We already gave you one tutorial for making bread this month. Here’s one more: A step-by-step illustration of making the famous No-Knead Bread! This bread is dead simple. It’s ridiculously easy, and very forgiving. If you’re intimidated by baking ratios, volume vs. weight, baking scales, and kneading, this is a great recipe to start with. It will give you such a delicious loaf, with about five minutes of hands-on time and literally no way to mess it up.
The Challenge: I have a container of mascarpone that I bought a little while back with no intentions of what to do with it. Well, it’s still in my frig! I have some vanilla and chocolate pudding packages lying around, some graham cracker crumbs, frozen pumpkin puree, frozen berries, limoncello and Bailey’s liqueur, and a container of heavy cream.
So I could go in many directions and want to get rid of some of this stuff with a quick dessert but don’t know if mascarpone can be stirred into pudding to make a creamy dessert. Any ideas?
Sent by Joan
I remember the first time I saw a kitchen with appliances tucked away behind cabinet doors. I was a little confused — where was the refrigerator? The dishwasher? They blended right into the kitchen! What do you think about this look? Would you like your appliances hidden behind cabinet doors, or do prefer to have them proudly on display?
• Are you an effective grocery shopper? at Bon Appétit
• Lindsey Vonn’s banana bread recipe at KSDK
• English muffins and espionage at Daily Bread
• A gallery of historical fad diets at The Boston Globe
• Why there are so few great yet inexpensive wines from California at Slate
• Skier spreads cheese on leg to heal injury at CNN
• Interview with Clotilde DuSoulier at Social Workout
• A cast-iron secret to great pizza at The Atlantic
• The beer trail of Vietnam at The New York Times
• Shopper’s guide to pesticides at EWG’s FoodNews
We’ve had several questions from readers lately about stylish and functional storage for onions and garlic in the kitchen. So we were really taken with this small, easy project from Country Home: Transform vintage tube pans with a bit of paint and a chain!
We are on a collards kick right now so these Spanish collard greens look amazing! Read on for this plus pan de coco (Honduran coconut bread) and the rest of today’s Delicious Links.
A hot red sugar bowl, a beautifully decorated burlap table runner, and chicken ragu in today’s Delicious Links.
Plus a winter salad of white beans, bacon, and rocket — that’s arugula to us Americans!
Lasagna is perhaps the quintessential feed-a-crowd casserole. There are of course as many ways to make lasagna as there are Italian mammas, but here is my own method for making it. I was so intimidated by lasagna, before I first tried it! It looked like a process that would eat up my whole day! While that it is not true, it is definitely more time-consuming than spaghetti — but it’s oh-so-worth-it, from time to time! So here, just in case you have never made lasagna, is the process in photos.
All month we’ve been soliciting your advice on the best ways to do a few common tasks in the kitchen. From cooking a turkey to softening butter, and from cleaning granite countertops to shopping for new appliances, you’ve offered the best of your own household intelligence! Now, at the end of the month, we turn to one last question, and it’s a bit larger and more philosophical: What is the best way to learn how to cook?
Reader Davin wrote in to ask about the best way to dispose of kitchen grease and oil. Most municipalities tell you not to put used cooking oil and grease down the drain, but what then should a cook do with it? How do you dispose of (or reuse) cooking grease?
Grating ginger is one of those little kitchen tasks that we rather dread. Usually when a recipe calls for grated ginger it calls for a lot, and while our Microplane does a pretty good job of it, our fingers always feel shredded up by the end! How do you grate ginger? Have you found a better, faster, more finger-friendly method than the Microplane?
From range hoods to dishwashers, and food processors to stand mixers, kitchen purchases can be daunting. Whether you’re in the market for a $300 mixer or a $2000 refrigerator, it can be nervewracking to figure out how to make the best purchase. How do you go about researching good deals and reliable brands? Where do you go to help you make the best decision — Showrooms? Internet? Friends? Consumer Reports? Tell us how you shop for major new kitchen purchases!
Stainless steel appliances and countertops have been extremely popular in kitchens lately, and their popularity shows no sign of diminishing. That sleek brushed surface is very attractive, especially when compared to black or white shiny surfaces. But we do hate cleaning stainless steel! It seems to attract (and hold on to) fingerprints and grease so well. Do you have any tips for getting stainless steel appliances extra clean and shiny?
We love the look of plates hung on the wall. It’s a great way to use a treasured but incomplete set of vintage dishes inherited from friends or family, to display your “only use once a year” dishes and free up cupboard space, or just show off a collection of single plates scrounged from thrift stores, antique stores and flea markets.
• Read the full post at Re-Nest
Container gardening is a great way for city dwellers to have their own home-grown food source in a small space. All you need is a deck, a roof garden, or a tiny patch of well-lit space to start your own small garden. To learn the basics, we attended a session with Merill Smith, from Chicago’s City Farm. Get ready for growing season!
• Read the full post at Apartment Therapy
