http://www.hertzmann.com/ The personal culinary ramblings, thoughts, comments, observations, and miscellany of one Francophile including lots of recipes and pictures. en-us Mon, 01 Aug 2016 23:43:44 GMT Mon, 01 Aug 2016 23:43:44 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss rss@hertzmann.com rss@hertzmann.com Copyright 2016 Peter Hertzmann, Inc. All rights reserved. French Cuisine http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2016/efs/ I spent June of 2016 as writer-in-residence at the Edinburgh Food Studio, a restaurant and, as it says on the front window, a food research hub. The place was started by Benedict Reade and Sashana Souza Zanella in November 2015. I became aware of it from a Kickstarter campaign; I had previously met Ben at a conference three years before. The Kickstarter literature included a phrase that one of the programs they wanted to institute at the Studio was a writer-in-residence. So I emailed Ben: I write, I cook, and it would be convenient for me to be present during the month of June. Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2016/efs/ http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2016/umami/ The first time I cracked open my copy of the Cracknell and Kaufman translation of the fourth edition of Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire, I opened the book to a section labelled 'Essences'. The concept at first seemed logical: 'As the name implies, essences are stocks made in a reduced form so as to retain a very pronounced flavour.' The text goes on to recommend celery, mushrooms, morels, and truffles as typical sources for producing essences. The paragraph ends with the thought that 'the usefulness of essences become meaningless where the basic stocks themselves contain the desirable quantities of strength and flavour; therefore, it is judged unnecessary to give more than one recipe.' Escoffier then provides a recipe for a fish essence which is nothing more than a standard fumet de poisson. Wed, 10 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2016/umami/ http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2015/aim/ My weekly blog of 230 amuse-bouche, intermedes et mignardises is finished but not forgotten. It's been converted into an article with 230 recipes. All the recipes and stories are available here and by means of the recipe index. Wed, 14 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://www.hertzmann.com/articles/2015/aim/ http://www.hertzmann.com/techniques/index.php?You_Say_Tomato During my years of teaching, the tomato was the one ingredient I never wanted to appear in the mandated class recipes. Management refused to acknowledge that good tomatoes were seasonal, that fresh tomatoes were different than canned tomatoes, and that not all canned tomatoes were the same. This video is a partial response to those bosses that I should have forgotten about long ago. Sun, 11 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://www.hertzmann.com/techniques/index.php?You_Say_Tomato