smitten kitchen

This all started with Homesick Texan. No wait, this all started with last year’s orangettes, to this day one of the most popular posts on this site. No wait, this all started with a lifelong (can you say that? when you’re just 31?) love of grapefruits. My favorite way to eat them is the same exact way my mom showed me, halved in a bowl with each section loosened with a arched, double-serrated grapefruit knife. First, I’d pop all of the sections into my mouth in probably under two minutes flat. But then, then came the “grapefruit soup,” I’d call it. Mom would help us scrape all of the residual grapefruit bits into the bowl, then squeeeze every last bit of juice, discard the empty shell of a peel and this, this my friends is the best grapefruit juice you’ll ever drink in your life. You must drink it straight from the bowl. I could live on it, and it alone.

Which brings us to the Homesick Texan, who mentioned in December that “everyone knows the juiciest, largest and sweetest ruby red grapefruit comes from the Rio Grande Valley” and it was funny, because I hadn’t known that at all. But given the price of the grapefruits we’d been seeing in the stores ($2 a pop), their sorry state (dented but still appallingly shiny with wax) and their flavor (average at best) I was just itching to find out. So, we ordered ourselves a little sampler from South Texas Organics and quite a few days later were presented with exactly what we were promised: the very best ruby red grapefruits, from South Texas.

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Now that you understand the basic way that yeast works—eating stuff and spitting out air (how human of it, non?)—here are a couple more ingredients to consider: starches, eggs and sugar accelerate the yeast budding process; salt and fats slow it down. You’re now well on your way to being a regular old Harold McGee.

If I could, I would try to convince every single person out there to bake bread, at least once, but first I’ll have to get most of you over you fear of yeast. Let me start with a definition: yeast is a budding microorganism used in baking as a leavening agent, converting sugars to carbon dioxide, or, you know, air bubbles. See? That wasn’t bad! Next we’ll get into controlling its appetite.

Seeing as I am never short on opinion on anything–most especially when it comes to many Food Network chefs that so often grace my television set, Alex calls the Sunday noontime shows my “stories”–I can’t believe I haven’t previously said a single word about Giada DeLaurentis. Let me redress that right now: I really want to like her–and no, not in the way that my husband does (busted!). I’ll see her cooking something and it always looks pretty good and like it could be tasty, but never, and I mean ever, do I feel any great need to cook the recipe for myself.

I think what it comes down to is that all of her recipes seem to be missing a little something, something that would make it more interesting. Like, you made pesto and added a swapped out a little mint for basil? Whoa. Where’d you come up with that! You add crushed almond cookies over an ice cream sundae to give it an “authentic Italian flavor”? I’m bowled over, here. But less sarcastically: does this actually improve it, or just make it different?

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When you hear pâte this and pâte that, do you just tune out? Don’t! It is quite simple: pâte brisée (butter and flour) is used for quiches and pies, pâte sablée and pâte sucree (butter, flour and sugar, enriched with a whole egg or just yolk) for dessert tarts and pâte feuilletee (puff pastry, created from a zillion butter-enclosed layers) for anything you can think of, savory (appetizers) or sweet (tarte Tatins).