Category: Recipes
-
Laughably-Easy Lard (or Bacon Fat) Pastry Crust
The perfect pastry crust eludes most of us…seemingly thousands of infinitely-thin layers that are tender, but shatter in your mouth while still remaining moist and succulent. It usually involves massive amounts of butter cut into the flour at just the right temperature to just the right texture…then a chill in the fridge…then the addition of…
-
Buttermilk Sweet Potato Ice Cream
At FRANK recently, we did an Americana menu, and needed to conceive an ice cream to go with our bourbon pecan pie. Chef Jennie suggested a sweet potato ice cream, but that just sounded too sweet to me. After all, pecan pie is very sweet, and to pair it with a super-sweet ice cream would…
-
Quick Sticky Buns
Over the last few years I’ve migrated away from commercial yeast and toward my sourdough starter. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even keep yeast around anymore. This means my breads have gotten infinitely better…but also take infinitely longer to bake. There’s no such thing as “quick sourdough” anything. So while I have…
-
Rosemary Sourdough Dinner Rolls
Makes about 24 rolls. I’ve been maintaining my sourdough culture for about 2 years now, and I just love the thing. I had always been hesitant to maintain a culture because of how much “work” I assumed it would be…regular feedings, complex calculations. It turns out that sourdough is FAR less picky than its reputation…
-
Chocolate Chili Pots de Creme
Makes 6 six-ounce servings, or 8 four-ounce servings. I’ve always been uneasy with the title “Pots de Creme,” probably because it sounds so pretentious. But it’s just French for “cream pot” so I don’t know why it bugs me so much. A pot de creme is a sort of intermediate step between pudding and custard. …
-
Sous Vide Scotch Eggs
The Scotch Egg was invented in a pub in London, and it was an intriguing, if crude, concept. A hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded and fried or baked to a crisp. But hard boiled eggs are truly one of the worst inventions of mankind. Yes, they are a convenient and nutritiously dense snack. …
-
Calas (Creole sweet rice fritters)
At our last FRANK, we wanted to serve a few Creole and Cajun classics that would be unfamiliar to the majority of our diners. After all, everyone knows beignets, etouffee, gumbo, jambalaya, and boudin. Calas (pronounced cah-LAHS) turned out to be a perfect option. These lovely little yeast-risen rice fritters were typically eaten at breakfast…
-
Oven-Fried Crispy Soft-Shell Crab
Ah, soft-shell crab! I vividly remember eating my first one…at a stunning brunch restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans called Stanley. I’ll never forget it…all the complex textures, and the first time I’ve never had to curse while disassembling a crab to get all the lovely bits of meat morsels inside the sharp,…
-
Sourdough Buttermilk Beignets
Ah, beignets! France’s answer to a donut, only without a hole, and rarely round. Single-handedly made famous in the U.S. by Cafe du Monde, steps from the cathedral of St. Louis in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans…though certainly not perfected by them. I actually grumble and groan anytime I take someone…