creaming alone or with spinach, or for making sauces for accompanying seafood. To make the sauce, first prepare the White Wine–Herb Sauce (above), made without the herbs. Remove the stems of 8 large sorrel leaves and cut into chiffonade. Whisk the sorrel into the warm sauce. The sorrel will immediately turn a sullen green. Serve immediately.

Sautéed Sea Scallops

Old cookbooks call for cooking scallops for 20 minutes and then covering them with a thick béchamel and broiling them. In fact, scallops need very little cooking—they are even delicious raw when freshly shucked—to bring out their delicate flavor, just enough to heat them through. When sautéing scallops, you need high heat to brown the two sides without overcooking the inside. Also, if the heat isn’t high enough, the scallops will release liquid (especially if they have been soaked) into the pan and then boil in their own juices. Get your sauté pan very hot before you add the scallops, and then start sautéing them one at a time, waiting for the last one added to start browning before you add the next one. When they are ready to turn, after 2 to 3 minutes, turn them only one or two at a time. If you turn them all at once, the pan will cool and the scallops will release liquid. This is one time when you can use a pan larger than needed to hold the scallops in a single layer.

If you are serving scallops as a first course or as part of a multi-course dinner, serve a single very large scallop for a stunning presentation. If you are serving the scallops as the main course, make them in the White Wine–Herb Sauce (above).

Makes 4 main-course servings or 6 first-course servings

• 16 large sea scallops for main courses, 18 small sea scallops or 6 very large sea scallops
  for first courses
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, olive oil, or grapeseed oil
• Salt, preferably fleur de sel
• Pepper 

Don’t season the scallops with salt and pepper ahead of time because the salt will draw out their liquid and the flavor of the pepper will be destroyed by the heat. Pat the scallops perfectly dry.

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over high heat until the oil smokes. Add 1 or 2 scallops, wait for about 30 seconds, and then add 2 more scallops. Continue in this way until the first scallops you added are well browned on one side. This should take 2 to 3 minutes. Then begin to turn the scallops, starting with those that are browned and turning 1 or 2 at a time. Sauté for 2 to 3 minutes on the second side, or until all the scallops have a brown crust on both sides. Remove from the pan, and place on a paper towel–covered plate to absorb the excess oil. Season with salt and pepper and serve on warmed plates. If you have fleur de sel, put a tiny pinch of it in the center of each scallop.

About Cooking

In an era of outfitted home kitchens and food fascination, it's no wonder home cooks who never learned the fundamentals of the kitchen are intimidated. Twenty years ago, James Peterson could relate, and so he taught himself by cooking his way through professional kitchens and stacks of books, logging the lessons of his kitchen education one by one. Now one of the country's most revered cooking teachers, Peterson provides the confidence-building instructions home cooks need to teach themselves to cook consistently with ease and success. COOKING is the only all-in-one instructional that details the techniques that cooks really need to master, teaches all the basic recipes, and includes hundreds of photos that illuminate and inspire.