5 second rule

via Serious Eats

500 Best Sauces, Salad Dressings, Marinades and More

The secret IS in the sauce.

As more people get serious about cooking at home, they look to dress up old recipes. The easiest and most effective way of doing this is by using a sauce, salad dressing or marinade. The addition of one of these elements can turn a simple meal into a spectacular meal.

Grilled steak with a rich mushroom sauce. Pomegranate vinaigrette dressing on fresh greens. These are just two examples of the incredibly delicious yet easy-to-prepare recipes featured in this book, and many are accompanied by tips and techniques. Cooking school chef George Geary provides recipes such as:

• Salad dressings and salads — creamy two-cheese italian, Chinese chicken salad, tabouli
• Stock-based sauces and brown and white sauces — poultry stock, champagne sauce, bechamel
• Pasta sauces — fast and easy marinara, wild mushroom sauce, slow-cooker garlic and onion tomato sauce
• Marinades and rubs — Caribbean jerk marinade, American BBQ sauce, curry rub
• Salsas, butters and spreads — watermelon salsa, gorgonzola scallion butter, smoked salmon cheese spread
• Dessert sauces — milk chocolate sauce, pecan-praline sauce, raspberry coulis, almond crunch fondue.

500 Best Sauces, Salad Dressings, Marinades & More has 500 secrets that assure success for every new and experienced home cook.

Chocolate: A Love Story

I came home from Atlanta to a few gifts from friends and listeners. One of them was “Chocolate: A Love Story—65 Chocolate Dessert Recipes from Max Brenner’s Private Collection”

If you haven’t been to one of their restaurants, you should make a point to go and try it out. I am a big fan as you can tell by my earlier post. The book is full of fun and quirky dessert names. I think a lot of the recipes seem very easy but one of the thing that’s missing from this book are picture of the finished product. Although I love the fun designs since I am a designer, I’d rather see what it will look like at the end and I think most of you would too.

Below is a sample of the recipes from this book

A Love Story: My lost childhood chocolate birthday cake
Ingredients

Cake2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-3/4 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1-1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Sprinkles for decoration

Ganache
1-1/4 cups heavy cream
20 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

Syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon Cointreau

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly flour and butter a 9-inch round cake pan
2. Make the cake. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric beater until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing until just combined.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until the crust is golden brown and a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes. Set to cool on a cooling rack.
4. Make the ganache. Bring the cream to a simmer and pour over the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Let sit until the chocolate begins to melt, about 1 minute, then beat with an electric mixer until the ganache is fluffy and smooth. Let cool to room temperature.
5. Make the syrup. Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Lower the heat and simmer until the sugar dissolves, about 10 minutes. Stir in the Cointreau and remove from the heat.
6. Cut the cake horizontally into 2 layers. Brush the still-warm cake with the syrup (do not soak). Once the syrup is absorbed, spread the cooled ganache frosting generously over the top of one round. Top with the second layer of cake and cover with the remaining ganache, using an offset spatula to smooth the ganache down and around the sides of the cake.
7. Sprinkle liberally with multicolored sprinkles.

Thank you for sending the book. Much Love :)
Chuti

You can get the book from Amazon or from the restaurant.