Braised Beef Cheeks, aka Beef Butter

I have a philosophy about new foods:

Try anything once, twice if you like it, three times to make sure.

Quick Eats: Flatbreads

Howdy, neighbors! I apologize for leaving you hanging for the past few weeks. Summer school has been a tour du force and I haven't had much time to myself. I have quite a few posts pending, so expect to see some catching up in the next week.

After a rough day of work I needed to decompress a little bit before jumping into writing a final paper and writing up the take-home final exam. Ms. Hightail had made some amazing cucumber dip and we had nearly run out of my favorite flatbreads from World Market that went so well with it. I poked around on the Internet a little bit and found a recipe over at Stresscake that seemed pretty easy to handle. (And the site seemed fitting!)

The Basics: Whipped Cream and Butter

Milk is amazing. It's just as simple as that.

Möbius Steak: Accepting Delicious Defeat

I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

— Ben Franklin

Not everything goes as planned. You study something, follow the directions, and you find your end product is a total flop. I always think it important to refer to them as "learning experiences" and to try and find something positive despite the lack of success.

The Basics: Mashed Potatoes

Mash. Mashers. Taters. Mashed-a-taters. The perfect white canvas of the food world. They go by so many names.

1 / (Shepherd's π)

This was not the post I originally intended when trying to showcase some things you could do with transglutaminase, aka meat glue. Since this one was a success and the other was an epic failure (something that I plan on attempting again soon), I thought I'd start with the success.

Tapioca Maltodextrin: Sprinkle on the Fat

Next up in the molecular gastronomy bag of tricks is tapioca maltodextrin!

This stuff is pretty amazing.