July 2012

We wanted our salmon cakes recipe to be simple to prepare, so we broke out our food processor. Pulsing small pieces of salmon allowed for more even chopping and resulted in small, discrete pieces of fish. We also found a way to ditch the egg and flour steps of the breading process in our salmon cakes recipe. Instead, we coated the salmon cakes with panko, which we also used to bind our salmon cakes.  

Tossing hot pasta with ricotta cheese creates a quick, creamy sauce that's rich in taste and low in fat. Top this dish with fresh parsley or basil, if you have some on hand.

When developing our muffin recipe, we wanted to wind up with a muffin with a rich, full flavor and a thick, crisp crust protecting its fragile, tender crumb. We wanted our muffin recipe to produce a real beauty, sporting a perfectly round, mushroom-like cap with a pronounced and crisp overhang. We began by testing mixing techniques and chose creaming, which produced the most tender crumb. Liquids were up next, and we found that low-fat yogurt delivered the finest crumb and the most rounded and crusty top. To get that big mushroom-like cap, we increased the amount of batter by one-third.

To tame the harsh bite of the cranberries found in most cranberry-nut muffins, we chopped the cranberries in a food processor and tossed them with confectioners’ sugar and a little salt (which we often use to tame the bitterness in eggplant). As for the nuts, we took a cue from cakes made with nut flour and augmented some of the all-purpose flour with pecan flour (made by grinding pecans in a food processor). But because we were working with less flour, our muffins spread rather than baking up tall and self-contained. We fixed the problem by letting the batter rest for 30 minutes.

For our best grilled vegetables recipe, we found that most vegetables are best cooked over a medium-hot fire. Lower heat is needed to cook through vegetables with a low moisture content, like potatoes. As for wood chips, we found that vegetables do not cook long enough to pick up any wood flavor. A better way to add flavor to a grilled vegetable recipe is to brush the vegetables with a flavored oil just before grilling. (Marinating makes vegetables soggy.) 

An all-too-common problem with hard-cooked egg recipes is that they produce a greenish colored yolk and a sulfurous odor. What causes the problem and how do we make perfect hard cooked eggs every time? We wanted a recipe that answered both these questions. One thing our testing told us: Don’t boil the eggs. After countless tests, we found that we got the best results from our Hard-Cooked Eggs recipe when we covered the eggs with an inch of water, brought it to a boil, covered the pan, and removed it from the heat. After 10 minutes, we drained the eggs and cooled them in ice water.