Certain food combinations are much more than the sum of their parts: tomatoes and basil; bacon and eggs; chocolate and raspberries. To this list, I must add goat cheese and honey. Just drizzling honey on goat cheese and eating on a cracker is a sensory delight. Inspired by this taste, I created this dessert to showcase goat […]

For those of you who are growing garlic, now is the time to snip the scapes. Our garlic leaves are waist-high and even avid gardeners have said, “I didn’t know you grew leeks.” We don’t grow leeks, but the garlic plant looks like a giant leek. The scape (which has a round stem not a flat leaf […]

Need a hot tip? Since stock tips are suspect, how about pastry tips? Kitchen Conservatory sells nearly a hundred different sizes and styles of pastry tips — all beautifully shown on our pastry tip page (along with pastry bags and couplers). Pastry tips are the same as pastry tubes. Although using a pastry bag may seem […]

Strawberries have arrived, which means it is time to make strawberry jam (followed by all the other fruits of summer: cherry, peach, gooseberry, and any other ripe fruit). Time for a jam session! Homemade fruit jam is simple to make: equal parts fruit and sugar plus one package of pectin for every 4 cups of chopped fruit. Place the […]

Our chicken coop now has an addition — a nursery for chicks. The separate section protects the young birds from being pecked by the older hens. Toward the back of the coop is the wooden house with a roost and the nesting boxes where the hens lay eggs. We have a dozen hens and we get about […]

Phyllo dough seems so simple: buy a box from the freezer case, defrost, brush with butter, and wrap around a filling. But the result tastes like paper, so is homemade phyllo dough worth the effort? Maria Sakellariou, who teaches Greek food classes for Kitchen Conservatory (next one is “Greek Goddess” on June 12), graciously taught […]

Bakeries and pastry shops in Paris have a running competition on croissants: is it bread or pastry? Boulangeries sell yeasty doughy croissants and patisseries sell flaky buttery croissants. The first step to eating a delicious croissant in Paris is to go to a patisserie, not a bread shop. So I have always thought that pizza is firmly in the […]

Founded nearly seventy years ago, The St. Louis Herb Society is a vibrant volunteer group of dynamic gardeners and cooks. They have just published their fourth cookbook, Herbal Cookery, which is full of creative uses for familar and unfamilar herbs. How about Avocado-Sorrel Soup, Grilled Chicories with Nasturium Blossoms, Pork Tenderloin with Nine-Herb Sauce, or Blackberry-Basil […]

Parties are just more fun when they have a theme. I love duck, so why not an all-duck dinner? Great, except no one wants duck liver ice cream, so I served a mousse (not a goose or a moose) for dessert. I bought seven ducks, saved the livers, cut out the leg quarters for duck […]

After the Day in the Kitchen: Fish cooking class, the participants said their most favorite dish was fish tacos. After the four-part Culinary Skills class, the participants said that their most favorite dish was fish tacos. At a recent Iron Chef competition, the chef who made fish tacos was the winner. Fish tacos are a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, […]