Dessert and baking used to be a big omission from my cooking repetoire. Now, I’m all about pie.
But a good foundation is key, so behind every good pie is a good pie crust.
I started in working from scratch, but I used a recipe that was all shortening based. I’d never used shortening before. It was weird, gelatanous, and looked remarkably healthy (yes, we’re talking about pies, but even by pie standards)! I was thrilled to have made a crust from scratch, but it seemed to be missing something. I eventually dabbled in the world of making a butter-based crust, and the outcome is noticably different. How you ask? Texture. Big time. You want your pie to stand up to you and you want it to flake and crumble when you cut into it. The shortening-based crust wants to fit in this role, it really does. But in reality, its just kind of smushy and withdrawn. Plus, you get extra cool
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Posted by mike on August 27th, 2007 in Dessert, Pie
I love Italian food and I’m well aware that having “Italian breadcrumbs” is about as authentic and authoritative sounding as calling General Tso’s chicken “Chinese food.” So given that disclaimer, I figured I could get away with calling it “Italian-flavored.” Well I guess I could get away with “Italian-American,” as if I really know. No pretensions here. Just humor me.
I like to have this handy for dishes which typically call for dredging something in egg and flour prior to frying. For dishes like chicken parmesan, the breading can really contribute a lot more to the flavor of the dish than plain old flour, and you’d be very surprised how much more dressed up a simple dish can become by paying a little extra attention to the smaller stuff that we usually just ignore.
So without further ado, gather the following:
- 1 cup Italian bread crumbs (you could just as easily substitute plain bread crumbs and/or flour and corn meal. Just increase the
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Posted by mike on August 27th, 2007 in Italian, Spices, dry rubs, and breadings
I’ve always been a big fan of Creole flavors–they’re spicy and complicated. However, if you’ve ever bought a pre-made bottle of something that purports being Creole seasoning from the grocery store (save your money and don’t!), you’ve probably been turned off to it (maybe it’s just me). More often than not, the store-bought stuff amounts to nothing more complex than very bland, very salty red stuff–blech.
This is a very simple seasoning to prepare and is something I always have handy in large amounts. Its good for rubbing into meats and also a great way to give some punch to any breading/bread crumbs when you fry foods. I tend to rub it into steaks, drum sticks, chicken breast, and use it in many of my breadings.
The paprika gives a great color, the sugar gives a little carmelization, the various peppers provide varying levels of heat and flavor, and the rest just gives those earthy spices that make this seasoning so interesting.
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Posted by mike on August 27th, 2007 in Spices, dry rubs, and breadings
